Second Summer at Whipple Dam on Halloween

It was a week of weird, warm weather, like we sometimes get in October. I was thinking that it felt like a second summer. You know, like second breakfast, but with fewer hobbits. It was ideal weather for a brand new butterfly to be flying. 

My husband and I kept shaking our heads: we still just couldn't believe how well that monarch butterfly saga turned out! "Where's my butterfly?" my husband asked when he woke up in the morning, sadly looking at the empty chrysalis sitting in our living room. "He did exactly what he needed to do, and I hope he's making lots of miles," I replied.

And as for ourselves, we decided to make use of the warmer weather to have a nice lunch at Couch's in McAlevy's Fort, and then go to Whipple Dam and stick our toes in the cool water. The beach area is closed to swimming now, but you are allowed to wade in the water at any state park with impunity. 

So we took our low chairs, sat them by the lake, and dunked our toes in, read our books, and listened to music. I was hoping I'd fall in, or maybe be pushed, so I could count this as one last tiny swim. But no, that never happened, alas. So the current "last swim" still stands. (Actual last swim of year at Whipple can be found here.)

The guy in the red swim trunks sitting in a red chair by the accessible swim ramp is my husband. There's a pavilion on the far side where three people were sitting on a bench. A few children were playing in the beach area behind us. Above us, clouds scattered themselves through the sky.

The colors have mostly passed at Whipple Dam, but the oaks with their dark reddish browns are bringing up the end of the parade. You can see some nice trees here and there, still. But mostly, the trees are bare. It's starting to look like November here, though it feels like summer!

I had heard that we might break some records for temperature on this day, and so I checked. It looks like the record high in State College was 81, set back in 1950, and it got to 80.6 on this day. At Whipple Dam, temps were more like the 70s. So I don't know if we broke any records but this day made a run at it, for sure!

Our soundtrack song is Loverboy, with The Kid Is Hot Tonite.