A Couple of Errands And the Changing Fall Colors

Last Saturday morning, I was drinking a little coffee and staring out the window of our kitchen and was greeted with the wonderful red colors of these two trees in our front yard. It had rained on Thursday and Friday and it seemed that the rain finally brought out some of the more vivid colors of Fall. These trees weren't this red the day before. It has been unseasonably warm here for the Fall season. That's been good because the riding weather has been great. We haven't even experienced a hard freeze yet, and it is already about 3 weeks beyond the normal date for our first freeze of the year. A couple of weeks ago I took a couple of pictures of leaves starting to change color. These leaves were just starting to change from green to yellow.

These were trying to change from green to red

It seems a little later this year for the leaves to change colors.

Now our front yard looks like this.

I had a couple of short errands to run today. It was the first Saturday that we have had in awhile that there wasn't some sort of wedding related task to accomplish. It was nice to sleep in a bit and not be rushed to get a bunch of things done. The errands were not far from home, nor would they take a long time and I took the camera along in order to try and get a few pictures of the finally changing colors of the trees.

I needed to stop by a couple of stores and they were both in the same shopping center. But first I rode around a bit looking for a place to get a picture or two.

I needed to stop by Barnes and Noble. I had just finished a book on my Nook, my electronic book reader. I have only the Wi-Fi version of the Nook, and I can't connect at home, so I sometimes stop by other places to shop for a new book where my Nook can connect to the Barnes and Noble website. It's easy for me just to go to the store itself since it is not real far from home. I sometimes get a cup of coffee and find an easy chair to sit in while shopping for another book.

The sun was bright after the rainy weather we had the past couple of days. It was cool when I left the house on Max, so I dressed fairly warmly. Heavy liner in the jacket, light liner in the pants, an old sweatshirt underneath the jacket. With the sun beating down, I found I was overdressed a bit.

I found a few different places to take pictures, some stops made very near the shopping center.

There were even some ducks on one of the ponds.

But for some reason I was more interested in the colors of the trees.

I stopped by Barnes and Noble and got a new book downloaded to the Nook.

My other stop was at a store called Backwoods that sells camping and hiking clothing and equipment. I don't ever spend a lot of money there, but it is a fun store with lots of interesting merchandise. I do have some long underwear from there that I sometimes wear while riding on a real cold day.

When they get you on their list, you give them your birthday, and they give you a little present each year. My birthday is coming up and I got a postcard that week that I could turn in for my present. It's usually nothing real fancy, but nice all the same, and the quality of their merchandise is always good. I picked up the present and headed for home.

As I rounded the curve to my street, which has a lot of trees, I noticed that we have the reddest trees on the block. There are lots of leaves in the street too, so have to watch out for them.

After I parked at the house, I opened up my birthday present to find a very nice little duffel bag. Not real big, but looks like I could easily strap or bungee it to Max and carry a few goodies with it.

My thanks to the Backwoods store. It was a lovely little ride.