Durant Nature Park

No matter what that song says, I believe that AUTUMN is the most wonderful time of the year.  So to get our autumn on, we headed to Durant Nature Preserve over in Raleigh today.  We could not have asked for a more pristine fall day!  The weather was just cool enough, while the leaves on the ground sounded just like leaves should when they crunch in the autumn.  Everything smelled Heavenly.

By the way...in case you didn't know...it's always going to be autumn when we get to Heaven.  (Ok.  My husband the summer-lover may not necessarily agree with me.  But it's true.)

 One of the great things about a nature preserve is that there are signs of life everywhere.  

You can look to see where beavers have been:

 You can count turtles sunning themselves on a log:

 The pine trees are ENORMOUS!

And even though it's October, there are still critters to be caught:

The prettiest thing we saw all day, however, was a beautiful doe who kept silently crossing our path.  If I didn't know better, I might have thought she was following us.  She was a big, healthy girl, obviously having fattened-up during the summer. But unfortunately she was a bit camera shy, so I agreed to leave her be and let her enjoy the beautiful autumn day, too.  It is, after all, her nature preserve.