A Fun Little Rabbit

Now this is more like it! Finally I have a good animal sighting. I always get excited when I see a little bit of wildlife roaming around out there. Rabbits are some of my favorites. They work so well in the snow.

I guess I have to let some of the air out of myself and tell you how I got these pictures. I was sitting in my house and I happened to look out my back door just in time to see this little guy run through my backyard. It was also kind enough to stop right within view.

I ran around the house for at least a minute or two looking for my camera. When I finally found it the rabbit was still sitting there in the same spot right outside my back door. I opened the door and the rabbit still stayed right there as if it was waiting for me. The dog didn't even mess anything up.

After several long seconds the rabbit finally noticed me standing there taking pictures of it. I have no idea why it took so long. Maybe it was resting from a long run or something and I just wasn't quite close enough to be an immediate threat.

When he finally saw reacted to me, he ran off to the right side of the back of the house. I took several pictures of the rabbit running away, but the one you see here is the only presentable one. It's really hard to get good pictures of moving animals. I'm lucky I got even this one.

The rabbit came to a stop behind these tall weeds not very far away. I guess he thought he was perfectly safe there because there was absolutely nothing I could do to get him to move again. After getting several of the same picture I decided I was finished.

My little town is just full of rabbits like this one. I see at least one every time I go out not matter what time of year it is. I usually see several. My problem is that I got out of the habit of taking my camera just outside my house. I used to do it a lot. I figured I got enough from around here.

But I haven't just seen my little town rabbits. I've been traveling. I have more animals and other interesting sights coming up soon. I lucked upon some old and new friends to share with you. I'll be staying in my truck for my next few adventures though because it's really getting cold here, but I still have lots of stuff from recent hikes to share. I'll talk to you later.

Winnetoon Jail

I have a few more pictures from Winnetoon for you before we move on to the next adventure. These are a little bit different from the buildings from the last post, but they are just as fun for those of us who are sightseeing. I wish there was more stuff because it was all so interesting.

The first picture is of the Winnetoon Jail. You can see that it's a pretty small building. It looks like it could be another one of those fake buildings like before, but no! I've been told that this used to be a real jail. I'm pretty sure that it says that on the sign on the front.

Of course it's not still the jail there, and there might not even be a jail in this town. I'm guessing it might be like the small town where I live; we don't have any police here. Actually we use the police from the surrounding county. I wish we didn't need them at all, but you have to have them everywhere sometimes.

I like this little statue of the hunter in the tall grass. I guess he's a hunter. He just seems to fit so well with the weeds growing up around him. You don't see many things like this in most places. I've only ever seen these type of things around this part of the country.

I write this blog to give other people a chance to see these things that they wouldn't otherwise ever get a chance to see. Winnetoon is a small town in Nebraska. Not many of you will ever visit there. But if you want to know where it is, I have a link to the location in the footer at the bottom of the post. I try to do that with many of the places I visit.

I couldn't miss getting a picture of this totem pole. I love totem poles. I find them in some unexpected places. There was a good one in one of the parks I routinely visited back in Michigan. It's on the blog in one of my old posts.

Now that I'm writing this post, I realize that I should have gotten some closeup pictures of the individual faces on the pole. I think I'll be back through here next summer, so maybe I'll do that when I return.

I'll be posting about some more local things coming up. I just recently visited some good places around here. You've seen them before, but hopefully I'll have some different and more interesting views of everything. I'll talk to you later.

Winnetoon

I really dislike posting the way I'm doing today, but I think this is the only appropriate way I could do this one. I'm giving you a total of 8 pictures in today's post. That's the most I've ever done in one post by far. I usually like to do 5 pictures at most, with 3 being just right.

I recently visited the town of Winnetoon, Nebraska. It's the place where my Grandpa was born. This one street is like an outside museum. All of the buildings are old fashioned with statues and other interesting features. I took pictures of everything, and I'm sharing the best with you.

I don't have much more to say about this place because I don't know much about it. I went here with my mom so she could see some of the sights from her childhood. We were visiting the next town over for her, where she was a kid, but we couldn't miss this one either.

I'm going to do one more post with sights from Winnetoon. It will have similar things to this one, but they are separate from this street. In some ways they're even more interesting than these pictures. There is also a small area like the one in today's post in a town not far from me, but it's not nearly as big as this. I'll post pictures of that place too one of these days.

I don't think any of these buildings in today's post are occupied, but I could be very wrong. I do know that some of them aren't whole buildings though, so that supports my theory. I went around back and saw a few front walls that were just propped up with nothing else behind them, and there were some other very narrow buildings as well.

When I went here it was a cloudy fall-like day. I found out after I got home that winter moved back into this place right after I left with a pretty big winter storm. I'm glad I missed that one. I got a tiny bit of snow here at home, but it got kind of cold. I don't miss the snow. I'll talk to you later.

A Little Look At The Park

I often complain about not having very many trees around here. It really is the truth, but there are places with plenty of trees in most of the nature parks around here. There just aren't quite as many, and the area with the trees isn't usually as big. That's okay.

As long as I get to stand in the middle of a bunch of trees sometimes I'm perfectly fine. I don't know what it is about a good forest that I like so much, but I really feel at peace there. And it's not even necessarily the place where I might find animals. I see them in lots of different places.

I got my answer on the trail that used to go up to the river in my closest nature park. I didn't even have to ask anyone about it. Under that stop sign in the picture above is a keep out sign as well. There is a walkway that goes over the railroad tracks that used to lead to the other part of the nature trail. I guess they decided to permanently close it off.

That's a shame because it used to lead to a couple more little foot bridges, and it lead right up to a trail that went along the river for a little ways. I really liked it, but I'm guessing they just couldn't maintain the bridges anymore, and maybe they became a little dangerous. They were really kind of old and rickety.

Above you can see one of the small hills on the trail in this hiking park. I really like having these hills, but they sure do get hard on my back when I travel up and down them so much. Even these little hills in this park have been hard for me lately. They're not much better for my lazy dog.

Back in Michigan I can remember the time I was chased by racoons. I ran about half a mile up and down hills like this to get away from them. I was a little out of breath when it was done, but I still felt pretty good. I think I need to get out more often. It used to be mostly every day back then, but now I mostly ride around in the truck. I miss the old days. I'll talk to you later.

Taking My Dog With Me

I'm back with this post a little later than I wanted to be because I didn't really have anything to write about. It gets kind of tough when most of my new pictures are much too similar to some of my other recent pictures. That's what happens when I don't see many animals.

I used to write mostly about all the little forest creatures I'd come across, but I just don't see them here, and when I do I never get the picture. Just yesterday I saw a fun little squirrel playing outside my front door, but my phone crashed and I had to reset it to get the pictures. By the time I got back the squirrel was gone.

Then when I was on the trails you see in these pictures, I came across a black-capped chickadee hopping around the trail in front of me. I wanted badly to get a few pictures, but unfortunately I had my dog with me. Isabella also saw the cute little bird. She lunged forward in an attempt to grab it, and it flew away just in time.

I have to keep a close eye on Isabella as far as birds are concerned. She's an expert bird catcher. I buy her lots of toys with squeakers in them. She loves to squeeze them and fling them around while chewing on them to get them to make the squeaking sound. She does that with birds too, and she also likes the sounds they make.

A long time ago when I couldn't have a dog, I walked the nature trails alone, telling myself that when I moved to a place where I could have a dog I would take it on the trails with me every time. I knew the dog would love it as much as I do, and now I know that I was right.

Isabella loves going to the nature parks with me, but sometimes I wonder if I should go without her sometimes. Even though she stops whenever I need her to, I wonder if getting pictures of animals might be a little easier without her. I'm not ready to cruelly leave her behind yet, but I still think about it sometimes.

I'm still not sure if I'd have any better success though. I was getting some good pictures of birds with her a couple of years ago. And some of the feistier squirrels will run close enough so they can do their best to tease her. I think I'll keep her along for the time being.

Oh, I guess I should explain today's pictures a little bit. They are all from the little park I was complaining about a couple of posts ago. As you can see, this place is much better than I made it out to be then. There are plenty of trees in some places, and I love that foot bridge. I haven't figured out that little theater area yet. I wonder what it's used for.

The only problem I have really is all of the hills I have to walk up and down here. Hills just kill my back, especially recently. I used to be able to handle these smaller hills just fine, but lately I can't even do those. I think I need to practice a bit more on my treadmill so I can get back into shape. Maybe then I'll like the hills again. I'll talk to you later.

The Sioux City Bridge

It was a little warmer than it has been recently, which isn't saying much, so I decided to go to Sioux City and visit the Missouri River there downtown. There's lots of stuff to see down there, and I haven't really took the time to explore a bit there yet since I've lived here.

I wish it had been different, but I did more sightseeing than picture taking. I originally just intended to get a few pictures of the river, but I ended up focusing on a few other things. One of the main things I looked at was this bridge.

This bridge takes you from Sioux City, Iowa to South Sioux City, Nebraska. These are two entirely different cities in two different states, but they are so close together that they exist as one whole community. There is also North Sioux City, South Dakota, which is the third part of this whole community. All connected by bridges.

As you can see by the above photo, it was getting a little late and I was running out of time to get more pictures. It wasn't as dark out as it seems, but I thought taking a picture into the Sun would give a nice shadowy effect. It did exactly as I had hoped. Do you like it?

I don't know if this bridge has a name. All of the bigger bridges do. This one is kind of a middle sized bridge. I like going over this bridge to South Sioux City because there's lots of Mexican restaurants there. I love Mexican food. Nothing here so far compares to Armando's in Detroit though.

There are many more things near this bridge that I need to visit on a sunnier day so I can get some good pictures. They have one little area that is full of animal statues. I gotta show you that sometime. They even have a squirrel statue. Squirrels used to be one of my best subjects. I miss them. I'll talk to you later.