October's Flaming Magic at Bald Eagle State Park

It was a lovely, sunny Sunday afternoon, and we finally went back to a place we had not been in four whole months: Bald Eagle State Park. Somehow our last visit there was in mid-June. It turned hot after that, and we sought out other, cooler swimming holes, like Greenwood Furnace. So it was great to be back!

But we almost didn't make it there. We had planned to stop for Mexican food in Milesburg, but their shop was closed. No notice on the door, nothing on their Facebook page. (I'd checked before leaving the house; I guess I should have called.)

Our next stop was a hoagie shop in Milesburg whose hoagies I am not a particular fan of. But it was what we had. "You will EAT this hoagie and you will NOT complain!" my husband admonished me. But there was a line there, and we didn't want to wait 20 minutes, so we left.

"I knew we should have stayed home," he said. At this point, we were not happy, no, not happy at all. And then we passed the Milesburg McDonald's. "Do you want to stop?" he asked. And I said we should, for we didn't even have a pair of snack bars between the two of us. We drove away happily noshing on our chicken sandwiches, feeling like the day had been saved: such a simple but necessary thing, sustenance!

And then we arrived at the park, and the first thing we spotted was the amazing red/orange trees that line the beach area. I have seen them in full October bloom before, but I can't recall them ever being as nice as this! So my husband dropped me off there for a few pictures, and said he'd be back in a couple of minutes.

But I saw him stop the car by the snack bar, and then he parked it, and got out and went in. He came back out sort of waving his hands at me, and so I went up. "It's the end of the season and the lady wants to get rid of the Penn State Creamery ice cream. Do you want a dish for $2?" he asked.

Well, WOULD I!!!! Absolutely!!! So we got our ice creams - butter pecan for me, and grilled stickies for him - and we sat at a picnic table in the warm October sunshine and ate our lovely snack while looking at these magical flaming trees. "When she told me she wanted to get rid of the ice cream, I said, I have to go get my wife," he said, grinning happily as we ate our sweet treats. Wow, what a turnaround: can a day get any better than this?

And then we drove around a bit, over to the closed road that is now covered up by lake water, which is cool. Then we moved the car to yet a different spot in the park, not far from a pretty bench and a short walk from the lake. We took our chairs and our music and went and sat to look at the foliage colors reflected on the lake.

You know how I am about photographing the surface of water. Water - be it a pond, or even just a puddle - can serve as a mirror to glory for me. And so on this day, I walked around like a silly, obsessed girl, taking way too many pictures of the gorgeous reflections I saw.

I made one of my reflection abstracts (I call them all "the color and shape of water"), and I hope you like it. It appears in the extras. On the surface are the foliage colors, and a boat or two passing by gave me some wave action with their wakes to make things even more interesting. Look at those colors shimmer. Isn't October its own special kind of magic?

One of the boats on the lake had a couple of young people on it, and they were water skiing and listening to music, which they jacked up so loud that the sound absolutely reverberated off the mountains. Of course, they turned it way up right in front of where we sat!

It didn't start out badly - with some AC/DC - or end up badly - with Axl Rose - but in between was a whole lot of yucky garbage that made me wish for earplugs. We turned our own tunes up louder, and were quite relieved when that particular boat moved off to another part of the lake.

We were apparently in a popular spot. In front of us, a pair of fishermen on a boat pulled up to the fish environment enrichment structures (a bunch of wooden posts sunk into the water) - and one guy pulled a nice sized fish out of the water. I checked the Bald Eagle State Park website and it says the lake contains crappies, perch, muskies, catfish, and assorted bass.

I am posting this set of images and this story a day later. This morning, we reflected upon our Bald Eagle State Park adventure: "It was almost like a Jimmy Stewart movie, wasn't it?" my husband asked; "almost a sort of object lesson in not giving up. Can you imagine giving up and going home and MISSING all of that?" No, I can't!!!!  :-)

Now, it's my custom to select a song for my postings. And since I have two images, I'm going for two tunes. First, the song that was playing on the car radio was this one, as we pulled in to look at the beautiful trees, and I laughed to think that it was perfect for them!

The song is Nena, with 99 Luftballons (99 Red Balloons). It was just the coolest of the cool when it came out in 1983. I thought I owned the song, but I checked and I didn't. So yeah, all these years later, I bought it on Amazon - in fact, I had done so the very day before!

For my second song, I've picked this one. This one comes straight from the heart of the girl who never imagined that the snack shop would be open this late in the season, let alone that it would crown our beautiful day with a sweet treat of Penn State Creamery ice cream. And that we who had been gone from these parts for months and months somehow showed up just in time for the peak foliage show! Here are Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, with You Got Lucky.   May you be so lucky, too!