At around 10 PM on July 15, 2026, I got back to Virginia after a two weeklong trip to Europe. While I had previously traveled a fair amount throughout America by car, this was my first time leaving America. It was interesting to see things outside of America. I spent a week in Italy and a week in Greece. It was a family trip with my parents, sister, and my sister’s husband.
I think my favorite parts of the trip were the cooking class in Taormina, the sailboat on the last night in Italy, and the catamaran boat on the last night in Greece. The cooking class showed us how to make several different shapes of spaghetti, two different sauces for spaghetti, and swordfish. It was fun to see them joking with my brother-in-law and the boat trips gave us some very nice sunset views.
Since getting back, I have not seen the chipmunks that I was observing before the trip. I had been seeing them every morning before we left. I think it has something to do with the house that they were spending time around was empty for what seemed like months up until a week or two before the trip. I hope that I either haven’t seen them or they moved on rather than a predator having eaten them. There are many predators around here like hawks and owls.
Even though the chipmunks seem to have moved on, I have seen a barred owl. When I was sitting on the front step with my dog last night, a barred owl flew over the yard while being chased by several smaller birds. We also saw two foxes run through the yard. I was happy to see all of them and I hope as I readjust to this time zone, I will get more pictures.
There is a competition that I meant to enter last year. I am thinking about entering it this year and when it is over, I should be free to upload the pictures to the website. I have held back many of my favorite pictures because I thought that I may want to upload them to this competition. They have some rules about uploading to websites and social media before the competition, so I need to try to make sure I don’t mess it up in case I do enter. If I do enter, I will give an update so that anyone interested knows where to look.