Silly Saturday ...

... spent kayaking at Minsi Lake.

It was a beautiful day so in the afternoon we headed up to Minsi Lake for a paddle in the kayak.  When we arrived at the lake it was a bit windy and I thought it would be too much but it ended up being really nice out on the lake.  We spent over 2 hours here ... not all that time kayaking though. 

We saw lots of interesting things ... as you can see in my collage.  The most interesting by far was the helicopter.  It had a long object suspended from it and the helicopter was intermittently dipping below the tree line and coming back up.  I was very curious about all this so I took some telephoto shots of the helicopter to see it there was any identifying marks on it.  When I looked at the photos later I could make out an "Aerial Solutions" logo on the side.  I Googled this and found out that this is a company out of North Carolina that pioneered the use of helicopter tree trimming!  WHAT?!?  Never heard of such a silly thing!  I won't put a link here as it might be considered advertising ... but if you are curious Google "Aerial Solutions".

Also featured on my collage is an adorable hooded merganser chick (upper right), a Plymouth red-bellied turtle (lower left) and some orange bluets having some fun.  It always amazing me the quality of photo I can get whilst bobbing around in the kayak!

Just a word about the Plymouth red-bellied turtle.  This turtle is NOT native to Pennsylvania ... it's endemic to Massachusetts.  So my guess is someone had him/her as a pet and could no longer care for it so 'dumped' it here in Minsi Lake.  kind of sad ... but it looks like he/she is doing ok.