Kirk and I spent the day hiking at Turkey Run State Park on Friday. I hadn't been there since I was a kid. I'd forgotten just how gorgeous it is. We stopped at Pine Hills Nature Preserve which is the first official nature preserve in the state of Indiana. While we were there we had a exciting snake experience on the Devil's Backbone. I saw a large black snake coiled on the ground and was stooped down with my camera taking a picture when Kirk said, "What about the one in the tree?" I looked up and this guy was a couple of feet over my head. If we hadn't been on a narrow ledge of rock with a 70' drop on both sides I probably would have made a quick getaway. I could tell that it wasn't venomous since there was no triangular shape to the head, but I'd recently read that even non-venomous snakes can give a painful bite. Still I couldn't resist prodding the one on the ground with a stick just to see him in motion. It must have been sun drunk because it didn't seem to mind being poked and lazily slithered off. After comparing the photos to a field guide, we came to the conclusion that it is a blue racer.

We spent the rest of the day hiking trail 3 at Turkey Run. It was so incredibly green and lush in the gorges. While we were there we met a couple of guys from Chicago who were using cameras which were replicas of ones that were used 200 years ago. It made me self conscious about using my own new camera (Cannon Powershot SD 750) since I'm truly a novice with it. Kirk explained the advantages of using the old style cameras for nature shots, being able to manipulate the photos by tilting the lens either down or up and side to side to accentuate interesting features. The tripod is necessary because the aperture stays open so long. It is amazing that a camera from 200 years ago is capable of doing things that today's camera can't. Just before the end of the trail I caught a glimpse of a pileated woodpecker but it was shy and I couldn't manage my camera quickly enough. Thanks to Flickr Creative Commons, I can post a picture of what I saw. The fiddlehead ferns were coming up and I saw lots and lots of Dutchmen's Breechs. What a wonderful day we shared!