Friday, November 19, 2010

Deer Make Detour Scenic


The Cedar Rapids metro area is growing on both its north and south fringes, and I saw some of that growth today.

As noted in an earlier blog post, the sidewalk along C Avenue south of Brentwood Drive has been closed for some utility work. In the morning, I ride on the busy 4-lane C Avenue for one block until I can reach the sidewalk on the western side.

That route doesn't work well coming the other direction--no light headed north to slow the traffic to make one block on C seem less death defying--so today I rode along the sidewalk of Blair's Ferry Road until turning in Marion to intersect Marion's Boyson Road trail.

It was after 4 and getting dusky when I got there, but as I went north I noticed that construction is underway on what will not doubt be a new neighborhood in what had been farm fields just east of the trail. I'm not a huge fan of urban sprawl, but this particular field is pretty much surrounded by city, so it's demise, I think, was a pretty foregone conclusion.

However, there was a strip of harvested bean field between the earth movers working on a new street and the trail, and a three deer were gleaning the field.

I took some photos, which I'm not sure does the scene justice. It was cool, just twilight, but still enough light to see well--3 deer, a nearly full moon and the contrasting lights of construction behind them.

Well, I stopped and took a few photos. One is here, more are on my Facebook page.

The detour probably should have added 10 to 15 minutes to my commute. It was more like 25 or so, but I think watching and photographing the deer was worth it.

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