A walk and a new toy

We went to IU Health North Hospital this morning so Carl could get his COVID screening test done. We were a little confused because they had drive-in COVID screening by appointment only (in addition to an area where they were giving COVID vaccines) -- we went to the "by appointment only" area and called the number indicated there to see if we were in the correct place for "pre-surgery" screening, and found that we were not. Carl went in to the hospital to the lab area -- the lady doing the test there told him that the test was annoying but "not a big deal", but then told him to sit on his hands to keep himself from smacking her as she "tickled his brain" via his nose -- sounds a bit more than "annoying"! We will only be told if the test is positive, and would be told tomorrow; if we don't hear anything, everything should be fine and the surgery will go on as planned on Monday.

We decided to head out to enjoy a bit of the afternoon -- today is predicted to have the highest temperature for the 10 days we are scheduled to be here. Carl had found some trails nearby at Cool Creek Park so we drove over there.

We headed out on the Beech Trail...

Cool Creek was along beside us the whole time.

It was a very pretty creek!

There were id markers on some of the trees... Carl's address used to be in "Box Elder, SD" (it is one of the several mail services available to RVers).

I didn't know that Sycamores had hollow trunks nor that they were good for cutting boards!

... and I didn't know that the light wood of the Buckeye was used to make artificial limbs.

Another view of the creek

The path was very nice -- graveled in some places... in a lot of places where there was not gravel it was a bit muddy -- I guess the weather is only recently thawing here.

We saw a large bird fly across the trail and then, when it landed, realized it was a large woodpecker.

close up

Quite the handsome bird

There were two on this piece of wood...

Close-up - one on each side.

We were walking up to a nature center -- we weren't sure it was open -- this is a view back down toward the creek from the top of the hill.

From inside the nature center (it *was* open), there was a bird feeder, and under the bird feeder a very rotund squirrel (on the left) and a very rotund chipmunk (on the right side of the post).

There was an information poster on Woodpeckers -- specifically the Pileated Woodpecker that we saw.

After we finished on the trail and in the nature center, we headed to a currently not-in-use field for Carl to try out his new toy...

The above shows his first take-off -- pretty good!

It wasn't *totally* in control...

The guy who was throwing a ball for his dog seemed to be clapping for us at times!

Carl actually was *very* good at controlling his new drone. He is hoping to be able to use it to get pictures and/or videos from above in some of the places we go... though we weren't able to get pictures with it today because we need to get a memory card for the drone.

The drone in the air, "looking" at us.

I think there will be a bit more practice with Carl's new toy, and hopefully you'll see some of the fruits of its labor soon!