For once, our plans for our Sunday came to fruition and we spent a splendid afternoon driving through the Wharton State Forest. This is what you see as you start your drive down the Quaker Bridge Road. Today is the first full day of fall. This was about 3 pm and the sky was the lovely deep blue that it gets in the fall. Not a cloud anywhere and the sense of quiet in the woods was complete. We passed folks on horseback taking advantage of the day. But other than a few other cars, we seemed to have the woods to ourselves. This photo shows the ferns and underbrush just starting to grow back after a fire. We have had several small fires this year and one major one. The major one was started by an Air Force flyer who dropped a flare on a training mission and it started a forest fire (duh). It burned four families out of their homes and destroyed several thousand acres of forest. But nature is amazing as always and the light greens are becoming visible through the blackened tree trunks and soil. The soil through here is mostly sand. It is only about 25 miles from the coast. We ended up at Batsto which is part of the NJ park system and always an interesting place. Today we were marveling at how low the lake is and how the water over the dam seems so shallow. We also saw how charcoal used to be made. It was mostly burned wood and was made in kilns that looked like this one. Batsto was once a major source of iron and glass in the area. The lake and surrounding rivers are "cedar water" although the orange color is not caused by the trees but by the amount of iron in the soil. The lake today was a brilliant blue as it reflected the sky.

After that, we were all hungry and headed back to the picnic area and had chicken salad sandwiches and home made chocolate chip cookies. And of course, knitting. I got in some knitting on Elanor's Kaibashira socks and will probably finish them shortly. It was a lovely way to spend a Sunday afternoon. I hope your weekend was a good one.