Home Again in the Mid-Atlantic: A Day in Delaware Nature

So I chose this evening picture as a start but we were out all day traveling from the Bear and Odessa, Delaware areas south along the canal and the Delaware River south as it becomes the Delaware Bay. And I'm sorry to say I can't remember exactly where this place was. There was a little nature center there, housed in an old house. It was closed when we were there. Another lady was there with a camera and was out taking pictures like we were except I was just using my phone. I should bring my real cameras more often. I used to rarely leave home without them.

I'm not sure what that smoke stack is in the background. Delaware City?

Above are kayaks turning in for the night.

Below is the old farm house that is now the nature center for this place. If I happen upon it again sometime, I'll go in and update this blog with the name.

And going backwards in time during that day, we were at the Summit North Marina near Bear, Delaware. It's supposed to be located within the Lums Pond State Park. We've hiked a part of that once. It's huge but I didn't know it encompassed part of the canal and this marina. The restaurant, Grain H2O is there, too, and we had a late lunch and a drink, bellied up to the bar on the screened part of the restaurant. The bar food was decent, as bar food goes, but the place could use a good cleaning, not to mention basic, daily wiping of counters and appliances and sweeping. Kind of gross if you looked around. Still, being by the water.... Even if it was man-made, the Delaware-Chesapeake Canal.

The colors, above, just struck me as beautiful. And the delicate shadow on the water, and the water marks and weathering on the buoy.

Odd, what sights amaze and entertain me.

We roamed about the still mostly empty marina. We love nautical porn.

This old sailer caught our attention. It's seen better days. Since it was vintage, one way or another, not cared for in other words, I put it in black and white.

But now, below, we have color. OMG, we have color. I love that color.

It's kind of cool, the back and forth, cascading walkway from H2O down to the boat slips.

We saw this turtle. I wanted it to be a snapper but I don't think it was. I like snappers as long as I'm not accidentally too close to them. The claws look impressive and the eyes look confident like a snapper. Maybe not as predatory or as confident as a snapper. They are amazing the way the convey both. This one didn't flush as we walked by, but it was out on a float so it obviously knew we weren't a threat.

You can see the railroad bridge in the background. The marina is in a small protected area just north of the canal. The hydraulic railroad bridge, sitting in the high spot, is pretty cool. We watched it one day when we were biking the canal trail that runs from Delaware City to Chesapeake City.