Sugar Knob

We had a total wash-out for our two night trip to Sugar Knob cabin. Checked the weather forecast before we left and it said 30-40% chance of rain. It started raining when we got to the cabin and didn't really stop until we were back home in Silver Spring two days later.




We spent most of out time feeding the fire and playing cards.

When we couldn't take it any longer we got suited up and ventured out in the rain. The blackgums and sugar maples were bright red, really lovely.

Another highlight of the trip was seeing SIX American Chestnut trees that were dropping nuts -- neither of us had ever seen evidence of trees that had survived the blight long enough to fruit. This is a picture of a husk and some of the old catkins from one of them. Seeing trees that are fighting the blight was inspiring, and we came home to read that there has been great progress in breeding even more disease-resistant trees.

Another mountain wedding, another friend moves to Urbana

Trying to save our friend Katy from a lifetime of cornfields and Fighting Illini
You'd think the mountains would make her want to stay. She must really love that guy Dan.

Cool bugs

At Sugarloaf. we haven't figured out what these are yet.

Jug Bay

We tried to go to Jug Bay and see all the butterflies we saw last year but it seems we were a little early -- the Joe Pye Weed hadn't quite opened up yet. However we saw a clearwing hummingbird moth:



And this nice buckeye:



And went we went for a swim there was a newly emerged dragonfly on the underside of the dock.

And there were lots of tasty blackberries.