Kayaking at Big Pool

Pam and I went kayaking Saturday for the 2nd time in our new kayaks. We went up to Fort Frederick State Park in an area called Big Pool, Maryland - obviously named after the water body we were in, named "Big Pool". It is a long narrow lake between the C&O canal and the Potomac River. We were out for 4 hours.

We explored a side creek and found a flock of geese way back in the woods. No pictures .... Sorry. We've decided that these were the mythical "Forest Geese", so perhaps we wouldn't have been able to get their picture anyway. We chased them all the way up the creek until they ran out of water, at which point they scrambled up the bank and disappeared into the underbrush.

On the side of the lake I found these blue dragonflies hanging out near to the surface of the water. I wasn't able to see their wings with my eyes, but the camera was able to stop the action just fine.

There were LOTS of turtles. Unfortunately, we did not get very good pictures. We had the waterproof camera with us and it is not the best at zooming in, especially on small subjects from a moving base. They were quite skittish and slipped into the water whenever we got close. However, Pam did manage to catch a little one - she just floated up next to him and grabbed him with her bare hands. Perhaps he was too young to know any better. Pam really wanted to bring him home with us, but we had no way of getting him there. He was VERY cute.

 

Vandals

Don't worry. Nothing bad happened. I just stumbled across this little tidbit on the Internet today and thought it worthy of sharing in the blog.

Have you ever wondered where the term vandalism comes from?

Around 439 AD, there was an East Germanic tribe called the Vandals, who under king Genseric formed a kingdom in North Africa, around the area that is now Tunisia. Part of this kingdom included an area that was claimed by Rome - the Roman Africa province. In 455, the Vandals sacked the city of Rome, leaving a great deal of destruction in their wake. The north Africa Vandal kingdom was only held for about 100 years at which point, in the Vandalic War (533-4), Justinian I re-siezed control for the Eastern Roman Empire.

Early Pro-Roman historians classified the Vandals, as, I suppose, any culture that was not Roman, barbarians for their sacking and looting of Rome. While the Vandals destruction of Roman antiquities was likely no more destructive than other invaders of the time, the Vandals were often blamed for Rome's downfall.

So, the Vandals got a bad rep and a bad rap. But it wasn't until much later (1794) that the term "vandalisme" was coined by Henri Grégoire to describe the destruction of artwork following the French Revolution. The term quickly swept into public use across Europe and - as we well know - is still used to this day to describe wanton or useless destruction of property.

Information gathered from Wikipedia (the fount of all knowledge)