A few Clear Creek photos

Things have been busy around here this summer, and tomorrow I leave for a cruise to Alaska! One of our excursions is a four-mile hike, and of course I'll post pictures when I get back.

In the meantime, I took these pictures several weeks ago but only just got around to posting them. I took them in the watershed, but I hiked all over the place that day and would just bore everyone if I listed the trails I took.

That one was taken on Cliff Trail, which overlooks the highway and the river. At some points, you can stand on the edge of the trail and look almost straight down and see the highway through the trees. Note to self: don't fall.

This one was taken on Dyer Trail, which I did finally hike. How I'd forgotten the details of it I do not know, especially since it's one of the trails that ends up by my house. It's a lovely trail, too, with a nice steep climb at the end.

And it's not super clear--I tried hard to get a better picture--but this is a baby snapping turtle and a frog. Ordinarily the only unusual thing about such a picture would be how I managed not to scare the frog off while I was taking it (I was taking so many pictures of the turtle that the frog swam over without noticing me because I wasn't moving), but in this case, I want to know how in hell a baby snapper made it to this particular creek. The creek flows out from under a rock halfway up a hill--I was right by the rock, but didn't think to get a picture--and has been artificially diverted to the gristmill's spillway. There's a mill pond not too far from the spillway, but it's at the bottom of the hill. Did the mother snapper climb up the hill and lay her eggs under the rock? Did the baby hatch in the mill pond and climb up himself? I just do not know! I will probably never know.