A Beautiful Day at the Lake

This past weekend, we discovered a beautiful lake with parks and walking trails in our new town. After hearing today's forecasted high temp was in the upper 60's, we packed up some leftover bread and popcorn and headed out to the lake. (We drove through here earlier and after seeing all the ducks, birds, geese, etc., knew we'd knew to bring supplies!)

We like this little outlet area where the animals like to hang out. As you can see from this picture, the first throw of food signals the creatures on all sides of the lake to come over in a hurry.

Within mere minutes, we were surrounded by about 50 or more ducks, sea gulls, and what we discovered are called "coots." They are the majority of the birds that are black and look like ducks. These American coots, or mud hens, are mistaken for ducks but are really not. We got a chance to look up close at their feet and as our book told us, they were not webbed. They made for a good time though! (Pete's arm is up because he wanted to see if the sea gulls would swoop down and grab food out of his hand like they do in Duluth. Much to his dismay, these are no Duluth-gulls. They're a bit shy.)

There are also a few very beautifully, bright-colored male mallards, as well as a female or two here and there. The sun's rays hit the surface of the water to make a shimmering effect and hit the mallard ducks' heads to magnify the bright green and purple feathers on them. It was so beautiful.

The land is very different from in Minnesota (other than the fact that there isn't any frozen water in February). The rocky ground the kids are sitting on in this picture explains why there are hardly any homes with basements down here. We were told that in order to simply build the foundation for the concrete slab, they often have to use dynamite!

It is so peaceful and soothing here. I think we'll be having a lot of picnic lunches here in the future! Thank you Lord for beautiful weather and all of your creatures we get to share it with!