Another fun park adventure!

I know...more pictures of our favorite park. But seriously, this is our main source of entertainment, and if you lived here (hey, you should move here...we could be neighbors), you'd spend as much time at the park as possible, too! It's incredible. Plus, it is a great way to tire Norman out for the night, so it's a win-win!

Temps were in the mid-40's today, so we took advantage of the warmth (well...that is a relative term) and decided to tackle one of the non-paved paths. The uneven terrain makes it more exciting. We have often seen deer while on these trails, and today was no exception! Look at this guy...he didn't even seem to mind us there while he chomped on something very crunchy.

Then, one of his friends came to join the party!

They blend right into the trees, so it was hard to capture the awesomeness (although I was using my new camera that I got for my birthday - thanks, Mom and Dad Irwin!!). There are lots of great settings on the new camera that I'll need to learn about.

Here are two of my favorite subjects on which to practice my budding photography skills:

It's a good thing we have such a great guard dog. Ok, so anyone that knows Norman knows that was not the most accurate descriptive word for our "scared of the world" dog...but it sounded cool. In this picture, he's actually intrigued by someone that just rode by on a horse.

During this hike, we decided to take a fork in the trail that we hadn't used before. We assumed it was another loop and wanted to check it out...what can I say, we're adventurous. After about 1 1/2 hours, we came upon this:


Oops! Our hiked turned a bit longer than originally anticipated, as we turned around to retrace our steps. But we did manage to make it back before the sun went down, taking only a slight -- ahem -- detour along the way. And the end of our journey, we were rewarded with this gorgeous sunset on the lake.

I love our park.