Coolest Camping Trip - Day 2

Sunrise is always beautiful at Tree Ring.

RetroMan likes to sleep in, so I always take a walk to see what's up at that hour.

As I left the camper, a deer scampered off.  She looked big and healthy. 

I made my way to the dry pond and noticed the spiders were busy.

At the dry pond it became obvious what the partying had been about the night before.  It was no longer dry.  We've owned Tree Ring since 2009 and there's been very little water at the dry pond - none at the end of winter.  Now there was at least 6 inches, and the summer monsoons haven't started yet.

I noticed the deer have eaten a path through the blackberry bushes.
 

And other sun worshipers were watching the sunrise too.

I  took off in the Polaris to see what sunrise looks like in the rest of the Preserve.

This picture does no justice to the beauty of the ferns among the water and the trees.

The mullein were flowering.

There were white flowers on some lily pads.

And yellow flowers on others.  If you looks really close you can see a frog between the twin flowers.

A woodpecker motel.

Phlox are everywhere along the roadways.

I waited while the turtle crossed the road.

Once back at Tree Ring, RetroMan and I started blazing trails through the piles of wood left after the clear cut.  At one point we got side tracked for an hour moving a 300 pound tree stump we thought would make a great bench under this tree.

Note to self:  Don't sit on a bench made out of freshly cut pine or you will get tar butt.