Look At That!

Hi! The picture is just a little something until I can get a new post written. I'll talk to you later!

A Blustery Day's Shock While Hiking in the Forest

Howdy folks! Let me spin you a tale about an old hike of mine that turned out to be anything but ordinary. It was one of those days in my local nature park where the sky was more gray than blue, and the wind had a bit of a mischievous whistle to it. A perfect setting for a tale, don't you think?

So, there I was, taking my regular stroll along the winding paths, with the wind playfully tugging at my jacket. The trees swayed like they were sharing secrets, and the whole forest seemed to be alive with whispers. I've always felt at home among these old trees, but that day, they seemed to hold a different story.

Without a moment's notice, the forest's whispers turned into a shout. A sound so loud and fearsome, it could've woken the ancient spirits! It was like a giant's growl mixed with the crack of thunder – a deafening crashing and tearing that echoed across the woods. My heart skipped a beat, I tell you.

Turning towards the ruckus, what I saw was a sight to behold. A mighty tree, older and taller than any storybook giant, was surrendering to the wind. It was falling, and oh, it didn’t fall alone. Like a king in its final descent, it took several of its woodland companions along with it. An awe-inspiring, yet heartbreaking ballet of nature.

There I stood, rooted to the spot, my eyes wide as saucers. Shocked, startled, and just a bit scared, if I'm being honest. It's not every day you witness such a display of nature's raw power. And would you believe it, in all that astonishment, I didn’t even think to snap a picture. So, you'll just have to use my new artwork here to help you picture it in your mind.

The rest of my walk was a quiet one, filled with thoughts about the age-old dance of nature – creation and destruction, all in one. It’s moments like these that remind us of the grandeur and unpredictability of the great outdoors.

So next time you're out in the woods, take a moment to listen to its stories and respect its power. And maybe, just maybe, you'll have a tale of your own to tell. Stay safe and keep exploring, my friends! I'll talk to you later.

Hello! I'm Back! Are You?

I took these pictures 3 weeks ago. I was going to post them shortly after then but I got self conscious about it because I had been gone so long. I hope you enjoy these and my story if you're still here with me.

Before I start I noticed that Blogger has made a few changes. I like what I see in the first few minutes. I hope it is still a good experience as I go on with my edits to this post. Anyway, let's get on with it.

Any of you longer time readers may remember that my dog hates to ride in a vehicle. Well, she made a conscious effort shortly before this trip to ride just so she could stay with me. She actually asked to go in her doggy way.

The poor dog endured a long trip to one nature park near the river. I took lots of pictures there but for some reason they all ended up blurry and messed up. I didn't realize it until I got home and looked at everything. 

But after she took the trip to the first park so bravely I decided to continue on to this bigger nature park. It was an even farther distance away from home. She did great getting to this one. She was learning fast.

We got out of the truck and explored the edge of the river here for quite awhile. This is where I got all of the pictures. This is a beautiful place that only gets better every year I come here.

The dog, Delilah is always amazed by what she sees whenever she is brave enough to go. She has only ever been to a nature park a few times now. I'm going to change that now that she is getting better about riding. 

Honestly, that is part of what has been holding me back about blogging. I just felt bad about going to a nature park without my dog. I'm also still experimenting with how far I can walk now too. But the dog was the main thing. I think she'll be fine now.

After I was done wandering around near the river with my excited dog, I decided to wrap things up. Before I left though, I went to look at the forested area behind the restrooms. I never went over there the many times I've been here. I was amazed by what I found.

A nature trail! There it was calling to me to explore it just like I used to do with other trails. The only problem was that I was too tired by then to answer that call. I decided that it was going to have to wait for another time.

I think that other time is coming in a couple days from now. I'm all set to take my dog on a walk through a good old forested nature trail just like I used to do in years past. I'm going to be in heaven! I hope the dog feels the same about the trails as I do. I think she will.

And to anyone who is still here with me, thanks for reading my blog. I missed you. I'll talk to you later.

My Internet Is Finally Back

It seems like circumstances and just my own laziness are conspiring to drive away any blog friends I have left here. The last update I gave was about my lack of internet. I'm glad to say that those problems have been finally solved. It actually only took about a week to get things settled. I really need to tell you about it. This might be a slightly longer story than usual. I hope you can last till the end.

On a Monday I had two appointments with my internet company to see about getting my internet sorted out.

The first appointment was to survey my situation to see about getting high-speed fiber optic cable put in here in the future. The government gave my service provider a lot of money to provide this new stuff for all of us in the surrounding rural area.

They only came out to assess the situation this time. They'll lay down the cable sometime around the middle of summer. Then hopefully by the end of the year, they'll connect everything up to the houses.

My internet speed at the time they came out was about 3mbps. Once they're finished they tell me my new speed will be 1gbps. That's well over 300 times as fast as my original speed. I'll finally be as fast as the modern civilized world when they're done.

But that's almost a year away from now. What happened in the second appointment?

The second appointment was so they could come out and replace my old non-working internet equipment with some new stuff that should fix me up just fine. They also said the new stuff will work with the fiber optic internet when it comes.

When the guys got there they came in and looked at the old box. The guy immediately told me that everyone who still had that old box was complaining. He also said that box was miserably outdated and they couldn't even update it anymore.

I wondered why they didn't send me a letter or something to upgrade me in the first place. They should have come out a long time ago. I should not have had to call them to tell them there was a problem. Even so, they were here now to fix it.

They did a quick unplug of the old box and plugged in the two new boxes that I have now. The guy said everything should be fine now.

As we were talking, the guy incidentally asked me about what I was currently paying for their service. I told him and, even though he tried to hide it, he looked a little shocked. He then assumed I was also getting phone service too. I told him no, that I was only getting internet. I was not happy. I now knew I was paying way too much and had been for years.

He then asked me what my internet speed was. I told him the 3mbps. He then informed me that I could get 10mbps right now. All I had to do is call and they would just flip a switch. Well, why didn't they just do it automatically? He said it would cost a little extra. That's fine. I'd just like to get out of the stone age!

Let me explain something. Before I moved here from Michigan, internet wasn't as fast as it is today anywhere. 10mbps is probably the fastest internet I've ever had. I was now as happy as can be and I forgot about my problem with them not taking care of this easier for me.

Then when I called them to get that switch flipped, they told me the cost would be different. Can you guess what the difference might be?

Not only did they upgrade my current internet speed, but I now pay only half the price I was paying before. I'm finally feeling good about my internet here. I can even watch HD video content now. And the only thing holding me back from posting new stuff here is my own laziness and the weather you see in today's pictures. I'll talk to you later, hopefully sooner.

Here We Go! We're Off!

Okay, this is going to be my first try at posting a record of my travels. I almost forgot to do it this time. I put the camera on the dashboard and took pictures of scenes I thought looked good or were interesting in some way. I moved the camera sometimes to get some pictures from the side. They weren't usually very good.

I have way too many pictures this first time, so I'll try to keep my comments shorter than usual. Sometimes, as usual, my comments will be unrelated to the pictures. Let's go.

I had just finished up at the doctor so that was still on my mind. These first two pictures were where I remembered to turn on the camera. These are just outside the city.

This picture above is a terrible shot of my old family farm. My family doesn't live here anymore, but the surrounding countryside is officially named after us because we were here for so long. There are stories written about us in the local history books.

I tried to get a picture of the hills here in this one. I'll try to give a better look in future pictures. This road travels through the heart of the Loess Hills.

This one shows how driving along here is up and down the hills. These hills are as big as mountains but they are classified as hills because they are made of dirt and not rock.

To the left in the picture above is a snow-covered field. I don't know how it looks in the pictures, but the snow made it look like the surface of the water. This was actually our first snow of the year.

On the left of this road is all flat land up to the river. On the right are the steep hills. Outside of the Loess Hills, the land is mostly flat. This area floods very easily when they let too much water out of the dam north of us. This road is routinely underwater.

And now for the last one. This area of the road goes right up against the hills. The river is just to the left. It's kind of a tight squeeze, but this area doesn't flood as much. I left the truck in the picture because that's what I mostly see along this road.

You'll see some strange anomalies in these pictures. They are just reflections on the windshield.

I hope this first post was at least a little bit interesting. I'll try to show some animals and other more specific things in future posts. I'll fine-tune things as I go along. I'll have lots of posts of this nature. I'll mix them with some hiking posts when I get the time, and Delilah will be back too. I hope you liked this one. I'll talk to you later.

Delilah And My Sister

As you can see, I have finally come back for an update. It's been quite some time, hasn't it? I think last time I said I'd be posting more often. That turned out to be a whopper of a lie, didn't it? All I can say this time is that I'll be back whenever I can. So let's get to today's post.

This one is going to be a rambling two-parter. First I'll tell you about the pictures. Then I have an amusing story about my little sister. So about the pictures.

I took Delilah back out to the nearest nature park recently. She really loves to go, but she still has a hard time getting there. She's about 8 months old now and you are finally seeing the way she looks mostly grown up. She looks like a skinny German Shepherd. She's the same size as any normal German Shepherd but she is skinny looking compared to a full-bred dog of that kind.

That was a short update, so let's get to the story about my sister. She has a full-blooded German Shepherd and it's a huge one. My sister goes on Facebook, and everywhere else, constantly bragging about how big her dog, much bigger than all other dogs. She's one of those kind of people that has to have the biggest and best of everything, especially compared to yours.

So I decided to tweak her nose a bit about it. She, like you, has also only seen my dog in a few pictures. So I went on Facebook and began bragging about how it is actually my dog that is the biggest.

I didn't tell her this information specifically, but it got the desired results. Her whole family got angry at me for daring to say that my dog was the biggest. Maybe a little childish? Maybe I'm being childish as well, but I'm also having fun. And since I got the desired reaction I decided to add a little more to my puppy's story.

I went back on Facebook and posted that I got one of those doggy DNA tests to find out why my dog is just so huge, much bigger than all other German Shepherds. I said the results came back that the reason is that my dog is part German Shepherd and part Dire Wolf. Of course, Dire Wolves are long ago extinct.

My sister immediately got on my posts feed to inform me of that pesky extinction problem. She usually ignores me. She informed me that her oldest son told her about that knowledgable super-fact. Then she proceeded to comment on this same post about a dozen times with all of her knowledge on the subject and how superior she was for informing me of my lowly error.

That is the most she has spoken to me in the past year. She had no idea I did it all just to get her going and I was laughing at her the whole time. It's still pretty funny. I'm not sure if she has caught on to the joke yet. I do think she did finally begin to feel foolish towards her last comment or two. Next, I'll Photoshop a picture of me standing in front of my giant dog.

Just to finish today's post off, I want to say my sister and I get along just fine. I just thought it would be amusing to exploit this little vanity(insecurity) she has. And I had to tell a few people some of the kinds of things I do to make a person angry with me. And with that, hopefull sooner this time, I'll talk to you later.

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.

Delilah And The Nature Park

I didn't want to do it. I didn't want to load Delilah in the back of my truck and take her to the nature park yet, but I felt like I had no choice now. This is a story that will shock and amaze some of you, and maybe just put the rest of you to sleep. So let's get it over with.

It was a normal routine day when I let Delilah outside to do what she does in the yard. But then something very strange happened. Delilah came to the door scratching frantically wanting to be let in. Usually, it's not such an animated event. Of course, I wondered what the problem could be.

I watched her closely the next time I let her out. She wandered around the yard, as usual. But then I saw it! It was a little rabbit on the other side of the yard. Delilah saw it too. And she ran at full speed to the door wanting in the house again!

Yup, my growing German Shepherd was afraid of a soft little bunny rabbit! I couldn't let this problem stand. I tried to convince her that the rabbit was afraid of her too, but it didn't convince her. The rabbit didn't even care about her. It was busy collecting grass for a nest. And it seemed to know that the dog wouldn't harm it.

I had to toughen her up, and I figured the only way to do it was to get her a little life experience. So I decided to take her to the nearest nature park where there are lots more rabbits and many other animals.

The good thing is this seems to have worked a little bit. Being on the leash and close to me also seemed to help. She was stalking any birds that decided to show themselves to us. Of course, that was very few. But they certainly made lots of noise, and she was very curious about that.

Overall, she had a very good time at the nature park. She's still not the best truck rider, but she'll improve now that she'll get to go to some place that she loves. She also has a brand new cage she rides in. That helps a lot.

I had more pictures from the nature park other than just these of Delilah. I'll share some of them soon. Maybe even in less than a week. That will be my first non-Delilah post in quite a while. Finally, we'll be getting back to normal here.

I haven't had a post in a couple of weeks simply because I had nothing to write about. There wasn't really even any fun stuff with the dog, though I had lots of good pictures of her. As you can see, she's growing rapidly. She's beginning to look like a grown-up dog, even though she's only about five months old.

I'll share more Delilah posts, but let's get back to nature around here now. I'll talk to you later.

A Fun Day In The Cornfields

I went out to try to get a bit of new material to put up here, but you know what I found? Cornfields.

Cornfields as far as the eye can see.

I think I just went in the wrong direction this time. But this is the results.

Hey, cornfields are pretty good for what they are, but you gotta admit they aren't very exciting most of the time, especially in the middle of winter when they've already been harvested.

I ended up in this small town looking at their little park. A park like this looks kind of bad in the winter time.

In the summer it's a green happy place with kids playing and having fun, but there's no green and no fun here today.

So I went back to explore the cornfields.

Yup, still the same. I thought it might change after fifteen minutes, but there was no change to the cornfields. They're still barren, and still cold and snowy.

I guess the giant hills in the back are interesting. But they're so far away.

Do you feel depressed yet?

... Wait a minute.

Okay, that's enough. This post was sad, but I'm pretty happy. And you might think I'm a little demented, but I think the post was a hilarious joke. You shouldn't write something if it's not fun for you, and this was fun.

But was it art? Maybe, maybe not. It was fast food for the mind. And now it's done. Was it even a little entertaining? I'll talk to you later.

Bison And Birds And Some Other Things

I visited the bison on my most recent adventure. I wasn't prepared for all of the birds that were swarming around them though. There were so many I was worried that they'd be flying around me like that too.

The birds seemed perfectly comfortable flying around and landing on the bison, but they stayed far away from me while I was out there.

I have no idea why it is, but these pictures seem far more impressive at full size than they do here on the blog. Try clicking on them for some of that. The amount of the birds comes out a little better like that, but they're still not quite right. Even so, I'm glad I finally shared them.

I planned on having these pictures up for you sooner, maybe last week sometime, but my dog died. The poor thing had cancer in her joints. She has been crippled for the past few years. She could walk but it was difficult for her. The cancer finally caught up to her over the weekend and she just couldn't go on anymore.

I didn't realize how much my life revolved around taking care of her these past few years. I love dogs, and she was a good one. But a crippled animal takes a lot of care. She was a big dog so it made things a little harder. Now I'm trying to adjust to life without her.

A pet probably doesn't seem like such a big deal to most people, but I love animals a lot and a person doesn't realize how much the work sneaks up on you to have to take extra care of an animal that was in her situation. Now we'll see how things will be like without all of that.

But let's get back to something more positive. Even though winter is quickly approaching, I'm going to try to go on some far off adventures very soon. Well, maybe not too far off, but farther than I've been going. I've already got a trip planned for next week. We'll see if I can come up with some good stuff to share from that.

It's mainly a trip so I can follow some clues about my family's ancestry, but there are some good nature parks on the way. I recently found out there are English knights in my ancestry. I didn't even know I was English until recently. I'm mostly Irish and Northern European, but I already knew that. That's why I look very good in green.

I didn't mean to get away from talking about these bison this time, but they really weren't the most recent thing for me. But I'm glad to have been able to share them with you. I loved taking the pictures and I also loved the little editing I did to the pictures. Try a good picture editor sometime. You can really help the true look of your pictures come out if you get some experience with it. I use Adobe Lightroom for most of my stuff.

The bison seem like the main thing here, but the birds are something for everyone to watch for. Fall is a good time to watch birds. They'll be in big flocks wherever you go. Take a look for yourself. I'll talk to you later.

I'm Back!

Are you still there? It's been a long time that I've been gone this time, but I'm back and I have some new stuff to share. I finally got my computer situation taken care of. It was really even worse than I have been describing. I keep two computers for personal use. Both of them went down around the same time.

My laptop just got old and too slow to be functional. It had become mostly unusable, but I didn't want to part with it so I kept trying. I finally replaced it with a brand new Dell laptop. The new one is a pleasure to use. I don't usually do my blogging with this one, but at least I can do it now if I want to.

I keep my main desktop computer in my bedroom. I built it myself and it's also getting old. The only original part is the case. I replace parts when needed. This time I waited too long and it caused most of my problems.

The last piece I had to replace this time was the main hard drive. I chose a solid state drive (SSD) this time. It makes a huge difference. The way the computer was limping along before, it took about 20 minutes to come back up when I restarted it. So I tried not to do that very often. Now with the new drive, a restart is almost instantaneous. I recommend SSDs to anyone who uses a computer.

I do almost all of my blogging on my bedroom computer. I'm only in that room at night, so I do other things during the day. I limit the things I do to certain times to keep my many individual activities from dominating my time. I need enough time for each thing. I mostly work all day for a long time, so I have to budget my time carefully when I'm done. I spend my days off trying to get more pictures.

I've been out getting a few pictures to share. Some are amazing and some are not so amazing. I only really judge how good they are by the experience and adventure I had while taking them. The pictures are just a record of the experience. A good nature adventure is what's really important.

The pictures today are some of the random scenes I've seen in the past several days. I have pictures from some really fun adventures coming up soon, as soon as I can get the time to write about them for you. I hope to have lots of stuff very soon. I'll talk to you later.

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.