The day before at the visitor's site they recommended we go look at a location on the river called Gaston's. It's a place named after James Gaston, or rather Al Gaston, the father of James who bought 20 acres on the lake in 1958. Al was a man with a vision, and it's obvious it passed onto James. He put his life into the area and the visitor's center is named in his honor. With this info Ed and I got up early Tuesday Morning after a relaxing night.
This is the view from the back of our RV. In the summer the area was covered with foliage; now the leaves have fallen but it's still beautiful. It's 25 degrees and the air is as sharp as a knife's edge. No sound, you can hear the whoosh of a flyfisher as he casts about 200 yards downriver.We went to Gaston's and talked to the attendants there, and they pointed downriver to a bend where an eagle had been seen the day before. It was a mile and a half so we parked and Ed and I started to hike.
Ed, surveying the banks of the river. We were halfway to the location the attendants pointed at. Beyond the edges of this picture fishers were wading in the water. On the left of Ed the bank continues up about 10 feet higher, which was where the water level was when we came in August. However the lake is low enough for us to walk on the lake bed. The level is controlled from the dam upstream that raises and lowers it to control the water level on the other side of the lake. If they have to raise or lower the lake a warning horn is sounded and about 30 minutes later the water comes gushing through.
Yours truly squinting in the morning sun. The weather was clear as a bell, a blue sky, but the sun coming off the water left a glare that was pretty harsh, and was directly in our field of vision.
About this time the we spotted something that clearly stuck out against the backdrop of the trees. A white, no, two spots of white. From about 200 yards away we spotted it.
It was a female bald eagle, no doubt about it. She was HUGE. It’s impossible to gage sizes at a distance but using a nearby telephone pole next to the tree, I guessed the tree was about 40 feet in height. This bird on this branch, very crude guess, was any where from 2 feet to three feet tall. By that estimation she must have weighed ten to fifteen pounds. She sat there oblivious to the fishermen below, waiting to make a dive for food.
Ed and I kept working downriver, trying to get a better view of the bald eagle. The river was about 50 yards across. We finally settled on this shelf of land. Gaston's has maintained this area and there was a bench up there as well. Ed and I got there, I pulled out my thermos of coffee and relaxed while we tried to get a better shot with our camera.
A better view of the eagle. This was probably our best shot, taken from the shelf. It gives you an idea of her size. A beautiful bird.
About the time a boat came by, the eagle had decided she had enough and took off. And I mean TOOK OFF.
A bird this large had a wingspan of nearly 5 feet. The beat of her wings were slow, methodical. She soared nearly fifty feet from us, looking for something, then took a dive. A beautiful sight in the air.
Another view of the eagle in flight. A beautiful bird. She hit something in the water and took off after that for somewhere deeper in the woods. Our guess was that somewhere in there was her nest. I was hoping we could get to the other side but there wasn’t a way for us to get there.
Ed and I walked back to the front of the parking lot, happy that we had bagged what we came for, a picture of our eagle. We had a chance to watch her for an hour. Twice she dove for something in the water, then finally went off. We felt we accomplished what we came for and were thrilled.
Going across the parking lot of Gaston’s we found pens for Guinea hens, peacocks, and pheasants. They raised them there, breeding them and releasing them into the wild (not the peacocks). We watched them feed them, and watched the fight between the hens as they went for the food.
Feathers for macaroni. We collected pheasant, guinea, and peacock, plus a couple of down feathers. They’ll be put in macaroni and add to our totem.
Ed and I near the bottom of the dam. We took a trip down to the bottom to scope out places to look tomorrow. After this we went back to our RV, built a fire and settled in to relax for the night. All in all a good day. We accomplished what we wanted to do, find an eagle. Watched the football game, I turned on my laptop to watch MST3k, with Ed, and dozed on the couch. Next day, we’re going to search around the camp. We’ll see what we can find.
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