Although earlier blog posts have covered our prairies trip in some detail, the purpose of this post is to provide a higher-level perspective on our trip as a whole, and to make recommendations for others touring the prairies. I normally impose on myself a 1000-word limit, for readability, but have allowed this one to go […]
Tag: The Nature Conservancy
Prairie Finale
Two days ago marked the end of our 4.5-month prairie trip itinerary, in north-central Montana. This post will cover the last 3.5 weeks, while another post will summarize the prairies trip as a whole, with reflections on how the trip went, and what we though were the best spots. From northwest North Dakota, we traveled […]
Prairie Medley
It’s been 25 days since the last post, during which time we have visited 21 locations in the Dakotas and the western edges of Iowa and Minnesota. Of these, 12 were preserves established by The Nature Conservancy (TNC), 7 were federal properties, and two were state parks. Four tallgrass prairie sites were in the distinctive […]
Kee-kee-doo!
We returned to central Kansas to revisit Cheyenne Bottoms Wildlife Area and Quivira National Wildlife Refuge at what is usually the peak of the shorebird migration. Unfortunately, all the recent rain had flooded the mudflats, sandy areas, and very shallow water preferred by most shorebirds, so the numbers were about the same as two weeks […]
Flood and Famine
From the Osage Hills in northeast Oklahoma, described in the last post, we headed across southeast Kansas. We’ve only run out of gas twice in the 30 years we’ve been married, but this was an extremely rural area, and when we finally reached a station, the truck’s display indicated only 9 miles to empty. Our […]
The Big Thicket
We briefly came through the Big Thicket around Christmas of 1989 and really liked the area. It was well located to spend some time before beginning the main endeavor of the year, our tour of prairies from south (northeast Texas, in March) to north (southern Saskatchewan, in August), and we looked forward to a spring […]
Nomadic Naturalists 