Friday Morning

Well Thursday was anything but usual after my early morning routines which started a little before 6 with a roll out, a few quiet moments and then left over pancakes for breakfast. I hand watered the gardens which despite no rain in the past several days is still doing well. We had some huge thunderheads around and many black clouds but they seemed to pass around us which is very unusual as we are noted for our fog and wetness at this end of the county.

I piddled around outside digging fishing worms and pulling weeds while waiting on Nancy to get ready to head over to our "mountain mom" Helen's place to do a few chores for her. Well, when we arrived she was all into viewing several large houses through her binoculars from her back porch. These houses were high atop a mountain some miles away so she said to skip the chores and let's go exploring which we did for the next couple hours. Both she and Nancy love to travel the back roads and Allegheny County has a ton of them.

We found the houses she was inquiring about after a steep drive on to the top of this mountain but since a couple drives were marked private we never could get next to a couple of these majestic structures. We ended up on dead end roads and stopped at an

old wooden built bridge and took pictures of the small river. We saw wild turkeys and deer out foraging in the day time which is unusual. We saw lots of pumpkin, corn and cabbage truck farming as well as tons of Christmas Tree farms. I often wonder how long it took for the old timers to get to town to buy their necessities back in the days of horse and wagon as these hills are steep.

Well we got back to drop Helen off after nearly 2 hours of exploring that area of the county around lunch time. We settled into a fresh garden salad for lunch and then never did get in our hike for the day as a storm came up with thunder in the distance. It sure seemed like we were going to get a gully washer as some one close by got a terrific storm. We even unplugged the TV and laptop in fear of the lightning which was accompanying the thunder. We may have received 20 drops of rain which didn't even turn the driveway rocks wet, oh well. We sat on the porch and read for the next couple hours. At least the clouds and breeze dropped the temperature down several degrees.

I had a fishing date with one of my pickle ball buddies so Nancy had a Zucchini Pie in the oven by 4 so I could eat early and meet him at 5:30. We fished a private lake and the rainbow trout as well as the large mouth bass were biting. All of the trout were 20 plus inches long and several of the bass were 2-3 pounds as well. What a peaceful setting and we fished until nearly 8 PM. That's the first time I've been fishing in many moons and that use to be one of my favorite past times and since this was a private lake I didn't need a fishing license, great!!

We after cleaning fish until dark I headed for the shower and then watched the Rays vs the Nationals on the tube. They are or were in first place in the division and where beating the Nats 5-3 when I decided to call it a night around 10'ish. I read a few chapters in the new Lee Child book before lights out for me, LATER