Day 4.334: The Lisha Kill Chimpanzee Rescue

"Where shall we go? Have we been to Lisha Kill?" asked Exile #2 this morning.

"Yes - I think so," I replied.  Even when a search of the blog drew a blank I was still thinking we must have been there.

We hadn't, but we have now and another it's another gem.

As I've observed before, much of the woodland in these parts was farmland into the late 19th century.  So it is with some reason that The Nature Conservancy are proud of this pocket of old-growth forest so close to civilisation.

We had  a great walk there - a little less than two hours to walk a little less than two miles - we certainly did not hurry.  It was just starting to snow as we arrived - and continued to do so (without really amounting to anything as we crossed the small tributary stream (lower-mid right picture below) into the main preserve area.  The sun peeked out a couple of times, but it hardly mattered either way as we navigated the fallen trees, protruding roots and mud along the Grattan Family Trail and Frank's Trail (we'll have to go back to do the extra half a mile of Paul's Trail another day).

The bottom left picture was a moment of beach fun (more stone-skipping) when we arrived at last at the side of Lisha Kill itself.

Here's another view of our hike:

Here are a few of the things that caught our eye.  A spectacular array of fungi:

and also insect mazes, fallen trees, wobbly trunks, golden flaky bark, a natural dug-out canoe (or possibly just a rotten tree trunk) and a 'clawed hand grabbing some tree eggs' as Exile #3 described it.

As we were playing on the banks of Lisha Kill (and hoping E5N1 would not repeat his water-antics of our last beach visit on this much colder day), someone noticed something lying on the bed in about a foot of water:

After a few attempts we managed to fish it out without getting too wet ourselves.

We hope he's pleased to be out of the cold water.