Marsh Walk in Fall

On Tuesday, I took my lunchtime stroll on the Marsh Trail at the Delaware National Estuarine Research Reserve (DNERR).

The trail is in the Lower St. Jones River portion of the DNERR. It crosses parts of the salt marsh and meanders along farm fields and through the woods at the edge of the Marsh. If you follow it to its end, you wind up at Kingston Upon Hull, an historic site. I didn't have time to get that far in a lunch hour, but managed to wander a mile out and a mile back (or so).

My main purpose was to get some photos before the foliage fades. It was a good day to take pictures.

On the boardwalk section of the trail I came upon a pair of painters also out for the fall colors.

The Reserve is just south of Dover Air Force Base. A large, four-engine military prop plane was intermittently overhead while I walked, practicing landing approaches, touching wheels down to the runway and then taking off again and circling back. This is a practice move that pilots at the Base go through called "touch and go."

There were also airmen and women at the firing range at the south end of the Base, practicing small-arms fire. As I walked I could hear distant, hollow bangs and pops.

I wasn't able to wander away from reminders of the city in which I work, but it was a refreshing walk.