In case you were unaware there was a solar eclipse today. The total eclipse could be seen in Greenland, Iceland, Spain. Here in NJ it was only a partial eclipse. The eclipse only covered around 10% of the sun so not real interesting but we had sunny skies and it was easy enough to put the solar filter on the camera and get a pic. The next total solar eclipse visible from the US won't happen until 2044 so until then we will have to be satisfied with these partial eclipses or do some traveling
Retirement has given me more free time. I have used this to do more riding. Relax a little more and do more hiking. NJ has an amazing amount of interesting places to hike. One of the first thing I did when I retired was make a list of places I wanted to hike. A couple of weeks ago I checked off Ramapo State Park and Double Trouble State Park but I have a lot more to visit.
This past Monday Laura had suggested doing a hike at Abbots Marshlands. It wasn't on my list of places to hike but it looked interesting so I decided to do it. Abbots Marshland is on the Delaware river in Bordentown. As its name suggest it is a marshland along the river. There are a number of trails in and around the marshland.
As we walked around we stopped for pictures of the water and plants around the marsh. Besides the usual spiders Laura was looking to get pictures of dragonflies. I was skeptical that we could get a picture of a dragonfly. Dragonflies are hard to photograph as they usually don't sit still long enough for you to get a picture of them. We got a few pictures of them on the ground that weren't that good. Luckily we found one perched on the top of weed that stayed there for a few minutes as we took pictures.
According to Laura this is a Blue Dasher dragonfly. All I know is that close up a dragonfly is very alien looking. I'm really happy with the pictures that I got. They show a lot of detail especially in the face and wings. Click on the picture if you want a closer look. I took this picture with my regular 18mm-150mm zoom lens which is not really meant for close up pictures so I might rent a macro lens to see if I can do even better.
Besides dragonflies we took a few scenic pictures of the rivers and lakes.
We ended up doing a 3.5 mile hike. Although this place wasn't on my hiking list I will probably come back again some other time as it was an interesting and scenic place for a easy hike.
I don't always have to go hiking to take pictures of wildlife sometimes they come to me. My wife has a lot of flowers on our back patio which does attract some hummingbirds. The problem is they fly around really fast and you never know when they are going to show up. I decided to spend a half hour quietly sitting on my patio toward the end of the day when hummingbirds sometimes show up and I got lucky.
The key to getting a good shot of a hummingbird is to make sure you have a high shutter speed so you can freeze the motion. You also need to shoot in rapid fire mode, taking as many pictures per second as you camera can handle so you can get lucky and capture them in a good pose.
I probably took a least 100 shots to get these two pictures. There is a lot luck involved in getting a shot of a hummingbird and it does take some practice. These shot are okay but with a little more practice and luck I should be able to do better. I do enjoy these hikes and photography challenges and am happy I have more time to do these things now that I'm retired.
When I lead a bike ride I usually have a planned route that I follow. I may make an occasional detour but I prefer to know where I'm going and what I will encounter. Last Saturday I got a suggestion for a route which was just a list of roads. I wanted to do something easy and short after doing a lot hiking and biking during the week. Laura did have a ride to Clinton but I didn't think I wanted to do that hilly or long of a ride.
Once I put together the route from the list of roads it was a little hillier and longer than I wanted but still easier than the Clinton ride. The route started from the Yardley park and ride and went up the NJ side of the Delaware and headed over a few hills to get to Lambertville then it was back through Pennington. It was just over 2000 ft of climbing and 45 miles.
I felt good as we started out and we slowly made our way up to the hills on the NJ side. My original route had us going up Pleasant Valley Rd but it was suggested that we make a detour to Woosamonsa and Harbourton Rd to not have to do as much climbing. We made the suggested detour but although the hills were probably a little easier the amount of climbing was actually more and we added at least a mile to the ride. We stopped in Lambertville for our break after going over Goat Hill. On our way out of Lamberville we set a picture to Laura just to annoy her.
We made a few more detours on our way back to Yardley. I'm not as familiar with these roads as other areas so I went along with the detours and discovered a few new roads. However this added a couple more miles and more climbing to the ride. In the end we had 2500 ft of climbing and 48 miles which wasn't much less then the Clinton ride. It was an interesting ride but I was tired at the end and it was not the ride I was expecting. Let's just say I will not be as willing to follow suggested routes and detours from this person anymore.
That is why this Saturday I listed a flat ride out of Allentown on a well worn route. It was a 50 mile ride down to Emery's and relatively flat. It ended up being a popular ride because I had a full ride before Friday. The day ended up being a little more hot and humid than I expected but we made good progress down to Emery's and everybody was well behaved. We did go down a closed road and went over a bridge under construction. I had a few riders on this ride who haven't ridden with me before but knew about my history of going over bridges that were out and were happy that got to experience it. It's nice to know that I didn't disappoint.
The way back to the start had a few hills along the way but nothing like last week. Still because of the heat I faded a little at the end. We did have one flat tire on the ride but it was right at the end a large metal staple went through his tire. The staple was so big and embedded in the tire that there was no easy way to get it out. Somebody had to go and get him and he will definitely need a new tire.
Although I like exploring and finding new roads sometimes it fun to just to do a well know ride.