Endless Grass

I only recently discovered some of the nature trails at this little nature park down the road from where I live. This park, Dunham Prairie Preserve, was one of the first parks I visited when I moved into my current home. I thought it would end up as my daily park because of the interesting trails, but there became one problem.

Some of the most interesting trails here ceased to be maintained. There is one trail in particular that went down to the Big Sioux River that I really liked a lot. Now it's gone, so there is no more access to the river from here. That took away from much of the attractiveness of this place.

I still like the park, but most of the trails are like the one you see below. They're mowed into the grassy prairie land near the highway. That closeup highway is really a turn off for me. And there's not much else to see except for endless grassland. But it's not all bad.

I just recently discovered that there are more trails of this park on the other side of the highway from the parking lot. Even if it is just grass, it's still a new place to explore. And I live for new places to explore. The other thing is that this is where I discoverd all of that milkweed growing that I wrote about in a previous post.

Seeing that much milkweed gives me something to look forward to other than endless grass. The grass would be fine, but it's not really very exciting to me, and I don't really know what to write about it. But I can come up with all kinds of things while I observe the growth of that milkweed throughout the year.

And who knows? Maybe they'll open up access again to the river one of these days. I don't really know why they closed it. I don't know many people and I'm not very talkative with strangers unless we get into an argument or something. I'm glad not many people in this area of the country are very argumentative.

The sign above says Fire Walk. That's the name of the trail here on the other side of the road. The trail is a loop from where you can still very much hear the sounds of the highway, and most of the time see the cars go by. I'll only come back on occasion, but I will be back to look at the milkweed.

I do like this place because it's the closest nature and hiking park to home. I guess maybe if I came here more often then I'd discover more desirable features. Does anybody know of some good things I might find in this grass that I'm probably not thinking of?

The river trail was really nice because it was isolated from the highway. Now that it's gone I'm looking for other advantages to this park that I've missed. I've seen so many things in nature over the past several years, but in many ways I still understand next to nothing. I learn something new with each new adventure, and I want to learn something here too. I'll talk to you later.

The Village

The pictures I have for you today were taken last summer. Right now it looks very different around here. There are no leaves left on the trees and everything is covered in snow. Also the temperature is much too cold for me to do much of anything other than wait till it warms up just a little bit to go out.

My first trip when I do go out will be right back to this very place, but maybe not to this village in the woods. The nature park where this village exists is a big one with many different features to explore, and there are many that I haven't seen yet. But today I want to talk about the village.

This village is one of the features of  Adams Homestead And Nature Preserve. I can't say I know much about it yet because I've only visited it once so far. I do know that this house above was built in the 1880s. That's pretty old for this part of the country. It's called the Shay-Adams House.

There are several buildings in this little village with signs like the ones above out in front of each one. They give a nice little description of each building and maybe go into the history of each one. In a future post I'll maybe give you a better look at what some of them say. I'll be back here many more times.

The cabin above was built in the 1860s and is called The Brusseau House. The door was open, so I went inside and took a few pictures. I'll feature them in a future post, I'm not sure when yet. I'm not sure if the door was meant to be open or if I was supposed to go in, but I did. I'm an outlaw. Fear me.

This red building is a school house. I never went closer to it than this. I don't know why. Onew of these4 next visits I'll have to go up close and examine it better. By the time I got this far I was eager to explore other parts of the nature park, and I was hunting a geocache, which I found.

The only thing we had like this back in Michigan near me was a big place called Greenfield Village which cost quite a bit of money to get in. It was worth it, but this little place gives you a similar but very much smaller experience, without all the flash, for free.

I hope I can keep these more frequent posts up, but the very much colder weather is going to make it difficult. It's been cold and windy around here. The cold is fine, but that wind just about kills me. I'll be making a point of going out on warmer days, and there are a few inside places I'll be visiting as well. I'll talk to you later.