My Flood Adventure

I took these pictures with my phone a few days ago while on a quick trip into Sioux(Soo) City. Most of these pictures show flooded cornfields. But the second one shows the Big Sioux River over its banks.

The water was expected to come up over the road and block all travel. The bridges going across this river into South Dakota have been blocked off for safety reasons.

Keep reading to find out what happened to me on my trip.

As I said, I took these pictures on my way into Sioux City. The trip was pretty uneventful on my way there, except for me getting these pictures. It was on the way back when it all broke loose.

The first thing that told me things were going to be bad was when a woman, who was also taking pictures, ran across the road too close to very busy traffic on this dangerous road. She was alright, but this road is very dangerous for pedestrians. It's usually deer that you see darting across the road here, and that doesn't end well a lot of times.

Anyway, about halfway home I noticed that the clouds up ahead were kind of dark. Then I began to notice that everything up ahead in the far distance was looking very blurry. It was kind of strange. I realized it must be rain I was seeing, but I've never seen it do that before.

Before long that blurriness got closer and closer. Soon enough I drove right into a wall of heavy rain. As soon as I was in the rain visibility was down to zero. The rain was so heavy that I couldn't see anything in front of me but that rain.

I remembered that before I got into the rain I saw that those black clouds didn't go very far. So the best thing I could do was keep moving, but just a little slower. It was best to get past this storm as soon as I could.

Before long I was able to drive out of the storm. It was still raining up ahead, but it was only a regular shower now. I'm glad I kept moving. I don't know how fast the water would have risen with all that rain, but I didn't want to find out right in the middle of the worst flood area.

So I made it home safe and sound. I did get soaked going from the truck to the house though. I was just grateful to be out of that terrible storm.

I haven't taken any trips to look around since that day. I've heard the flooding got worse. It's been flooding all around me. Even the back way out was flooding this time. I was blocked from every city and even from the bigger town to the north of me.

Today I think the waters have receded some. I can probably travel in most directions. I'm going to attempt a trip to the grocery store a little later today. If there's anything interesting along the way I'll get more pictures.

It's been flooding here every few years since right before I moved here. It floods easily here, but I don't think it was this often in years past. Maybe it will continue like this from now on, but I hope not. I'll talk to you later.

The Swamp

I thought I'd share some pictures of my local swampy pond this time. You've seen it before but maybe you didn't know it at the time. I find turtles in this pond quite often. This pond is right on the edge of a hidden nature preserve, but I don't think it's actually part of it.

I think the pond is maybe more interesting than the nature preserve. There's more to see in it. The nature preserve used to contain a good sized lake, but the lake has mostly dried up. I don't know when it happened, but I'm sure it was sometime in my lifetime. And I'm not as old as you might think.

Beyond this swampy pond is farmland. It was probably difficult, but they are able to farm on these rolling hills. The hills here are probably similar to what you might find in a place like Ireland. My own house is tucked in right on the edge of some of these hills.

There's actually more to this swamp than you see in my pictures today, but I have what I have. Honestly, I was looking for animals for pictures, not the swamp. What I found was the swamp, not the animals. It seems kind of weird, but you can find wild animals easier in the city than you can out here in the country. Who would have guessed?

Unrelated to this swampy pond, I've been doing lots of work on my property this year. I've been cutting down trees, mowing weeds on a large piece of land without a riding mower, laying gravel with a wheelbarrow and a shovel and rake, and trying to clean out my garage. And I won't be able to get started rebuilding my rotted back deck this year.

I can't keep up, but I'm determined to do all this stuff with only simple tools. I don't know why I don't just hire a crew or get a better way, but I feel like doing it this way. So it's going to be a busy summer. I would show you the results when I'm finished, but I'm not sure it'll be pretty.

I think that's enough for this time. I'll talk to you later.

Ooh, Looky At The Nature!

I'm back with a turtle! I wanted to show you this turtle in my first picture because I specifically searched for turtles and I found this one. It was the only one I found this time, but at least I got what I was looking for.

The swampy area where I found him is home to lots of turtles. I don't share every turtle I find because we don't want so many. There would be turtles all the way down the blog if I did that. If you read the same books I do that last sentence might be amusing. Probably not, but you'd know what I'm talking about.

Take a close look at the above picture. Do you see the birds? The one on the left seems to be keeping guard for the one on the right. The right one is lying down for some reason. I'm guessing they are mates, but I don't know that. They left when I got a little closer.

I wouldn't have moved in closer to them but they were right on the side of the road. You might think the one was injured or something, but it flew away just as easy as the other. It's not a busy road, but it's also not a very good place for a possible nest.

I threw this picture above in to show you non-photographers how difficult it is to take these pictures. I tried and tried to focus the camera on this bird, but the camera just wouldn't do it before the bird flew away. So I lost another one. It's a common occurrence with nature photography.

The secret is to just take as many pictures as you can and to use the good ones. If you're like me, you also use some of the bad ones. That's why I get to wear a rat costume.

If you want to be a little safer with your photography, then you can take lots of pictures of things like these. They don't run away when you point your camera at them. They do move a bit when there's a gentle breeze though, so nothing is foolproof.

I used the flowers last because I thought it would be good to end with a pleasant photo after that one with the bird. I'm also trying to not be so distracted so I will post a little more often again. I have to keep trying to remind myself to have some fun because I've been getting too wrapped up in business. I'm still trying to organize my time a little better for everything. Hopefully I'll get it right when I talk to you later.

A Little Story Of A Normal Sized Pheasant

I'm gonna tell you a story, about a bird I know. He was a ring-necked boy, standing in the road.

Okay, I stole those lines from an Alice Cooper song called Disgraceland. The words aren't exactly the same, but they're close enough. Of course, his song wasn't about a pheasant. My little story is though. At least some of it is.

I've seen pheasants around here kind of infrequently up until this year. I've been seeing lots of them since the weather warmed up this spring. The one in these pictures gave me a golden opportunity to get a few pictures.

It was standing there in the middle of the road when I came driving along. I had to stop a ways back so it wouldn't fly away or I wouldn't run it over. Luckily I have a good zoom on my camera. It was good enough anyway.

No animal just sits there waiting to get its picture taken. Just like humans, they don't really like it when they see a camera pointing at them. Eventually, they get nervous and decide to make a break for it.

And that's just what this pheasant did.

The middle of the road is a fine place to just stand there and contemplate the world when there isn't either a truck or a camera coming for you. But when one of those two things appear, or both, you just have to move on to a more safe and invisible area.

I don't blame him a bit. I would have probably done the same thing.

And right after this last picture, the pheasant was gone as if he had never been there. I searched for him up close and never was able to see him again. That's a good talent. I've tried it myself. And while I'm also pretty good at hiding, maybe I'm not quite as good as this bird.

So now we come to the end of my little tale. It was fun for me, and I hope you liked it too. I'll have more coming soon if I can fight off the mighty distractions of the outside world that have been fighting me like a monster lately. I'd like to get back to the same schedule I had last year at this time. We'll see what I can do. And until then, I'll talk to you later.

Getting Back Into It

Okay, I'm having a little bit of trouble getting back into things after my time off, so I'm mostly going to just give you some nice pictures of my latest tour of the countryside for this post. I do have lots more, but there is so much I'm just not sure what to say yet.

So let's just look at these pictures today while I get my thoughts together for my upcoming posts.

I would have gotten this second post back to you much sooner, but my new business is taking a lot of my time and it's a great distraction from this. I have to give it extra attention because everything is just starting to ramp up. That's all I'll say about that so you don't get too bored. Nature is more fun.

After this little bit of writing, I'm starting to get back into things already so my next post will be more like me. And maybe I'll come back with a few animals here and there. I like when I have animals to share. I hope you liked the landscape pictures this time, and I'll talk to you later.