My mom took me to Walden Ponds while we were visiting because she had seen turtles there in the past, including one in the middle of a trail a long way from water. We saw several of these Painted Turtles, but none of them were gallant enough to climb out of the water and pose. Mostly we had to just admire the turtle heads popping out of the water from time to time.

None of the numerous pond turtles around Perry County Lake would let me get near enough for a closeup, so I took a lot of shots at a distance and only later figured out which turtles I had photographed. (In this particular case I got help from the herp hive mind at fieldherpforum.com.) There turned out to be two species hanging out together here; the two on the outside are Red-eared Sliders, and the four on the inside are Western Painted Turtles.

Dismal Swamp Trail used to be a two-lane highway (Route 17) along a section of the Dismal Swamp Canal. It was converted to a trail on which pretty much everything is allowed (hiking, cycling, rollerblading, skating, horseback riding, etc.) other than driving a motorized vehicle. We stopped by to eat our lunch, and I spent half an hour or so trying to sneak up on various turtles, fairly unsuccessfully.