Millennium Park was crawling with wooly-bear caterpillars today. Most seemed to be inching their way down the hill - wooly-bear convention down at the Charles? The fuzzywuzzy above? Its head was on the left, as you can see below:

Ever wanted to recreate the final scene in "Planet of the Apes" when Charlton Heston goes around that cliff, sees the remains of the Statue of Liberty and suddenly realizes what's happened?

You can get a taste of that by walking the path in the woods along the Charles River at Millennium Park in West Roxbury. The park used to be the city landfill and while most of the stuff there is now covered by several feet of clay and dirt, there are a couple of remnants of a large building frieze that lie exposed on the river bank, including "Machinery" above (the other one shows "Leather").

Sure, it was way warm today, but the view from the hill at Millennium Park makes it clear that fall is coming.

Yesterday, some Brazilian guys were trying to sail away from the top of Millennium Park in West Roxbury. At least while we were there, none succeeded in getting airborne for more than a foot - and a second - or two. Except for one guy, who just jumped off the side of the hill and sort of sail/hopped down to the canoe access road at the bottom of the hill - for maybe 20 seconds.

Fortunately, if they were after views, they didn't need to get very high: Millennium Park offers some beautiful views of the surrounding terrain, which includes the winding Charles River:

The sun sets over Millennium Park in West Roxbury on Wednesday.

Millennium Park in West Roxbury is a great place to fly a kite - it sits high atop a former city landfill off the VFW Parkway, so there's almost always a brisk breeze. Click on the image for a 29-second clip of a butterfly kite flying above the park today (1.2Mb Quicktime video). At one point, it looked like it was going to get into a fight with a dragonfly kite, but then the two fluttered away from each other. All those kids' voices? I took the video from the park's playground.

Looking south from Millennium Park in West Roxbury around 11:30 this morning.