Muir Woods and Muir Beach

San Francisco Arboretum

Incredibly warm day for San Francisco. Fog all burned off and wearing only shirt sleeves. A real treat. Wandered around the arboretum for an afternoon.

Slide show embedded below. Click on the picture frame to expose the slide show controls, then click on the play button...

Pumpkin Island Take 6

The wind howls, the storm clouds scuttle overhead, shortly after sunset an amazing lightening storm swirled down from Lake Ontario and engulfed the islands. It seemed like the sky was exploding all around as the rain pelted down from the west. Large distinct bolts of lightening reached down from the heavens right to the river, and the air seemed charged and thick with negative ions recently misplaced. Happy to be on a island, however small, covered with moss, but with a firm granite foundation and shielded by large trees rather than bobbing at anchor on a boat.

Pumpkin Island - Storm moves in

I catch up on photo uploads and take some stills of the storm weather as it passes through.

Click on image to enlarge...


Here is a slide show with some still images. Really hard to capture the high dynamic range of the light and the broad vista between river and sky. Click on the frame of cover photo to expose slide show control, then click on the play button to watch slide show...

Pumpkin Island Take 5

Pumpkin Island Take 4

Pumpkin Island - Take 3

The hot weather persists with 10 knot breezes in the afternoon. Multiple swim sessions in the comfortably cool river water make all activities possible. We paddle, hike,relax, read, cook, and eat. The bird life swirls around us, even sitting on the deck relaxing, so gazing off into the distance is usually a well rewarded activity when all else has been exhausted with osprey, heron, kingfisher, hummingbird, ducks and geese all sampling the culinary fare which floats by on this fluid smorgasbord which drains the great lakes.

In the threaded Canadian channel of the St. Lawrence River, Pumpkin Island sits amidst a collection of smaller and larger islands just north of the border where Interstate 81 crosses the border from New York State. With broad views upriver to the West, and an intimate archipeligo to the east, the island is the perfect place to escape the stress of normal life.


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