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Back Roads and Lincoln Trail Park, Illinois

Posted in Adventures With Pepper, Birds, Favorite Places, Lakes, Nature, Travel, Writing, tagged , , , , , on October 10, 2012| 8 Comments »

            “The everyday kindness of the back roads more than makes up for the acts of greed in the headlines … It does no harm just once in a while to acknowledge that the whole country isn’t in flames, that there are people in the country besides politicians, entertainers, and criminals.” – Charles Kuralt

A lone great egret on Lincoln Trail Lake —  Photo by Pat Bean

Adventures with Pepper: Day 18-19

            I got it all figured out on the map, just exactly the best way to get to Lincoln’s Tomb in Springfield. But in the end, I decided I’d rather spend my day traveling down Illinois’ backroads.

A young deer in the sunlight while the mom stays more hidden in the shadows. The park was full of deer. A staff worker said they had fawned late this year. — Photo by Pat Bean

So, with a cheat sheet of right and left turns to compensate for my lack of directional sense, I set out to drive from Chatham to Lincoln Trail State Park.

You guessed it. I got turned around numerous times. It seems my map and reality were  two different things. Too often sign markers were missing, and once even turned around the wrong way.

But it was a beautiful drive and I eventually found my way over numerous state and county roads to Lincoln Trail State Park, which was awesome.

I camped on a high lookout point with stairs leading down to the small lake that was painted by the colors of fall.

I had breakfast at the park’s marina restaurant before I left. The food was ho-hum, but the view was magnificent. — Photo by Pat Bean — Photo by Pat Bean

The large park is just west of the 1,000-mile Lincoln Heritage Trail, which marks Lincoln’s passage from Kentucky, through Indiana to Illinois.Heavily forested, the park is home to beech, oak, maple, hickory, sweet gum and sassafras trees. among many others. The air was clean and fresh, the days warm and sunny, and the nights cold and crisp, just perfect for snuggling beneath the covers with my canine traveling companion Pepper, and having pleasant dreams.

            Book Report: Travels with Maggie is now at 55,212 words. Not much time to write with traveling and other commitments, but I’m trying to at least keep it moving forward every day.    

The Wondering Wanderer’s blog pick of the day.

        Bean’s Pat: Focus on the Eyes http://tinyurl.com/8rd5zjr Good advice for picture taking. I never thought of this very helpful hint. Perhaps other amateur photographers haven’t either.

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Happy

Posted in Birds, Weekly Photo Challenge, tagged , , on October 7, 2012| 4 Comments »

I could list a jillion things that make me happy, and coming upon a pair of sandhill cranes would be in there someplace. — Photo by Pat Bean

Happiness is a Pair of Sandhill Cranes

“I, not events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy  today. I can choose which it shall be. Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn’t  arrived yet. I have just one day, today, and I’m going to be happy in it. — Grocho Marks”

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Prairie Dog State Park: A Tale of Two Animals

Posted in Adventures With Pepper, Birds, Favorite Places, Lakes, Travel, Writing, tagged , , , , , , , , on October 2, 2012| 4 Comments »

Entrance to Prairie Dog State Park, Kansas — Photo by Mike Blair

“The ultimate value of life depends upon awareness and the power of contemplation rather than upon mere survival.” – Aristotle

Adventures with Pepper: Day 12   

Prairie Dog at Lake Arrowhead State Park in Texas. The Kansas prairie dogs were too quick for my camera. — Photo by Pat Bean

         Kansas’ Prairie Dog State Park was indeed a great place to spend the night, so I spent two.

Pepper and I had a peaceful camp site that offered a tree-framed view of Keith Sebelius Reservoir out Gypsy Lee’s rear window. While I saw several of the critters for which the park was named on the drive in, birds were the only wildlife I saw in the camping area.

These included an osprey that hung out in a tree overlooking the lake, killdeer near its shore, a lone great blue heron that sat on a rock in the water about a hundred feet from shore and turkey vultures frequently hovering overhead.

Black-tailed ferret, a cute little thing but deadly to prairie dogs, which make up about 90 percent of the ferret’s diet. — Wikipedia photo

But it was the sighting of the black-tailed prairie dogs roaming free in this high plains grass prairie that delighted me most.

That’s because I once participated in an endangered wildlife project that didn’t bode well for a pack of these prairie dogs that roamed the Utah-Colorado border.

The project involved transplanting endangered black-footed ferrets, thought to be extinct until a pack of about a dozen of them were discovered in 1981, into their midst. Prairie dogs are the black-footed ferrets favorite food, even though the two species are near the same size.

The discovered ferrets were captured and entered into a breeding program and some of the offspring began being transplanted back into the wild. Today there are slightly over 1,000 ferrets once again inhabiting North America.

If the number of prairie dogs I’ve seen in my travels are any indication, they are surviving quite nicely – thankfully.

Book Report: 54,312 words. The number is better than it sounds because I cut almost as much as I edited.

The Wondering Wanderer’s blog pick of the day.

Bean’s Pat:  I Can’t Afford It http://tinyurl.com/8vnkbw8 I’m pretty thrifty but it’s good to be reminded every now and then that it’s OK to say no to things we want but may not need.  

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Elk Creek Campground

Posted in Adventures With Pepper, Birds, Dogs, Favorite Places, Nature, Travel, Writing, tagged , , , , on September 25, 2012| 2 Comments »

            “Every morning I jump out of bed and step on a landmine. The landmine is me .After the explosion, I spend the rest of the day putting the pieces together.” – Ray Bradbury

The scattered rain showers that slowed my journey for a day turned the sky overhead into an ever-changing kaleidoscope. — Photo by Pat Bean

Adventures with Pepper: Day Eight

Robins, as well as magpies, white-crowned sparrow and dark-eyed juncos were plentiful around the campground. — Photo by Pat Bean

While I was eager for the next step of my journey, crossing Rocky Mountain National Park, I let a little rain delay me. My RV, Gypsy Lee, doesn’t like slick roads.

So instead, I spent the day catching up on laundry, giving my RV a good Pine Sol cleaning and simply enjoying the sights around the campground. .

It rained off and on until late afternoon, but then, as the weatherman had promised, the sun came out and bode well for my next day’s travels.

Book Report: Just a half hour this morning because I wanted to get on the road. Travels with Maggie is now up to 52,186 words.

The Wondering Wanderer’s blog pick of the day.

Bean’s Pat: A Red-tailed Hawk Survives a Tornado http://tinyurl.com/924×859 I love happy ending stories. Don’t you?

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Johnny B. Goods and Rabbit Ears Pass

Posted in Adventures With Pepper, Birds, Favorite Places, Lakes, Nature, Travel, Writing, tagged , , , , , , on September 24, 2012| 4 Comments »

 

Up high on Highway 40 near Rabbit Ears Pass. — Photo by Pat Bean

“Every leaf speaks bliss to me, fluttering from the autumn tree.” – Emily Bronte

Adventures with Pepper: Day Seven  

The rock formation that gives Rabbit Ears Pass its name. — Photo by Pat Bean

          After my daily morning walk with my canine traveling companion, Pepper, I took a second walk to bird watch with the park’s nature and wildlife interpreter, Holly. It was a pleasant walk but the birds in this high, quickly cooling elevation had mostly already flown south for the winter.

Magpies, starlings, black-capped chickadees, Cassin’s finches and yellow-rumped warblers were the only birds still hanging around this morning.

So bidding farewell to Yampa River State Park, Pepper and I continued our journey east on Highway 40, stopping when we came to the town of Steamboat Springs. The ciy has no steamboats, but it does have some natural hot springs. I had visited this ski town in the early 1980s when it was a minor dot on the landscape.

This day its bustling crowds, even though snow hadn’t fallen yet, reminded me of in tourist places like Park City, Utah, and Jackson, Wyoming. It was a much bigger dot now.

I found a parking spot, and telling Pepper to guard the castle, I went in search of breakfast.

I found it at Johnny B. Goods bar and diner, where I took a seat at the bar rather than wait for a table. Johnny, himself, waited on me. I had the special Johnny B. Goods breakfast, which was excellent, and enjoyed the lively chatter going on in the place. Eating alone, with my Kindle in hand, always gives me a great opportunity to eavesdrop, which I love to do.

Highway 34 passes three lakes on the way up to Rocky Mountain Park, Lake Granby, Grand Lake and Green Mountain Reservoir, which is shown above. — Photo by Pat Bean

I didn’t learn anything worthy of a story this day, just that everyone around me seemed to be having a grand old-time. So, carrying half of my breakfast in a to-go box, I made my way back to Gypsy Lee and Pepper to continue the day’s journey.

The drive took me up and over 9,426-foot Rabbit Ears Pass, and through a landscape already touched by the Midas finger of autumn.

After the pass, we passed through Hot Sulphur Springs, which used to be so rowdy on the last day of the month, which was pay-day, that the town celebrated Halloween a day early. While the town is not quite so rowdy these days, the early Halloween tradition is still observed.

At Granby, we turned north onto Highway 34, and followed it to Elk Creek Village just outside the southwest entrance to Rocky Mountain National Park.

What a great day!

            Book Report: Grumble, grumble growl. I spent a half hour working on Travels with Maggie this morning, then a second half hour recovering what the computer ate when I hit a couple of wrong buttons. I’m not exactly sure what I did, but the control Z recovery didn’t work. 51,902 words.

The Wondering Wanderer’s blog pick of the day.

Bean’s Pat: 12 Things My Grandmother Told Me http://tinyurl.com/bmymnuo These are almost as good as some of my grandmother’s saying’s to me, like “You’re going to hell in a hand basket,” when I got into mischief; or “The devil’s beating his wife,” if it was raining while the sun was shining. Did your grandmother tell you these kind of things?

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Solitary

Posted in Birds, Favorite Places, Travel, Weekly Photo Challenge, tagged , , , , , , , , on September 23, 2012| 13 Comments »

“Being solitary is being alone well: being alone luxuriously immersed in doings of your own choice, are of the fullness of your presence rather than the absence of others. Because solitude is an achievement.” — Alice Koller

One Brown Pelican

A lone brown pelican photographed in Aransas Bay during a trip out to see whooping cranes on Matagorda Island. It was a cool day and I had the choice of standing alone on deck or enjoying the camaraderie of other mothers inside the boat’s cabin. I did both. — Photograph by Pat Bean

I daily count my blessings, and one of them is that I enjoy my own company. That’s not to say I don’t like people. I do, and I need them.

Just not all the time.

 

 

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Awesome Sunset: A Perfect Ending to a Playful Day

Posted in Adventures With Pepper, Art, Birds, Dogs, Favorite Places, Nature, Travel, Writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , on September 21, 2012| 10 Comments »

“One’s age should be tranquil, as childhood should be playful. Hard work at either extremity of life seems out-of-place. At midday the sun may burn, and men labor under it; but the morning and evening should be calm and cheerful.” – Thomas Arnold

I stood outside in awe for quite a while watching this blazing end to my playful day. This image was not enhanced even a tiny bit. — Photo by Pat Bean

Adventures with Pepper: Day 6 Continued

            Playful black-billed magpies followed my journey this day. I seemed to see them everywhere, and they delighted my soul.

Not a very exciting magpie photo, but it was the only one that didn’t come out blurry. The magpies were just too quick for my camera. — Photo by Pat Bean

The first time I became aware of these birds was in the mid-1980s during a visit to a friend’s house in Glenn’s Ferry, Idaho. A half-dozen or so of them were frolicking above the Snake River. I was enchanted, and have stayed that way.          With magpies shadowing my drive after leaving Dinosaur National Park, I soon crossed into Colorado and through the small town of Dinosaur.

It was here, in October of 2009, that a mythical portal consumed Marvel Comics’ Dark Avengers.

Pepper in control of her own leash. — Photo by Pat Bean

I wondered if the portal was located on the city’s Brontosaurus Boulevard, Stegosaurus Freeway or Tyrannosaurus Trail.

The city had been renamed Dinosaur from Artesia to capitalize on the monument that stretches from Utah into Colorado, and then the city fathers began to get playful with its street names.

My scenic Highway 40 route this day  also took me through Maybell, which holds Colorado’s lowest recorded temperature record – minus 61 degrees F; and Craig, which claims to be the Elk Hunting Capital of the road.

“Ok! I’m tired. You can be in charge again.” — Photo by Pat Bean

My stopping place for the night was Yampa River State Park near Hayden, where even more magpies were hanging out. Pepper took a running leap at one that came too close and jerked the leash out of my hand.            I could almost hear her shout “free-at-last” as she began running circles around me. It wasn’t the first time this had happened.

A smart dog, Pepper had wised up to the fact that it was easy for me to grab hold of the trailing retractable leash, so she had started picking it up and running with it.

Yup! I think playful was the word of the day.

Book Report: 51,306 words. An aha moment gave me the perfect conclusion for my book, but made me realize I’ll have more rewriting to do so I can add a continuous thread. It was like getting both good news and bad news at the same time.

The Wondering Wanerer’s blog pick of the day.

Bean’s Pat: East London Art Walk http://tinyurl.com/8zkzkmr Now I might enjoy this kind of walk almost as much as I do my nature walks. It would be a fun change of pace anyway. Perhaps one day I might even get to London. I’ve never visited Europe, but I have visited 46 of the 50 states, and after this journey I’ll have knocked off 49.

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Green River and Sandhill Cranes

Posted in Adventures With Pepper, Birds, Favorite Places, Nature, Travel, Uncategorized, Writing, tagged , , , , on September 20, 2012| 6 Comments »

            “In rivers the water that you touch is the last of what has passed and the first of that which comes; so with present time.” Leonardo da Vinci

Adventures with Pepper: Day Six continued

View of the Green River from the Dinosaur National Monument quarry overlook. — Photo by Pat Bean

            My detour off Highway 40 to Dinosaur National Monument on a rural back road followed the Green River as it flowed down to join the Mighty Colorado River.

Not a slouch in itself the Green, which begins in the Wind River Mountains of  Wyoming, is 730 miles long and a major tributary of the Colorado.

I had rafted this section of the river, through Split Mountain Gorge into Dinosaur National Monument, back in the late 1980s, and I had canoed a section of the river from Ouray to Sand Wash in the 1970s.

So while I have a fondness for all rivers, I have a special fondness for the Green. It was an expected pleasure to watch its passage from behind the wheel of Gypsy Lee this morning.

What wasn’t expected was the flock of sandhill cranes in a meadow near the river. I had to stop for these.

A flock of great blue herons in an irrigated agriculture field just outside the entrance to Dinosaur National Monument near Vernal, Utah.

The herons were an unexpected sight, the kind that continues to make travel so alluring to this wondering wanderer.

Book Report: Travels with Maggie now at 50,402 words. Over half-way there. Yea!

The Wondering Wanderer’s blog pick of the day.

Bean’s Pat: Running with Scissortails http://tinyurl.com/8q45ucg One of these things is not like the other. Personally, I hang out with scissortails at every opportunity, but I’ve never seen scissor-tailed flycatchers anywhere but Texas.

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Jordanelle State Park, Utah

Posted in Birds, Favorite Places, Lakes, Nature, Travel, Writing, tagged , , , , on September 17, 2012| 6 Comments »

            “Coexistence: What the farmer does with the turkey – until Thanksgiving”

The view of Lake Jordanelle out my RV window. — Photo by Pat Bean

Adventures with Pepper: Day Four Continued

The zoom lens on my new Canon Power Shot was a plus in capturing this view of wild turkeys at Lake Jordanelle. — Photo by Pat Bean

             I only drove 77 miles today, but then I only have to drive 75 miles a day to meet my goal of getting back to Texas in time for Thanksgiving.

That gives me plenty of time to start my day by writing, taking a hike with Pepper and then dawdling along the way, stopping to enjoy things like Devil’s Slide up Weber Canyon, the fall colors in the mountains and, of course the birds.

It was a good day for bird-watching. I saw ravens, crows, turkey vultures, a red-breasted nuthatch, magpies, house sparrow, belted kingfishers, great blue heron, a western tanager, kestrels, European starlings, barn swallows and house finches.

It was also a plus that my canine traveling companion, Pepper, was distracted elsewhere when I spotted the turkeys. — Photo by Pat Bean

I even got to see some wild turkeys at Lake Jornanelle State Park, where Pepper and I spent the night. Thankfully, I saw them while Pepper was sniffing a hole in the other direction and was able to snap off a couple of photos before we got closer.

The turkeys disappeared into the bushes as soon as they saw us.

Book Report: Travels with Maggie is now up to 48,803 words. I had time to do more but smelling the flowers got in the way. I no longer flagellate myself for letting that happen. Perhaps it’s because I know that I have more life behind me than ahead of me, and while writing is important to me, it’s not the only thing in my life.

The Wondering Wanderer’s blog pick of the day

Bean’s Pat:  Wales’ Castles http://tinyurl.com/8exuruo From the era of King Edward, An armchair-traveler’s special.

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Good-Bye Ogden, The Road is Calling Again

Posted in Birds, Favorite Hikes, Favorite Places, Nature, Travel, Writing, tagged , , , , , , , on September 12, 2012| 4 Comments »

            “A journey is best measured in friends rather than miles” Tim Cahill

My morning walk with old birding friends on Two Rivers Trail began here beneath Ogden’s 21 Street Bridge across the Ogden River. — Photo by Pat Bean

But First, Bird Watching on Two Rivers Trail         

Along with seeing that great Southwest bird overhead, everyone also got a very close-up view of this juvenile great blue heron. — Photo by Pat Bean

    “Hey! Did you see that big bird with silver wings and a red tail?” asked Jack Rensel, whom I know is as old as this wondering wanderer, but whom looked as young as ever and was still carrying his birding scope and tripod over his shoulders as we walked the Two Rivers Trail early this morning.

“You mean the Southwest bird,” someone quickly jibed.

It felt ever so good to be back among my old bird-watching friends after a year’s absence.  Jack and Keith Evans, whom I also got to see this morning at the bird-walk breakfast, were my mentors and my reference sources back when I was writing a birding column for the Ogden newspaper.

It’s a good thing one or the other of them was always available, as I was a novice birder at the time and hated making a fool of myself in print.

My birding skills have improved since those days, and so has Ogden’s trail system.

The river was still this morning, making it the perfect canvas for landscape reflections. I especially liked this double bouquet of yellow blossoms. — Photo by Pat Bean

Good for me and good for Ogden.  The city has grown since I left it eight years ago, but the Wasatch Chapter of birders that I left behind hasn’t changed at all. It’s still the best Audubon group I’ve ever had the privilege of birding with.

I hated to leave this group of awesome birders early,  but I had miles to go before I could sleep.  I’ll tell you a bit about those miles tomorrow.

Book Report: Travels with Maggie is now up to 44,916 words. Still inching along like a snail.                

The Wondering Wanderer’s blog pick of the day

Bean’s Pat Cliffy http://tinyurl.com/8e4ghhd  Today’s arm-chair travel blog made it to the top of my list today simply because it looks like an intriguing place to sit and drink a Jack and Coke. Should I put it on my ever-growing to-do list?

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