Sky Show at Black Moshannon

It was a beautiful late-May-sliding-into-early-June day, and the weather was really gorgeous. When the sun broke through in mid-morning, I was glad I had scheduled it as a vacation day. We've had lots of rain lately, so everything is green, green, green.

We had things we had to do in the morning, and so we took care of those first. (This included installing the new digital converter box that arrived Thursday, which would give us TV again for the first time in a week and a half to two weeks, hooray!)

But then we packed up a few things in the car and set out for the Black Moshannon area, where we spent the afternoon. First we visited Six Mile Run, where I spotted the puddling butterflies before. The butterflies weren't puddling on this day, alas, but the stream was lovely and everything was so, so green.

We hiked a short ways down the creek and did some walking in the stream in our water shoes, which was fun and refreshing. The water was just a bit lower than it had been on our last visit, perfect for wading. When we weren't in the creek, we were sitting among the hemlocks in the shade, watching the huge yellow tiger swallowtail butterflies flitter by. (For creeks and rivers are like roadways for the flying creatures.)

After hanging out around the creek for several hours, we decided it was time to start heading home, but first, we managed to fit in one quick stop at the fishing pier at Black Moshannon State Park. The sky had been doing amazing things all day, and the clouds were putting on quite a show.

I couldn't resist taking many pictures, of course, and although the sky was a shade of blue that was lovely and well worth seeing, in the end, my favorite picture from the set was this monochrome one, which I thought emphasized the cloud drama going on in the sky.

With all those marvelous clouds in the scene, the song for the day just has to be Joni Mitchell's Both Sides, Now. I'm including links to two of my favorite versions of this song, the first performed by Joni Mitchell herself; the second, by Neil Diamond.