my weekend

Ryan came up to visit this weekend, since he decided to leave camp early. The weather was really nice, except for the temperature. It was too hot to do much of anything during the middle of the day. We went to church on Sabbath (my first time here), ate lunch, and went to a park that is in Hendersonville, TN. There were LOTS of Canada geese, random ducks, and weird trees with softball-sized green balls hanging from them. (Anyone know what kind of tree?) We played catch and tried to take a nap in the shade, but it was too hot. I took pictures of the animals I saw there. We saw a duckling get stuck in a wire thing that was down in the water. It's mom climbed out without a problem and left it inside!

Sabbath
My three nature pictures from this blog are from Sabbath afternoon.

The park had pretty purple flowers growing along the entire bank of the river/creek/pond thing (it's manmade) and attracted lots of bees. I should have taken a picture of the whole bank so you can see it.


I was kind of surprised to see canvasbacks in the water. This one looks pretty sad (click to see bigger), but it was there nonetheless. I cropped it before posting, so hopefully it didn't lose a lot of detail.


Speaking of sad-looking animals, this fox was half dead wandering around in the Highland Church parking lot. It had ticks all over its back and was scratching like crazy before it sat down and just looked at us while we drove closer. Ryan says it was smiling, but I say it was grimacing from pain. I don't think he signed up to be a blood donor. =(

Sunday
I am being a good little tourist. I have already seen the zoo, a plantation, and now have been to a home game of our local baseball team. The Nashville Sounds' stadium is on the south side of town and is smaller and not as nice as Bellsouth Stadium where the Lookouts play in Chattanooga.

Ryan made a good point about this sign in asking what "other items" might fly into the stands at a baseball game. Any ideas?

The game was pretty interesting, considering that baseball can sometimes be 3 minutes of action spread out over 3 hours! The Sounds lead 3-1, lost the lead and stayed tied for a while, then won 6-3. This first picture is a Sounds player safe at first after the pitcher tried to pick him off.

I like this second picture because you can see where the ball hit the dirt and the catcher caught it (click to enlarge). The batter checked his swing - we have photographic proof.

You can see their ugly camo uniforms. I don't know why they're wearing those, considering that their colors are black and red.

The scoreboard was pretty interesting - a giant guitar! They're going to build a new stadium closer to downtown, right on the river.