Thursday afternoon & Friday morning, summer at the lake begins

Well summer season has officially started. Last weekend was Memorial Day weekend and that is when the rangers start charging $5 to park in the Lake Wyola State Park parking lot. If you show up late enough in the afternoon you can dodge that. It was a rainy weekend though so they didn't get great crowds. The weather has been warming up though, and yesterday afternoon my daughter and I stopped by in the afternoon for a visit. Lots of families were there. The kids and some of the adults braved the cold water. It was too cold for me.

This morning there was a little fog on the lake, and as I came by the dam I spotted the heron I have seen a few times. Since I was stuck behind the high school bus anyway I pulled over for a picture.

Friday morning-- view of the state beach

Heron at the dam--

 Better view of the foggy air--

It's a bird at the beach

Not sure how visible this bird will be, but there was a large bird at the Lake Wyola State Park yesterday. It was by the wheelchair access point.

Looks like the fishing dock needs some adjusting. Hopefully that will happen soon.

Forget me nots

I had a few minutes to get the camera out on Friday afternoon. It was a beautiful day, although the wind was blowing. The Lake Wyola State Park is covered in Forget-me-nots now. Happens every year and it is always beautiful.

I don't know if you can see it or not, but in addition to the people fishing, there was also a sailboat. Unfortunately by the time I got to the water it had sailed over to Shore Drive.

turkeys and falcons

I didn't get pictures, but the turkeys were everywhere this morning. I saw them on the "S" curves in Leverett, in Haskins Meadow in Amherst, and at the farm next to Haskins Meadow. The last one would have been a really good picture too, but I was running late and couldn't dig out the camera fast enough.

Meanwhile, down at Umass the peregrine falcons have hatched 3 babies and can be seen at www.library.umass.edu/falcons .  This is a live camera on the roof of the library and can be really cool to watch if you time it right.