Peaceful waters

Tuesday
Our original plan for today was to go kayaking on the Little Miami River. I made us a picnic, and we loaded the kayaks on the car, and set off in two cars, one to leave at the end, and the other to take to the put in spot. However, when we got to the river, we decided the flow looked a bit higher and faster than we’d like, so we changed plans, and left one car there for the rest of the day, and we continued up to Cowan Lake with the kayaks. It was a hot day, and very humid, but with quite a bit of cloud cover, which made it bearable. We had our picnic first, then set off paddling. The water was very still, which was nice for paddling, but a bit of a breeze would have been nice to cool us down. It turned out to be a wonderful birding kayak. We first paddled across the lake to some of the American Lotus beds, then we started paddling toward the inlet creek, making a detour into some other lotus beds, where we saw a couple of egrets. Heading up stream, we saw many belted kingfishers, or the same two or three several times over! I’ve never seen so many before. At the point where we turned around, because there was a downed tree across the creek, we saw a green heron. When we got back to the main part of the lake, we saw a couple of cormorants in a tree, and of course, there were many great blue herons seen along the way. I’ve added a collage in extras of the birds we saw as well as a Lotus flower. My blip was taken when we got back to the canoe/kayak dock - I was just taken with the minimalistic simplicity, the calm and the reflections. The skies had darkened as we kayaked, and it definitely had the feel of the “calm before the storm”.:The forecast did call for the chance of thunderstorms this evening, but as I write this at 11 pm, we haven’t had more than a few spots. We need one to bring down the humidity - according to our weather app. when we got home early this evening, having picked the other car up en route, humidity was 85%!