Hiking in the "woods"

  As you might have heard, Isaac turned out to be rather less than a hurricane, at least for South Florida. I know that a number of states have really suffered from it, but we only experienced a few periods of wind and rain, and a bit of flooding. In fact, Andrew and I were driving during the worst part of the storm, because I didn't realize that it was supposed to hit that early in the day. It felt far less dangerous that driving during a big thunderstorm.
  The worst part turned out to be the day after. Our power was out for twelve hours, and since the university was closed, we just sat at home and waited. I can see now why hurricanes can be so awful; even after the storm passes by, you can lose your power for hours days. Someone in our neighborhood had no power for three days, which isn't very good news when you consider that this was only a tropical storm.
  To celebrate the clear weather, we headed out to the great (humid) outdoors. I wanted to use the Labor Day weekend to check out a state park, because state parks allow dogs. We drove a few hours north, which meant that the vegetation was slightly (but sufficiently) different - look at the pine trees in that picture. You don't see trees like that in Miami. Of course, Labor Day doesn't mean it's cool - that won't happen until November, so we just drank lots of water and wore hats and trudged through the heat.