He ain't heavy

One day in August I had to drive Sammy over to the high school for football practice. We live about 20 or 25 minutes from the high school, and there are about 4 different routes we can take to get there. One route goes down a super busy, straight 2-lane "highway" called Meridian Road. Traffic on that road can sometimes be crazy, with lots of drivers well exceeding the 55 MPH speed limit. Also, since it's just 2 lanes, many drivers pass when they really should not do so. Been quite a few wrecks on that road, including fatalities. When Sam starts driving himself (soon, thank God!), he is already aware that he's not allowed to take Meridian Road.

From Meridian, we take a left turn onto Gordonville Road. Gordonville includes a bridge that crosses the Pine River and then the road follows the river. That curvy stretch is also a bit dangerous to drive since many drivers tend to go too fast for the road, which has very short sight distance ahead due to all the bends in the road. Here's a view of it thanks to Google Earth:

(Don't you just love Google Earth satellite views?!)
So of course, I love to take that route. Mostly because the curvy stretch of Gordonville along the river is a beautiful piece of road. I also enjoy seeing the changes in the river during the months. In August, the river is usually at its lowest point, showing all the rocks and dead trees. This August, because of the summer we've had with lots of humidity and good bit of rain, the river had a lot of plant life in it and next to it. Grapevines have gone completely crazy this year!

On this day after dropping Sam off, I took the Gordonville way back home. As usual, I had my camera with me. We had taken Gordonville to the high school, and I thought I had seen something interesting in the river, so I wanted to take another look. I got my camera ready, and actually stopped at one spot and managed to take 5 photos before I chickened out and drove on. Turned out to be a good idea because right after I began driving again, a little car came around the bend fast and got very close to my car very quickly.

None of my photos were exceptionally in focus. I didn't discover exactly what I was photographing until I could look at the pics on my camera when I got home... Here is the best of my risky photographing that morning:

Pretty cool, huh? I knew it was a turtle on the rock, and I've seen turtles on that big rock before, but I didn't know it was a double-decker until I saw it on my camera.

And also something I think is kind of cool is that I can see that rock in the Google Earth shot...


I have, however, learned my lesson... not gonna stop along that stretch of road to take photos ever again. When that little car came up behind me, it scared the crap outta me! Not really worth a rear-end collision. Imagine that conversation... "yes, officer, I know I shouldn't have been stopped there in my car, but I wanted to TAKE A PHOTO OF A TURTLE..." Oy.