S.IN JRA aka BikesBirdsBeer

Timothy invited me to do some kind of ride and I agreed to do whatever kind of ride. We met at Slugger Field and rolled over to the New Albany Quills for coffee and a snack. With no real plan in mind I wanted to look at some birds, so we then went to Loop Island Wetlands and did some trail riding and bird watching. Watching Timothy try to trail ride on the trike he is borrowing might have been the highlight of the day.

Railroad bridge at Loop Island, eventually to be part of the S.IN Greenway. No clue whay the pic is so funky.

There I saw:

Great Blue Heron (2x)
Great Egret- not many of those in the area
American Bittern- first one officially
Black-crowned Night Heron- juvenile. pretty sure although there are some other options
Wood Duck mama and babies- when we arrived she did this full frontal attack display across the pond at us. Then she bleated for a while looking for the babies.
**Two different looking birds flew off as we arrived. Their shape was unlike anything I had seen. Wish I could've gotten a second viewing. Ducks? Waders? Cormorants?

We moved on to look for the other railroad bridge cut-through that is used stealth-style by a group of mt.bikers from Louisville en route to visit New Albanian Brewpub sometimes. Timothy wasn't quite sure of all the entry/exit points, so we explored around a bit and spent a bit of time over the span. I don't like heights, btw. We rode on only to find that Timothy had lost a bottle, so I waited and he looked. We returned via the Clark Park to find the river very, very high from all the recent rain. We topped things off with a beverage at Against the Grain- the beer cheese was quite nice- and I meandered slowly to the house, giving me 35 miles on the day.

A very successful JRA, if you ask me.

The trike succumbed.

Final path towards "secret" bridge, the one everybody apparently uses.