A Saturday Well Spent

Today was fun! I went to the Earth Day festivities at Ballard Park, first to look at the new trail map kiosks being unveiled, and then to walk the trails as a group, with Friends of Ballard Park executive director Colleen McGrath. I got to talk to a lot of cool people, like Colleen herself, and Frank Amaral (a local landscaper who has done a lot for the park's development and who designed the new trail maps), and Lauren Parmelee, local bird expert. I didn't take pictures during the walk because you guys have seen so much of Ballard Park already in my stuff both here and on my Gather.com pages. But I did takes pictures of the new trail maps.

This is one of the new trail map kiosks, built by students in the Newport Area Career & Technical Center's carpentry program. As I said above, Frank Amaral designed the map. I've included a detail of the main part of the map below, which you can also download as a pdf file here. Click on the picture below to see a full size version easier to read.

But that's not the best part. After our walk, I headed down Hazard Rd. to see who might be on Gooseneck Cove today. And what I found was a very photogenic Snowy Egret. I spent almost an hour with this bird and took over 120 shots; the three posted below are the best of the lot. He/she was very intent on feeding on the schools of minnows in the water near the culvert under Hazard Rd. In any event, here is this very gorgeous Snowy Egret in all its glory!

© 2009 by A. Roy Hilbinger