Project 365: Day 99!

Birthday!

Today is my birthday. And for my birthday I hadn't a clue what I wanted to do, so I went to one of my favorite places. Panther Lake! I love this place.

It's tradition as soon as I arrive, I must visit my gigantic rock. I climb up it, look down at the water, try to take pictures between the trees, fail, and then I climb down the other end to see my elbow tree.

Then, I go exploring. Now that I think of it, I didn't do as much exploring as I normally do. I actually did very little, missing a lot of places I go to, but being I had school the next day, I couldn't stay out too late anyways. Stupid 5:30 am train ruins everything.

On the list of places to go...of course the crabapple trees. They smell horrific. They are constantly falling off the tree, where they then decompose in the grass. When around these trees you have to be careful, one time I got hit with a falling crabapple. It didn't hurt as much as it shocked me.

Getting a boat, of course, was the next order of business.

I'm not sure if it's because of a bad experience I had on these boats, where my friend almost tipped us (purposely) or freshwater just bothers me, but I used to freak out halfway into the lake. ESPECIALLY when we would go through the thick lily pads. However now, and I am so proud of myself for this, I no longer get that extreme fear when I'm in the boat and we sorta hit a log, or we don't seem to be moving anymore, or when we get stuck in lily pads. Which happened twice.

This was the most amazing part of my birthday. I got to see new born baby turtles (hatchlings) on the "beach"! One was on his way to the water when I almost stepped on him, he blended in so well with the "sand". I call it a "beach" and "sand" because by Panther Lake's standards it is a beach and there is sand. But really it's just a lake, and the sand is really only dirt. lol.