Fading Fall at Lillie Park

We had a quiet day on Saturday, staying close to home and enjoying each other's company now that Jake's barrage of tests has past. The weather has been so nice and we wanted to get some fresh air, so we went for a hike through Lillie Park.

The last time we visited this park, in August, we were attacked by mosquitos, even though we were covered in repellant. But the park was very beautiful and we were looking forward to a visit sans bugs. Lillie Park in the fall, though, was very different from Lillie Park in the summer. Still beautiful, but no longer lush.

We walked to both of the ponds, but didn't see much wildlife. All the birds have migrated and the turtles must be hiding too.

The scenery was so much more brown and gray than last time, but I enjoyed the contrast. It's like everything is settling down for the winter. You can feel it in the cold winds and hear it in the silence where once there were birds and insects.

Some of the trees still had pretty, fall leaves.

But a lot of them were completely bare.

We had a good time walking through all the leaves, though!

To give you an idea of how different the landscape was this time, here is a picture from our hike in August:

And here is the same place now:

We still saw some neat things. Now you can clearly see the small, black berries that cover many of the trees.

We saw a huge, but empty, paper wasps' nest.

Only one cool mushroom, definitely not like last time.

And some pretty, dried weeds.

(As a side note, I found these very intricate seed pods by our house.)

Later that night we warmed up with some home-made hot chocolate (it's really not hard to make from scratch) topped with lots and lots of whipped cream and mini chocolate chips!

Definitely a nice weekend.

Hope you had a good one too!