It's All Done with Smoke and Turtles. 7-15 and 16, 2026

Our big plan for the day was to go to the Brimfield Antique Show but hit the Magic Tree in Worcester County first. No problem, we've done that many times before and since this was a Wednesday (Andrea's vacation) we knew traffic would not be the problem. Like it usually is. It wasn't bad and with eating on the road, we pulled in to the state forest a little before 8:30 AM. It was a strange drive in, however, because due to wildfires in Canada, there was a cast over the sky and car bumpers had orange light glowing on them.

We first headed to a flipping spot and the first flip had a gorgeous female Garter under it that we watched slowly crawl away without a photo. Oops... not quite awake yet. We soon made up for it with another Garter under a piece of wood. Andrea procured it for an in-hand shot.

Interestingly, when we put it down, it crawled away a little and then had an orange glow on it's head. I couldn't really capture it with the camera, though you can see it a bit on the needles in this shot.

We headed toward the Magic Tree in a moment of instant gratification, we saw a large Rat Snake (first of year) crawling toward it. It zipped inside and was never seen again.

The tree is barely standing. It is now completely split in half and the sides are slipping from each other, leaving a 1 1/2 foot space at the top. Plenty of Rat skins are hanging inside, so they're still using it. The above shot perhaps shows the orange pallor to the sky a bit better than the Garter shots.

As do these shots of completely covered (with duckweed) Painted Turtles basking in the smoky sunlight.

A Pickerel had earlier handed me my ass and avoided my camera but the second one we saw tried to but I was still able to get a voucher shot in a bush.

Up towards the front where the water was less cluttered with duckweed, a much cleaner Painter was basking.

Some bright red Staghorn Sumac was living at the edge of the water.

Before leaving (after about two hours of sweaty, hard-to-breathe hiking) we went back to where the pretty Garter had gone unphotographed in the morning. I was flipping through a tarp and found a small Garter with about 3" of skin left to shed. I picked him up and slid the remaining skin down like a stocking, and imagined a little "pop" as the last tip of tail came free. And that little guy was a badass!

I gave him to Andrea to look at and he made a meal of her!

Things bode well for his future!

Guess who was also in the tarp and proceeded to hand me my ass again...

We went to Brimfield, grateful in a way, for the smoke because it kept the temps under 90°. But we didn't last long, even though we'd found some amazing things. It dawned on us that we might not be able to do both on the same day anymore. That's OK... we had a great time at both places and saw some nice critters.

The next day, Thursday, had a much clearer sky and so we planned a local walk. Because of the energy we used up the day before, we got a late start and that probably hurt our chances. It was pretty hot when we left the house. We decided to stop by "the school" on the way to our destination. No Water Snakes were seen and the water was very low. The adjoining pond had plenty of Painted Turtles up basking in the much cleaner air.

The place is looking pretty litter-filled again and I'm planning another clean-up. Perhaps this week.

Our destination was very hot and no animals were up. We cut it fairly short and the only photo I took was of this Hollow Joe-pye Weed.

But that's not a bad way to start Andrea's vacation! Exercise, animals and nature. The way we like it.