After the concerts… Monday morning took me to Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge.
A “swampy” collection of lakes, ponds & rivers just north of Dover. A few too many bugs for my liking… and not quite enough birds. Seems like there were a LOT more migratory birds there two years ago… less last year… and even less today. What’s up with that?!

One last photo as I was leaving… too many bugs… and then to pedal back to the hotel to get ready for my day. For today we start taking down some of FIREFLY and start flipping other parts over to BIG BARREL.

So nice to have the sun back. Blue skies. White clouds. Gorgeous.
Just don’t look too closely at the super-saturated, mud-covered grounds.
Mud everywhere you look down… so keep looking up to the skies!

A sunrise view through the dry-docked boats at the Leipsic harbor.

Big clouds rolling on over The Woodlands. We’ve already had a lot of rain while we’ve been here. What’s another storm??? These clouds were pretty dramatic & imposing… luckily they blew over almost as quickly as they blew in.

So by now you may have realized that I have an odd obsession with roadkill. So much of it seen on the side of the road during any of our many bike trips. Well, I found it quite funny when we started seeing all of these single flip-flops stuck in the mud and left behind at the Firefly Music Festival. Dead shoes on the side of the road. A sad reminder of the mud. A little bit of festival roadkill.

One of the perks of designing & working at the Firefly Music Festival is that you get to see some pretty great concerts. The top headliner this year was Paul McCartney. A wonderful concert for the birthday boy who just celebrated his 73rd birthday two days ago. Sir Paul puts on a beautiful show. About 2-1/2 hours straight with no breaks. Just a continuous flow of all the songs you love and know the words to. The Beatles. The Wings. This was my second time seeing Paul McCartney in concert. Both times were incredible!!! So wonderful to see a living legend put on such a fantastic show.

Some beautiful “local” plants along the beach this morning. Like these really cool mimosa trees with cool “firework” flowers and the nubby buds waiting to explode!

Pickering Beach is one of the small beach towns. So small there’s only about 20 houses and nothing else. Literally… so maybe it’s not even really a town?! But just a beach? Who knows…

Anyway, it was so nice this morning to have the entire place to myself.
Not another person to be seen anywhere up & down the beach.

Okay, so no people… but plenty of horseshoe crabs!
So many of them flipped over on the beach. Trapped upside-down without a way to get back to the water. So I did my duty and started crab flipping. I must have flipped at least two dozen!!!

And just so you can see how big they are… here’s a horseshoe crab compared to my foot!

It was a beautiful morning on Pickering Beach. So nice to have the whole place to myself as the sunrise went through its paces creating a beautiful “calico” patchwork across the sky.

This afternoon has been wonderful. Crystal clear blue skies with a gentle cool breeze. Enjoy it now… the weather forecast for the next few days does not loos so good. Lots of storms with lots of rain… coming soon to a music festival near you!