Something other than Fishing

Last year, while doing my blog, I had a variety of things I wrote about. There was some fishing, a lot of birding, and a few daytrips to historical places. I went to the Bronx Zoo and Concord, MA. This year, you may have noticed, everything that I wrote has been fishing reports. I have done a lot of fishing but not much else.

DJ, Laurie, and myself were going to go camping over April vacation from Thursday until Sunday. Unfortunately, DJ had his track meet moved to Thursday leaving only Friday, Saturday and leave early Sunday morning. We needed to be back early Sunday to be home for Easter dinner. Then the next disappointment today ( Saturday) is a wash out. Camping this week went from something I was looking forward too and turned into an impossibility. We were going to camp down the Cape and do some trout fishing during the mornings, hike in the afternoon, and eat smores at night.

Its not a big deal we didn't go. Since I'm writing this Saturday morning and it is 41 degrees and raining, I am quite sure we made the right decision not to go. The problem was Laurie took Friday off from work to go camping with us. I didn't want her to waste a day off. It would have sucked for her to waste a sick day and not do anything better than rent a movie. So I spent much of Thursday evening trying to think of a plan Friday.

We decided to go to Garden in the Woods in Framingham. I went there last year ( see link )www.southernnewenglandoutdoors.blogspot.com/2010/04/garden-in-woods.html

Last year I went on April 30 and we had an extremely warm spring. Being so cold this spring and going 8 days earlier, there wasn't much hope of to many spring flowers popping up. Still I needed to do something with Laurie so we went. We got there about 10 am and jumped on the guided tour. The price went up to $ 10 a person. Up from $8 last year. There were a few early spring bloomers and a ton of bright green skunk cabbage.

The highlights were not plants. It was actually some animals. We saw a red tail hawk eat a vole about 20 feet from us. It swooped down on the path in front of us as we were walking. We all stopped and waited for it to eat and fly off. There is a lily pond at the garden. In the pond we saw some turtles, frogs, tadpoles, leeches, and frog eggs. It was fun to walk around the pond a couple times and see all the life. Laurie enjoys seeing frogs and turtles so it was a pleasant 1/2 hour.

After we left the garden we stopped at Wendys to plan the rest of the afternoon. Laurie suggested River Bend Farm in Uxbridge. We got the map out and figured out the easiest way from Framingham. It only took about 30 minutes to get there.

River Bend Farm is part of the Blackstone Valley National Heritage Corridor. It is basically a couple paths along the Blackstone Canal. You can walk to the Blackstone River and out to a field. You can fish a small pond and there are tons of picnic tables. It is a cool place. Last year we saw a couple big snakes sunning themselves.

On our walk we saw a bunch of turtles and a couple carp jump. The highlight was a muskrat that swam around the canal. Laurie got some good looks with the binoculars. I've seen so many muskrats this year, I just let Laurie watch it.

Some kids were catching sunfish. They caught quite a few. They fished while the parents watched. The kids were about 6 ( boy) and 9 ( girl). When they caught fish they used a glove to hold the fish to take it off the hook. It was a leather glove. The mother would take the hook out for the younger kid. If the older one caught a fish she would give the glove to the girl. It was ridiculous... tools

The sun came out and felt nice on our backs . It was a relaxing day. We came home and watched " The Kings Speech" I really had no desire to watch it. However it won all the Oscar awards so I wanted to see what the hype was about. I have to admit, Colin Firth deserved an Oscar. It was an impressive performance. So it was not a waste of time.