Ratty And The Nature Park

This was my first trip to a nature park in quite some time. Luckily, this one is only about 5 miles away from me. This is a small walking park that sits between the highway and the railroad tracks. Beyond those tracks is the Big Sioux River, which has been flooded since winter.

For those of you who might wonder, the word Sioux is pronounced like Soo or the name Sue. It is the name of Sioux City, Iowa, Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and the Sioux Indian Nation. Isn't it great that we have the habit of naming places like these to commemorate certain people?

This park is small but it has several different features to keep a person occupied. This swampy looking area isn't usually quite so wet. It's usually a small creek that you could step across after going down into the gulley. It looks like this because it connects to the bigger river, so it's also flooded here.

Up on the top left of the picture is what appears to be a deer hunter's tree stand or maybe just an observation stand. I've never seen a deer here, but I'm sure they are here. I'm not sure how old this stand is, but I don't remember it from my other trips here.

You can see the river beyond the railroad tracks in the picture above. I can't get any closer than this because there are no passable trails that go near there. There used to be two trails that crossed the tracks and went to the edge of the river. Those have been purposely blocked off for a few years now. That's a shame. I liked those trails a lot.

And finally, you can see my first bird in flight picture in many years. This was directly above me. I just barely got this one. I'm very out of practice. I tried to get other bird pictures but they weren't coming out for me this time. Maybe on my next trip here.

Any of you who are missing The Everyday Adventurer Dog Blog shouldn't worry too much. Even though I'm going to try to start posting my good old nature stuff, Delilah will be back from time to time. She's too insistent in everything she does to ignore her all the time. But I really like posting about nature more than anything else, so that's the way it should be most of the time. I'll talk to you later.