So, I really am writing this from the Pocono mountains, while waiting for SWHTL to finish getting us checked in, but we aren't really camping, we're checking into the "Great Wolf Lodge" for a couple of days. The place looks like FrontierLand at Disney World but the good news is that I managed to get poison ivy before we even left for vacation, so at least I've got that out of the way.

I was running around Lock 60 on the old Schuylkill Canal System which really is a beautiful piece of parkland / industrial history. The pictures were meant to focus on textures and details, cause that's the current challenge at Photographica (speaking of which, does Cory know his site has pretty much collapsed? Pages never seem to finish loading, and I haven't been able to post a story all day.)

Anyway, I found a beautiful flower on the bank of the canal, full of bees, moths, butterflies and spiders. And I keep scootching closer, and closer to the flower to get different compositions and so on, when suddenly my foot shoots out from under me and I'm sliding feet first into the canal. (Have you ever tried keeping yourself from sliding down an embankment into a canal while protecting your camera gear and your cigar? I don't recommend it.)

Anyway, I caught myself at the last possible moment, with one foot in the water, the other scrabbling to push me back up one hand holding the camera, the other holding the cigar. A few seconds later, I managed to crab back up onto solid ground. I assume it was then that I managed get the poison up and down the insides of my forearms, although how is unclear, since I didn't see any poison ivy and, in fact, my hands were full of the aforementioned cigar and camera.

Oh, well. At least the pictures turned out well.

UPDATE: Holy smokes, it's spreading. I was standing in line with my daughter, "Lamb", for a water slide, and I was scratching my arms when she yelled at me "Stop thinking about it. Oh, and don't think about how it's spread to your stomach." She's right. Sigh.