Walking on the Provo River Trail + cake

The past month or two I've been walking a lot on the Provo River trail with Piper. Almost every time we see something new and exciting. If you just want to see baby pictures they're on my photo blog.

some shelf fungus appeared on a tree after it rained

a dead Monarch butterfly! At least I think it's a Monarch.

I meant to identify this flower after our walk... I never did X(.

the views are amazing

ladybug!

morning clouds in our neighborhood 

there's a part where the river trail goes under a road that has openings of different shapes. The diamond opening was by far the favorite of spiders! You can't see it very well but there were 12+ spiders in this one opening. Test of courage!

There's a spot where 30-40 ducks regularly congregate and sleep near one of the parking lots. We call it "duck city."

Leopard slug

UFO cloud!

we get tons of these bugs around our house... are they mayflies?

There is a house along the trail with a very duck-friendly yard and regular morning feedings (usually between 8-9). This must have been before the feeding and I counted at least 60 ducks gathered here. I call it "ducktopia" because I keep wondering if they're going to harvest any of those delicious-looking ducks. 

Another yard near the trail houses two horses and a donkey. Koko and Piper were pretty interested in meeting it.

look carefully--there's a moth in this photo!

I looked up the tree that is everywhere on the river trail and it's a Fremont Cottonwood tree. Duh! I feel like I should know this stuff by now. Is there a remedial plant identification course I could take?

I started taking Piper to the library and I read a few issues of Otomen, which they have there. Here were two parts I thought were pretty funny (in the first two, the friend is thinking up an excuse to leave so his friend can have a good date or something). In the second two, the traditional swimsuit fan service is completely undermined, to humorous effect.

Okay, now for the last few photos I wanted to share:

sometimes I have really high-calorie snacks? This is goat cheese, cashews, and honey.

I made caramel for a cake I baked

This was the cake before I frosted it. It looked better after the frosting, but I forgot to take a photo.

I baked a cake! It was this salted caramel cake from the Cook's Illustrated magazine. It was actually one of my "little goals" I mentioned in the previous post. The part I messed up on the most was cutting the two layers in half and getting them to line up. Otherwise it was just a matter of following directions, although I was glad I started in the morning, because with all the cooling times of the cake, caramel, and frosting it took almost all day! I have a lot more appreciation for the work that goes into making a cake now.