Black Friday--Head to the Mall!

Black Friday, the traditional day to go to fall, found us looking to enjoy great weather and follow tradition.  We rode the metro to Smithsonian, then exited to the Mall and walked to Eastern Market.

Along the way we checked out The Mary Livingston Ripley Garden next to the closed Arts and Industries Museum, both parts of the Smithsonsian, and then the Botanical Gardens which were full of families going to see the model trains exhibit. We passed the Capitol, and a small bird on its grounds.

Ripley Garden still has lots of flowers.

Botanical Gardens has flowers, and trees with fall colors.

Hiking, Photography, Mapping

Today dawned chilly and wet.  The weather forecast predicted clearing skies in the afternoon, and hoping for good light, we held off hiking until late afternoon when the hoped from sunlight would make for great photos.  The forecast did not disappoint.

The "Eiffel Towers" at Greenbury Point, seen in the 2017 county lidar.

Our hiking route in red, thumbnails of the photos where the camera captured a GPS position (less than half of all photos, so the camera's GPS leaves something to be desired), and our route in red.  The base map is the lidar intensity, near IR-like image. 

One of the pictures (the blue thumbnails in the NW corner of the map; at the scale of the photos, you don't see much of the turkey vulture).  We keep hoping for a more interesting bird, but at least when you see the full resolution images the red face adds interest to the photos.

Roses--spring and fall color in the garden

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Halloween Flooding--too dark to see the cormorant eating

It flooded again Halloween, but peak water was as 0200 (2 AM) the next morning.  It was also raining heavily, there was a chance of tornadoes, and I stayed in bed.

But it reminded me that I had not posted pictures of the cormorants last weekend, so here they are.  Click photos to see the full resolution.