Last Long Run before the TCM

Today called for a 12 miler. I woke up around 6:30 and thought about what I was going to do this morning. Last night I was looking at the GeoCaches online keeping an eye out for the green Jeeps that the Jeep company has hidden in geocaches around the country. It just so happened that one turned up here only a couple of miles from the house. I decided to make a run to this lovely location

near here

I found this:

4-Unpaved – it’s a jeep thing. So anyway after all that excitement, I decided to go for my run on the I & M Canal Trail again.

I hadn’t gone very far when I saw a turtle on the side of the trail.

He’s a little larger than last weeks turtle.

So I’m running down the trail right -

Then I see this stretched across the trail

Crikey! That’ll put a spring in your step if you’re not expecting it. (Terrible to hear about the crocodile hunter wasn’t it.)

As I was getting close to the half way point, I stopped on a bridge that goes over the canal at one of the locks that still has a lock house. There are several on the I & M and they were used to enable the barges to stairstep their way up or down as the water level rose and fell with the topography. Here are pictures looking west first, then east.

Did I ever mention that the I & M runs between the canal and the Illinois River? The Illinois River is large enough to accomodate barges and also has a large population of recreational boaters.

So here’s your faithful runner around mile 11 – I could still smile…

Here’s a couple more blue herrons just for fun:

Gotta figure out a way to hold the zoom steady, but this guy was in a tree around where a geocache was rumored to be. I still haven’t found the geocache after probably 5 searches.

On my way out of McKinnley I saw this beautiful fawn – I saw the mother too, but didn’t get the camera out quickly enough. Another shaky picture.

Anyway, it was a great run. I’ll be tapering between now and October 1st. My target in St. Paul will be survival, but it should be a fun event anyway.