Five Ridge Prairie

I went to Five Ridge Prairie nature preserve the other day. I've been there many times now, and it has become my favorite nature park around here. But I have to tell you that it wasn't an easy place to find.

This park is at the end of a long and hilly dirt road that is kind of hidden when you're on the main highway. It took me about six months to find this place. I drove by it many times but I never could find that dirt road.

Finally I found it, and it's now one of my favorite places to visit. I don't come to this place nearly as much as I want, but I hope to change that now that I'm a bit more mobile than I was. I forget how much I love these kind of places until I finally get back to them.

That long absence can sometimes be a problem too. Five Ridge Prairie is not the easiest place to hike. It's all hills and valleys. It's pretty easy getting in there a ways, but getting out is kind of hard. I have to say it's all worht it though because the place is beautiful.

When I don't go to these places for a long time I can get kind of out of shape to be doing this stuff. I knew that would be a problem this time, but I hoped to pace myself a bit so I could minimize the pain. I've learned that no amount of pacing really helps all that much here.

Going in is mostly downhill at the beginning. And then you get to this beautiful place where there are all sorts of birds and other wildlife. You don't always see them because there are plenty of places to hide, but they're out there.

I decided before I even got there that I wasn't going to go very far into this section because I knew I'd wear myself out while I was still inside this huge place. But while I was in there I learned that I was more out of shape than I had hoped.

After a short rest I turned and began to maqke my way back out of the park. It was okay at first, but I was already tiring out much too fast. With my dog Isabella wanting to pull her leash in every direction at once while she explored, it wasn't an easy journey.

As we got to that hill we had to climb to get out of there, I was already to tired to really keep going. Still, I had to get out of there somehow, so I kept right on going. The farther I went up that hill the more I ran out of breath. Isabella wasn't doing very well either, so I had to stop and rest several times.

I did finally make it out of there, even though I thought I was going to die trying. I gave Isabella a nice big drink of water, which she needed badly. The good thing is that I got all of these pictures and some other good stuff. And now that I've made the journey once, I'll be going back as soon as I can.

I'll talk to you later.

Turkey Vulture

I sometimes let time get away from me. I'm writing this post very late in the night. I usually write kind of late because it's nice and quiet then, but this is kind of pushing it. I say all this just because it's the first thought in my mind when I started the post.

Now that I got that out of the way I can talk about the pictures I have in my post today. On my newest little adventure I spotted this turkey vulture flying close by overhead. I thought it was a hawk when I saw it because it looked so small.

Hawks aren't usually very small for birds either, but many of them are smaller than turkey vultures. Most turkey vultures I've seen are pretty big. This one seemed quite a bit smaller than usual, but then I also saw another one that was about the same size.

This area is just full of these turkey vultures. I see them just about everywhere. I've also seen hawks here and there, but maybe some of them were turkey vultures. I'll have to take a closer look next time I see a hawk flying around. It's not easy sometimes.

I'm sure there is way to tell thew difference by looking at the wing shape or something like that, but I don't know how to do that quite yet. I really do think that if I keep watching I'll learn how to do that at some point.

I sometimes wonder what these birds are doing when I see them circling above. I'm sure they're just either looking for food or they've spotted some food on the ground. I've often seen them on the road picking at a dead animal, their preferred meal.

I saw this one flying around near the entrance to a huge nature park. I had just gotten out of my truck and I was on my way into the park. I'll tell the story of that little adventure in my next post. For now I was just glad that my camera focused so well on this bird. Talk to you later.