George W. Mead and Sandhill Wildlife Areas

 

Last night after blogging, I went to brush my teeth and discovered I had carefully packed toothpaste and floss... but no brush. It's okay, a dental student once told me flossing is more important than brushing. 

This morning we got going pretty early and went back to the George W. Mead State Wildlife Area. It was a perfect day, sunny but not too sunny, and not too warm with a bit of a breeze - exactly what you want for hiking around outside. Here you can see Travalon heading into the woods.

There were a lot of dragonflies in this spot, and I made a video, but they don't really show up. Then we turned deeper into the woods and were attacked by mosquitoes. We walked on a boardwalk and came out of the woods where the path went around a pond. We saw a flock of pelicans flying overhead, and oddly a bald eagle wheeling around with them like it was one of the flock, You can kind of see the eagle in the bottom left of the first photo.

Here I am on the trail.

We saw a pair of trumpeter swans (I heard one trumpeting) with at least two cygnets.

There were purple martin houses there with lots of occupants.

We met a guy on the trail who had a very large camera and a hat for a local wildlife watchers group, and he told us the cormorant rookery was about a mile down the trail in the other direction, so we believed him. It was a beautiful trail like the one in Horicon Marsh that you can only go on from June to August.

We did see an egret flying around, and then it landed and posed for us.

We also saw a male blue-winged teal.

There was a bush with white flowers.

There were ferns with orange tips on their fronds.

More scenery shots.

Not pictured: a beaver I saw but Travalon wasn't fast enough to see, several cormorants flying overhead, a tiger swallowtail and a mourning cloak butterfly that were too fast for photos, and a little snake Travalon took a photo of, but it wasn't in focus. Travalon is scared of snakes, so maybe he was too scared of it to focus properly.

We had walked well over two miles and still hadn't found the rookery, so we weren't sure if this avid outdoorsy person had no idea how long a mile is or if we had somehow missed it, but we were too tired to keep going because with the loop around the pond we had already gone four miles and still had to head back. We turned around and went back into the woods, and we saw this kingbird. We also saw a bigger bird that may have been a shrike, but it was too quick for a photo. Also not pictured: several tiger swallowtails on a pile of poop, because they scattered when we got close enough for a photo.

We went into Marshfield to find some lunch, and there were a bunch of fast-food places and a Perkins. We went to Perkins, and I had a healthy lunch of whitefish and shrimp on pilaf with asparagus... and then the waitress asked, "Don't you want pie? It's Free Pie Monday!" Travalon and I said, "Free Pie Monday?!" in incredulous unison, and since I have no willpower, I got the wild berry pie, which has no sugar added and so had the lowest number of calories. My FitBit said I had burned off all those calories already during our long hike. The pie was wonderful and tart - I think it was raspberry. It was "seasonal berries."

To honor the day, we went to the Veterans' Park in Marshfield to pay our respects.

Then we drove to the Sandhill State Natural Area, which is a long loop that you drive through. There's a gate at the start that you have to open to drive in, and then you have to close it behind you, but both coming and going we had people right behind us, so we left it open for them, and hopefully they closed it. We didn't mind driving through it, since we were hiked out, though we did get out a couple of times to check things out. There are hiking trails off the road. 

There were so many lupines in bloom. I took a close-up shot of one but should have taken a picture of a field of them. It almost looked like a field of lavender in bloom.

Here are a couple shots of what the flowages looked like. They were labeled with letters of the alphabet; the highest one I saw was Flowage L, that I can remember.

We saw a pied-billed grebe.

These are yellow pond lilies. Native Americans ate the roots and seeds.

Randomly, there seems to be an abandoned house in the middle of the preserve.

In this photo, you can kind of see a white-winged tern flying and a sandhill crane looking up at it.

We saw a great blue heron posing perfectly against the sky.

We saw two pairs of ring-necked ducks swimming near each other.

This little turtle started to cross the road in front of us, so we stopped... and then he changed his mind and went back in the direction he had come from.

This birch tree made an arch over the road.

We came upon three swans, and they got upset and flew off.

For those keeping track at home, it was a Three Big White Birds Day, because we never saw a whooping crane. We did see a sandhill crane fly right over us, but we didn't get a photo of that.

As we were driving down the road to head home, some very odd chickens crossed the road in front of us. We don't know why.

There were three of them, but we only got photos of two of them. Does anyone know what kind of chickens they are? They don't look like the standard breeds I know. Are they guinea fowl?

We stopped at a park on the banks of the Wisconsin River in Nekoosa, and Travalon took some photos.

We also stopped at Ship Rock in Adams County, but we didn't stop at Rabbit Rock. We will try to make a trip to Adams County later this summer and visit all the big rocks there.

As we drove south, I could see ominous clouds to the southwest, and the rain underneath them looked like waterfalls in the sky.

My instinct was to drive away from such a scary-looking storm, not toward it, but we wanted to get home. I was hopeful that it was south of us, and it was for most of the trip... until about two miles from home, when we hit the torrential rain so it was very scary to drive that last little bit. And then just a couple of blocks from home, it began to hail. Travalon's phone was randomly playing songs that we mostly liked, so we just let it keep choosing the songs, and it chose "Boogie Wonderland" by Earth, Wind and Fire so we sat in the car until the song was over. By then the rain had let up a bit, so we unpacked the car and checked each other for ticks. I found five ticks on myself, including a tiny one, but I'm not sure if some weren't the same tick that I pulled off and threw out the window as we were driving, and maybe it blew back in. Travalon must not taste good, because he had no ticks on him. Lucky guy!

Tomorrow I am back to work, but from home, and adoration is suspended because of the fire at my church, so I may not have to leave the house at all.

Famous Hat