A Merry Lea/Pisgah Kind of Day

I made the effort to get up by 7 a.m. this morning so we could drive to Topeka, Indiana, to eat breakfast at Tiffany's. As we headed east we viewed a colorful sunrise. Too bad I was riding in a car so that I couldn't get a good photo. I tried to shoot thru the windshield as we approached a traffic light but by that time the dark reddish pink had lightened up a lot.

Tiffany's is an Amish-run restaurant. The food turned out to be pretty mediocre but the plate was piled so high I barely ate half of my scrambler (scrambled eggs with onions and shredded potatoes all mixed up together). We had eaten the lunch buffet here years ago, followed by pie. The pie is really the star of the place.

We drove to Merry Lea Environmental Center southeast of Topeka. Last year we experienced a sorghum pressing. This year we parked on the western edge of the property as we only explored the eastern part on our first visit. I guess we really weren't supposed to be hiking in this part. It is for educational programs. There was an old gravel pit and a geodesic domed building. The few marked trails petered out.

Not much fall color yet. The spell of hot weather we had in the first half of October slowed down the changing of the leaves.

Though we had a few moments of sun, the cloudy setting didn't make for good photography. 
We drove west to Indiana 5 and headed south. We saw the sign for Pisgah Marsh and decided to stroll the boardwalk. It has been a few years since we visited Pisgah.

There was a little bit of fall color but not much yet. We saw hundreds of birds flying and lighting on trees making such a racket. I'm not sure what kind of birds they were. We had run into this racket at Merry Lea as well in one spot. Were they massing together readying for a migration? Usually you can see sandhill cranes at Pisgah; we saw two in a harvested cornfield north of the marsh, but none at the marsh. We did see way off in the distance Canada geese in the marshy pool.

Those are birds not dark leaves in those skinny trees above, but big swirls of them were moving around.