Day 5.222: Christman comes but once a year

This afternoon, we took a trip to the Christman Sanctuary. It turns out it was just a little over a year since our first visit.

Much of what we saw was the same since both were mid-summer visits, but the river couldn't have looked much less similar.

Here are comparative pictures of the falls from last year (top) and today (bottom):

And here is the place where the trail leading to the orange trail loop crosses the river (last time when we demurred is on the left).

As you can see we had no issues fording the river to complete the loop this time.

Here are some pictures of nature that we spotted:

The fish actually pecked briefly at Exile #4's toes and the strange-looking wasp is a parasitoidal ichneumon wasp of some sort.  Check out Darwin's comments about their behaviour.

Here are the kids (and adults) having fun (along with a random picture of some interesting rocks.

Can you guess how long it took after that top left picture before someone got completely soaked?

Despite the lack of water in the river and the excess of it in E5N1's clothes, we had a great visit.  It really is, as has been observed before, a special place.