Courting Cormarants

“I should know better than to follow you downhill,” one of today's riders remarked (when he caught up with me). The group was massed at the summit when I arrived, so I waved and immediately started my descent. [Otherwise I'd be on the brakes the whole way down, mixing it up with them and likely making more than a few of them uneasy.]

All that water in the reservoir was a site to behold! I paused to admire a hunting great blue heron and a pair of cormorants who seemed fixated on each other.

I missed the fawn that others saw, but this pair of young deer posed nicely for me. [No, they are not lawn ornaments.] They didn't immediately bolt when I stopped, and seemed curious when I spoke softly to them.

On the return trip I looked up to see a halo ringing the sun; not wanting to point directly at the orb, I captured a lower arc.

It was cool and breezy, the kind of day we needed to reassure us that our recent run of triple-digit heat was a fluke.

A smooth 44 miles, with a scant 1,319 feet of climbing.