Home Sweet Home (Springwoods Lake)

This past weekend one of my dearest friends, Gayle, took the train up from Orlando.  She is the first person to visit me here in Columbia (and as such, clearly loves me the most).  We spent most of the weekend hanging about at the house, and put in a few hours on Springwoods Lake, conveniently located in my backyard!

Mornings started with coffee on the dock as we watched the sun melt away the mist and wake up the ducks, geese, and turtles.

We were keeping a sharp eye out for the otter that I saw frolicking about a few days ago, but he never made an appearance.  From what I hear, seeing this little fellow is just a matter of luck.  The resident flock of Canada geese swam by and seemed very attentive to us, especially when one of us would make a move to stand up.  So, I ran inside and grabbed a loaf of bread.

Sure enough, they were all about having breakfast with us!

I took entirely too many photos of these guys, and these are only a few.  Feel free to scroll past them!

After our morning on the dock and lunch in town, we were back on the lake, this time in the kayaks.

The better part of the lake (in terms of size) lies to the left of my dock and is primarily open water.

To the right of the dock there is a little stretch of open water, which narrows down into a stream of sorts.

The stream off of this side of the lake is my favorite part.  It gets no traffic other than me and my guests (not that the lake gets much anyway).  Often when I float through here I see a couple of green herons, a white egret, and a little fellow with a very distinctive call that I've decided must be some type of kingfisher, though I haven't been able to find his picture online yet.

There are two great blue herons that live on the lake, one on each end.  I see them both almost every time I go out.  I'll do better about bringing my camera with me so that I can get some decent portraits of them.  For now, here is a not-so-great action shot of the great blue that lives to the right of my dock.

Gayle and I were out for a little while on Saturday, then again for 2-3 hours Sunday afternoon.  Sunday night, a few hours before Gayle's 2am train home, we braved the 48 degree temps to experience the tranquility of being on the lake at night.  The fish were stirring, but for obvious reasons, we saw nothing else.  I've got a couple of nighttime settings on my camera, but this is the best that came of them:

The next morning (I guess it was this morning, seems like forever ago) would have been a great time to go out.  But, Gayle was on a southbound train headed home, and I was dragging myself out of bed to get to work.  It's a tough life, having to wake up every morning to this: