January 26th. The spring semester at UMBC started today and we dropped Elroy off yesterday but before we gave him back we explored a new park we hadn't visited before, Patapsco Valley State Park. This isn't a huge park but it has an fairly extensive series of hiking trails (outlined in my previous post), some of which are also used by bikers. Since it's wintertime, the visitors center was closed which was a little irksome especially since it wasn't straightforward where we were to go to find the trailheads to the various hiking paths. But we persevered and finally hiked the Cascade Falls Trail. The central attraction of this particular hike is small falls that cascaded in wonderful frozen burbles (if that's a word) over a short precipice. The sound of trickling water underneath the icy surface was interesting. It was a sunny but rather frigid afternoon just perfect for a hike. Along one remote section, where few hikers strayed, we found numerous downy feathers and one short brown-banded feather among the leaf litter, marking a spot where a bird (I imagined a baby owl) must have fell afoul (or should I say afowl) of a forest predator. Later along this same trail Elroy spotted a shed snakeskin. Imagine, finding a snakeskin in January. How long must it have been lying on the forest floor waiting for someone to come and marvel at its scaly resilience. Anyway, here are a few pictures along the trail.