Cacapon State Park in January

We drove down form the Blue Ridge Mts., over Sleepy Creek Mt. and stopped at the base of Sideling Ridge. We crossed through three watersheds; first the Shenandoah, then the Opequon and finally into Sleepy Creek Watershed. All three eventually run to the Potomac River and the Chesapeake Bay. Trillium is discovering her ecological address and how the watershed is an important factor, so it was especially interesting and made the journey more personal. Cacapon State Park has two lakes – one for fishing and one for swimming. Our trail took us up to this fishing lake that was almost frozen over.

You can see the Oriskany sand mixed in with the grass. It looks like left over snow but it is really the sand deposits from the common sandstone in the area. It reminds me a little of the white sand in the Gulf of Mexico I used to play in when we vacationed in Panama City, Fla. But this sand is coarser.

We speculated how that branch came to rest on the ice.

And wondered how these interesting ice shapes were made. Our conclusion was that they were pretty to look at and they reminded us of all sorts of things.

I stopped for a moment to scoop up a small water sample with algae to examine later under my microscope.

I was having trouble getting the right white balance on my camera so the color is not quite right in some of these.

Two kinds of algae were present and some interesting diatoms.

When we left the lake side Trillium noticed the partially eaten pine cones. Our conclusion was deer browse since they were on the lower limbs and there was deer scat nearby.

She also noticed pine cones on the ground that had been eaten like fresh Eastern Shore sweet corn. Nothing but the cobs were left. There were several on the ground and it looked like the beginnings of a red or flying squirrel midden. Gray squirrels don’t eat that far down to the core.

Our other interesting sighting was Fall Cankerworm Moths (Alsophila pometeria) flying around the oak trees. They are part of the Inchworm Family (Geometridae).

Visit other interesting blogs featuring water at Watery Wednesday.