Friday, November 28, 2014

Endless Grass

I only recently discovered some of the nature trails at this little nature park down the road from where I live. This park, Dunham Prairie Preserve, was one of the first parks I visited when I moved into my current home. I thought it would end up as my daily park because of the interesting trails, but there became one problem.

Some of the most interesting trails here ceased to be maintained. There is one trail in particular that went down to the Big Sioux River that I really liked a lot. Now it's gone, so there is no more access to the river from here. That took away from much of the attractiveness of this place.

I still like the park, but most of the trails are like the one you see below. They're mowed into the grassy prairie land near the highway. That closeup highway is really a turn off for me. And there's not much else to see except for endless grassland. But it's not all bad.

I just recently discovered that there are more trails of this park on the other side of the highway from the parking lot. Even if it is just grass, it's still a new place to explore. And I live for new places to explore. The other thing is that this is where I discoverd all of that milkweed growing that I wrote about in a previous post.

Seeing that much milkweed gives me something to look forward to other than endless grass. The grass would be fine, but it's not really very exciting to me, and I don't really know what to write about it. But I can come up with all kinds of things while I observe the growth of that milkweed throughout the year.

And who knows? Maybe they'll open up access again to the river one of these days. I don't really know why they closed it. I don't know many people and I'm not very talkative with strangers unless we get into an argument or something. I'm glad not many people in this area of the country are very argumentative.

The sign above says Fire Walk. That's the name of the trail here on the other side of the road. The trail is a loop from where you can still very much hear the sounds of the highway, and most of the time see the cars go by. I'll only come back on occasion, but I will be back to look at the milkweed.

I do like this place because it's the closest nature and hiking park to home. I guess maybe if I came here more often then I'd discover more desirable features. Does anybody know of some good things I might find in this grass that I'm probably not thinking of?

The river trail was really nice because it was isolated from the highway. Now that it's gone I'm looking for other advantages to this park that I've missed. I've seen so many things in nature over the past several years, but in many ways I still understand next to nothing. I learn something new with each new adventure, and I want to learn something here too. I'll talk to you later.

10 comments:

  1. Ratty, find out who maintains that Park. The City? the Parks and Recreation organization?
    Call the City, they can direct you to the proper people. Then you can ask why it was closed and tell them how much you miss it.

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    1. I'm not much for asking questions. I'll maybe get around to asking about it one day, but probably only if I see someone at the park. That might happen. I used to do it at my old parks.

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  2. I like to sometimes just have a good trial to exercise on. You will see bloom, it looks newer. You should check with the county people, they have maps, each trail has its own wonders.

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    1. The one thing I like about these trails is that they are indeed good for exercise. And they're good enough that I get a little lost on the other side of the road sometimes.

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  3. Each trail has its own wonders.

    That's good.

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    1. These trails do have their own wonders. They're better than I make them seem.

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  4. You have to travel pretty far around here to find a trail that doesn't overlook some sort of highway, or you can at least hear the freeway - I bet you have way more than we do!

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    1. Most of my old Michigan parks were near highways or freeways. The grass here makes this one seem a bit closer though.

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  5. Grasslands usually have a lot of flowering plants at certain times of the year.

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    1. I need to go here more often to see the growth of some of the plants. I'm sure I'll get more out of this place then.

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