On Friday, May 19, we played out on the deck at Legend Brewing Co. We had to play inside last time because of the weather. The deck is always better - both the sound and the view. This was the view from my piano bench:
And here's a picture I took of the Richmond skyline during a break:
Thankfully none of those clouds ever produced a drop of rain during our performance! We had a good crowd including a double table full of friends.
We didn't have any more gigs that weekend so we went down for a quick overnight trip to Merchants Millpond State Park in North Carolina, about a 2-hours drive away. It is one of our favorite places to camp and paddle. The millpond is 760 acres, with cypress trees and Spanish moss everywhere, parulas and yellow-throated warblers singing from every tree, turtles basking on just about every downed log, and always the potential for an alligator sighting!
The campsites are wooded, spacious, and quite private. Our camp "compound" includes both a giant tent for sleeping (could sleep four) and my hammock for lounging. We got rained on overnight and into the morning, but the tent and hammock flies held up just fine. Espresso made on the open flame is as good as you can get in any coffee shop!
On our second day and second paddle of the trip, I decided to count every turtle I saw. The pond is loaded. I counted 97 over the course of a 2-mile paddle! It's hard to get a good picture because they usually plop into the water before you get close enought. This is zoomed in from the original and not very sharp, but the best I could do:
We also managed to track down an alligator! It's in this picture, camouflaged against the muck directly in front of the nose of my boat:
Pretty sure you can't see it even if you try to zoom in. I did an extreme image crop so you can sort of make it out here, maybe:
Many years ago, on a solo paddle here, I met a photographer on the water, who took some pictures of the alligator (and turtle buddy) that I pointed out to him, and kindly sent me copies. I don't remember his name or I'd credit him. This is the kind of picture you can get with pro photography equipment and skills:
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