The (new and improved) Prairie Adventures

Ready for spring already!

2009-11-15T13:37:00.002-06:00

What a year this has been!

I am settling in and enjoying small town life in northwestern Kansas. The windmill picture is from rural Phillips County, taken in mid-October when I was out measuring irrigation well depths for work.

I've had quite a few adventures this past summer and fall, so I hope to get a few of those posted soon.

Current Update and Future Plans...

2009-03-12T10:05:00.005-05:00

This picture was taken by Mitch in my office of an owl he saw at a cattle feedyard. I'm not familiar enough with owls to know what species this is exactly.

I will be retiring this blog and establishing a new blog in the near future. I am moving away from Garden City and the reason I established this blog is to promote this area and especially the Sandsage Bison Range. Since I will no longer be involved with those activities, I will be starting a new blog that will detail my travels from now and into the future. I am moving to a new area of Kansas with many new things to see and do.

I hope everyone has enjoyed the Sandsage Prairie Adventures blog and I will keep it alive because there are a lot of pictures and memories that are preserved here. I will probably post a link to my new blog when I get it set up.

Chelsea

Friends of the Zoo annual meeting

2009-02-03T13:06:00.005-06:00

On January 29th I attended the annual meeting of the Friends of Lee Richardson Zoo. We had an awesome catered supper and then listened to a rundown of what the Friends group was up to in 2008. This is a group with over 3,000 members and an income of $87,000. Nearly $40k of that was just from memberships alone. Wow! The big push right now is funding for the new "Cat Canyon" exhibit and the group has raised just over half of the $600k needed.

The thing I enjoy the most about this annual meeting is the speakers they bring in. Last year was awesome and this year was too. The speaker was Craig Piper, the director of the Denver Zoo. He talked for over an hour about elephants, which is a controversial subject for a lot of zoos including Garden City, which is home to a pair of aging female African elephants. One criticism is that elephants need space and the exciting thing is the new elephant exhibit being built in Denver. It will be a huge 11 acre area and the animals (including elephants) will be rotated from one pasture to another througout the day within the enclosure. When he got to "elephants walking overhead on a bridge", I was sold!

Another really cool thing is that the Denver Zoo will be converting 95% of the animal waste plus human garbage to energy via a process called gasification. This has been done for large industries before, but not on a small scale and could have huge implications for waste management and energy production in the future. He got a laugh out of everyone when he said the zoo just didn't have enough poo to run the system, so they'll have to add garbage too.

A lot of Craig's presentation was about the struggle of wild elephants and how the African elephant population dropped from millions in the 1970s to only about 1/2 million in 2008. Zoos are hoping to establish a viable population of elephants in order to preserve the species. The problem is that male elephants are difficult to house and therefore most zoos do not have the space to breed elephants (in other words, housing the male babies once they are not so small and cute anymore). Enter The National Elephant Center.

The National Elephant Center is a new 300 acre facility being built in central Florida, just north of Lake Okeechobee. It will serve as a training facility for all elephant handlers in AZA-accedited zoos and also provide a stop-over place for elephants who's enclosures are being rebuilt around the US. The main thing is the Center will be an important part of the AZA elephant breeding program.

I can't wait to see the Denver Zoo elephant exhibit once it opens and I definitely have a lot of respect and admiration for the good job being done by the elephant keepers at the Lee Richardson Zoo. Oh, and I can't wait to go see the new sloth bears either. Apparently they are very playful!

2009 awaits!

2009-01-21T10:46:00.004-06:00

Not much has been going on for me in the winter months. With the warm January temps I half expect the bison tours to start picking up, but last year was slow because it seemed like people just wern't traveling. Apparently I missed that memo because I have quite a few travel plans for 2009!

In late March or early April, I hope to head to the Sedan area in southeast Kansas to see the redbud tree blossoms. (There is an actual redbud festival.) My wonderful coworker Sue has relatives in that area so she's going to show me the sights. I will be back in that general area in the fall for the Native Plant Society's annual meeting, so I'll get to see the spring and fall wildflowers!

I hope to meet my parents sometime in Denver to tour the sights and visit the botanical gardens for sure. Then in early May I plan to attend the Barber County wildflower walk in Medicine Lodge. I enjoyed it last year so I hope we go to new wildflower locations this year. I have learned to stay at a motel in Pratt though...

June will be a busy month. The first weekend there is a spring wildflower tour at the Maxwell Bison Range just south of Salina and I also want to see the Rolling Hills Zoo. The weekend after that I am attending a friend's wedding in Manhattan. Packed alongside my high heels will be my hiking boots because I plan to take a stroll or two around the Konza prairie. I've always wanted to be in that area in the spring and now I have a reason! Yaa for love and to-death-do-us-part!

Then I will be in Nebraska for the 4th of July holiday and I will definitely make it back out to the Spring Creek Prairie. The wildflowers were wonderful last year and I got some amazing pictures! Not so excited about the ticks though... September will be another busy month with a fall wildflower tour at the Maxwell Bison Range one week, then my cousin's wedding in Hebron NE the next week, and the weekend after that the Native Plant Society annual meeting in SE KS. Busy busy busy!

I hope to travel even more than what I've talked about, so be sure to check back here often for updates! Have a great year!

Tour of John Martin Reservoir Dam in southeastern Colorado, Dec. 9th

2008-12-10T12:34:00.015-06:00

View of John Martin Reservoir dam, on the Kansas-facing east side.

On Tuesday this week I was fortunate to participate in a tour of John Martin Reservoir (JMR) Dam. I've been working with issues involving that reservoir for 2 years now but have not seen inside the dam before. We got a guided tour from a Corps of Engineers employee and we visited the 3 levels in the dam. The 2 levels that were actually inside the dam are just long corridors with 1 row of lights to help see. Our guide told us a story about when he was working inside the dam and the lights went out and he had to walk about 1/2 a mile in pitch black before he could get out. Now he carries a flashlight, even though emergency lights were installed. The inside of the dam was like an echo chamber and when those loud pumps start running it could really freak you out in the dark!

* Click on the pictures for a larger view *

The dam was completed in 1948 and it is amazing that most all the equipment like pumps are still original issue. JMR is 60 years old, but the tour guide said that it was built so well that it's only aged about 25 years. I can vouch for that because there was only a trickle of water running in the gutters in the very bottom level of the dam. My favorite part was climbing along the outdoor catwalk level just below the road that goes across the dam. Definitely not a place for those scared of heights! Below is a picture of the west-facing side of the dam, and the bottom picture is the east side of the dam with Lake Hasty below JMR and the Arkansas River heading towards Kansas.

Deer close-call!!

2008-11-16T12:52:00.007-06:00

I was driving back to Garden City after spending Saturday with friends in Hays and I saw a buck heading towards the highway and if I hadn't slowed down I probably would have hit it! The buck actually stopped on the side of the road and looked at me before crossing the road. I got a close enough look to see that it was missing an antler. This was a good reminder to be careful and watch for deer this time of year. I had my camera sitting on the seat so I snapped a couple pictures!

Arkansas River pictures

2008-11-10T12:44:00.010-06:00

Here are pictures of the Arkansas River in Kansas. Below is a picture of the river at Kendall, which is a tiny town 40 miles west of Garden City. Note all the salt cedar lining the banks of the river. Salt cedar is a non-native plant that uses about 2x the amount of water compared to native plants like willow and cottonwood.

Below is a picture of the Amazon Ditch headgates where water is taken from the river and put in the Amazon Ditch to carry surface water to farmers. The headgate is located between Kendall and Lakin and is about 35 miles from Garden City.

Below is a picture of the Arkansas River at Ingalls, which is a tiny town 28 miles east of Garden City. The river looks like this currently from about 20 miles west of Garden City, but sometimes it gets within a couple miles of Garden City during a wet year.

Interesting info...

2008-11-10T10:21:00.006-06:00

I had a curious moment this morning and found myself looking up the population for towns I am familiar with in KS and CO. How bored am I? Actually, this weekend someone told me that Liberal KS was a big as Garden City and I just couldn't believe it so I hit the internet this morning and found that Garden City is about 10,000 more people than Liberal. Ha!

South & west KS:
Garden City ~30,000 people
Dodge City ~26,000
Liberal ~20,000
Hays ~20,000
Scott City ~3,900
Lakin ~2,100
Syracuse ~1,900

Central & East KS:
Salina ~46,000
Manhattan ~50,000
Topeka ~122,000
Wichita ~360,000

Colorado cities I frequent:
Lamar ~8,900
La Junta ~7,500
Pueblo ~102,000

My hometown of Crete, Nebr. ~6,100
My college town of Kearney, Nebr. ~27,500
Lincoln, Nebr. ~226,000
My grad school town of Fargo, North Dakota ~93,000
My western North Dakota job town of Dickinson ~16,000

What is it?

2008-10-29T09:23:00.009-05:00

*Click on the picture for a larger view*

Above is a picture taken yesterday by Mitch in my office. I think this is a bull snake because there isn't a rattle and the snake is already a foot long. I ran into a similar-sized snake in North Dakota and it definitely rattled. The snake's coloring is enough to give you quite a jolt though!

** Update ** I have recently been bragging about my awesome rattlesnake pictures (from summer 2006 in western North Dakota) so I figured I better post them to back up my claims! Enjoy! Or slowly back away from your computer and scream for help...

(Rainy) weekend in Colorado Springs

2008-10-13T09:18:00.016-05:00

Yet another weekend adventure took me to the base of Colorado's Rocky Mountains. I was in Colorado Springs to visit my uncle with my parents in tow and we had a great time even though the weather was dreary. Saturday was 40 degrees all day with intermittent sprinkles and rain. Still, we spent nearly an hour that morning wandering (frozen) through the Garden of the Gods. That was awesome with the trees turning fall colors among the rock formations. I did notice that there are a few rotton apples in the Garden of the Gods, in the form of a nasty plant called burdock. I hope somebody in Colorado Springs is herbicide-friendly enough to spray the burdock, otherwise yet another invasive plant will continue to degrade our nation's natural treasures.

** Burdock **

On the way back to Garden City we stopped at Bent's Old Fort aka "Castle on the Plains" (Website: www.nps.gov/beol). This reconstructed fort from the 1840s is really neat and fun to explore. The fort was originally built by fur traders and it played a major role in the history of the west. Did you know that all the land south of the Arkansas River used to be part of Mexico? That's why Bent's Fort was located and then rebuilt on the north side of the river! While my parents and I were exploring the fort I made friends with the local black cat (Halloween!) and it followed me all over and is in most of my pictures of the fort. The fort is located off the beaten path, but is definitely worth visiting, especially if you have kids. I know I made the $ouviner $hop owner a happy person!

Native Plant Society meeting in Hays

2008-10-06T09:46:00.011-05:00

KNPS members at a location just north of Hays, KS

This past weekend was one of my most anticipated times of the year. I got together with 50 to 60 fellow plant lovers and we spent the weekend hiking and enjoying the last few plants that haven't given up for the year. I enjoy having the opportunity to travel to areas of Kansas that I haven't seen before and to do so with a group of people who love being outdoors.

The focus of this year's meeting was medicinal and cultural uses of native plants. We heard about the harvesting of wild populations of Echinacea (purple coneflower) for the medical industry. Its good to know that Echinacea is resilient even after people have over-harvested the plant throughout the midwest. Echinacea roots are used as an herbal treatment in Europe and the U.S. for medical maladies such as the common cold.

On Sunday the group met at Wilson Lake, 45 minutes east of Hays. Being from southwestern Kansas, I was amazed at the volume of water in the reservoir because we don't have anything like that in the dry, sandhills area of Garden City. The scenery was beautiful and a lot of native plants were still blooming. We hiked a 3-mile trail and I saw several plants I've never seen before. Several people in the group are plant experts and can identify every plant and we even had an insect expert in the group. I am always awestruck to be around that level of expertise and experience and I can only hope to know a tiny fraction of what they carry around in their heads all the time. Plus, you can tell that everyone is enjoying themselves and doesn't want the weekend to end.

It was a great mini-vacation for me and I look forward to next year when we are supposed to travel to extreme southeastern Kansas. It will be a whole new world to me!

Click on the picture for an up-close look at a scorpion and notice the red/orange parasitic mites on the scorpion. Too cool!

Saturday trip to Scott City area

2008-09-28T13:22:00.016-05:00

I spent all day Saturday with my coworker Sue in the Scott City area, which is a half hour north of Garden City. First, we went to the annual Whimmydiddle (I kid you not) arts and craft show and I enjoyed that WAY too much. Then Sue and I drove around Scott Lake, which is about 10 miles north of Scott City. We saw a rafter (group) of about 20 turkeys cross the road. I also walked in the cool water along the designated beach area, but was chased out by the unwanted arrival of a van full of pre-teen, church camp boys. Annoying! So then I took Sue's suggestion and we drove further north to one of the many natural wonders of Kansas, called Monument Rocks. The "rock" formations are actually clay bluffs that spring out of the otherwise flat landscape. Pretty impressive. I enjoyed climbing all over the bluffs and I saw a toad along with several neat plants. I had lots of fun taking pictures of the sun shining over the bluffs and through holes in the bluffs. Yes, I may have too much time on my hands, but what a way to spend it!

**Click on the pictures for a larger view**

Work in southeastern Colorado

2008-09-22T10:19:00.019-05:00

*Click on the pictures for a larger view*

My office's water engineer and I drove around southeastern Colorado for 3 days checking on problems we found during our spring "dryup acres" inspections. See my June blog entry below for that trip. Basically we're looking for illegal irrigation and over-use of water on Colorado fields where no river surface water is supposed to be applied in order for Colorado to honor its water agreements with Kansas. We had a run-in with an unhappy farmer who said "don't you have anything better to do", but if we turn a blind eye to his problem then the other 80 problem fields we identified would be treated the same way, much to the detriment of Kansas farmers and irrigators. We felt sorry for the guy because he didn't know there was a problem with his field due to a breakdown in communication within the Colorado agencies. On the other hand, our view is that we'd like to see the landowners be pro-active rather than re-active on these issues.

*Update* I just compiled the numbers and this year my coworker and I visited over 60,000 acres (over 2,200 individual fields) of cropland/farmland in southeastern Colorado. Just to give you some perspective, a football field is 1.3 acres in size. Still, 60,000 acres is only about 19% of the Ark River basin which has a total of 318,000 acres of farmland. It isn't hard to see why there are water shortages.

What I love the most about fieldwork is the wildlife and wildflowers. Over 3 days we saw at least a dozen deer and I took several pictures of wildflowers. My coworker tried to catch a wasp that was laying eggs on a live caterpiller (for his son's bug collection for school), but after several capture attempts he gave up. Having an angry wasp trapped in a Taco Bell cup inside the truck wasn't my idea of a good time anyway. I can handle nature-stuff as long as it isn't mad at me.

Another day out of the office...

2008-09-10T18:15:00.010-05:00

I spent all day reading 20 center-pivot irrigation meters in southeastern Finney County. I was so excited when I drove up to this one center pivot and saw an ornate box turtle crossing the road. I caught up with (her) before she fled into the corn rows. I have seen turtles on the prairie but never in a cornfield!

My day was going well until I started back for Garden City and noticed the work truck wasn't driving quite right. When I stopped to fill up with E85 gas, I noticed that the back driver's side tire was pretty low. As I was getting the tire fixed I took a picture of a hawk that had been rescued from traffic on Kansas Avenue by the tire workers. I don't know what happened to it, but it didn't want to fly. Pretty cute though! Whenever a person would approach it, the hawk would extend its wings out to make itself look bigger and supposably scarier, but that backfired because it made me want to take more pictures and get closer!

A day out of the office...

2008-09-03T12:28:00.013-05:00

I got to get out of the office today to read irrigation meters. I don't normally do fieldwork with irrigation wells, so I tend to forget things like "wear hearing protection around a running well motor" and "take the cell phone with you before you walk a 1/4 mile out to a pivot center and can't find the meter". At least I am getting exercise! I'm glad I threw my boots in the truck because I had to walk 1/4 mile to another pivot center and the road was really muddy because the pivot was running!

Before today whenever I went out to read well meters I would wonder around the countryside not really knowing where I was, trying to drive and read a paper map at the same time, and hoping I ended up at the right well. Today, I took my work laptop with a GPS hooked into it and knew right where I was and where I was headed because I could see myself on the computer map (as a little blinking dot) as I was driving. I'll never have to ask for directions again! Yaa for technology! Now I need to figure out how to keep the laptop from flying off the seat when I slam on the breaks...

Mule deer on the Range...

2008-08-30T22:06:00.014-05:00

On Saturday August 23rd I saw my first male mule deer on the Sandsage Bison Range. This guy was avoiding the midday sun by sitting under a couple of the scattered trees on the range. Eventually the deer had enough of our nosiness and bounded off over the sandhills. The tour participants were 4 hot air balloon pilots who were in town for the 5th annual Hot Air Balloon Classic in Garden City. I took several pilots on a tour last year so they recommended it to their friends this year.

Weekend visit to Wichita, KS

2008-08-18T14:47:00.023-05:00

A view of the Botanical Gardens. Lovely!

Giant turtles at the zoo!

I spent 4 days in Wichita taking in the biological and cultural attractions with my parents. We really had a good time and I was impressed with Wichita, which was a 4 hour drive from Garden City. The first thing we did was visit the Sedgewick County Zoo. My favorite exhibit was the colossal-sized turtles, but I enjoyed the variety of exhibits and was amazed at the sheer size of the zoo. It was a lot more than I had expected. Definitely worth the time if you are in the area. My only complaint was the salt cedar tree planted in a concession area near the gorilla house. I think I am going to have to send an email to someone about getting rid of that highly invasive and ecologically devastating plant! ** Update ** I got a reply back from the zoo curator who said they know the plant is invasive, but they are "keeping an eye on it" and don't plan to remove it. That's downright irresponsible! But, unfortunately not illegal so thats that.

The next morning we strolled through the expansive Botanical Gardens. Talk about a plant lovers paradise! I loved the weird-looking plants that come from all over the world. I am a bigger fan of native prairie plants, but I definitely appreciate the effort it takes to put together a horticultural garden and the Botanical Gardens take extravagance to a whole new level. Top notch!

We also took time to check out the Wichita-area cultural history at the fancy County Museum. I learned that Wichita is named after an Oklahoma tribe of Native Americans. The Wichita Indians "agreed" to move from Oklahoma to the site in Kansas that eventually took their name. Other tribes that already inhabited that area did not respond well to the new arrivals and eventually the Wichita tribe went back to Oklahoma. There is a creek in Oklahoma named Skeleton Creek, which commemorates the sad and deadly trek of the Wichita tribe back to their homeland. So when you travel somewhere, ask yourself "What's in a name?".

After lunch at the River City Brewing Company my parents and I walked through the Museum of World Treasures in the Old Town part of Wichita. I was amazed at how clean and quaint the Old Town area looked. The World Treasures Museum is a shrine to all things opulent in the ancient world. It struck me that nothing has really changed throughout history. The powerful and wealthy have always walked all over the less fortunate in order to raise themselves to immortality. Museums tell you who owned the gold crown, but not how many people suffered as a result.

We also spent several hours going though a place called "Cow Town". It is basically a living museum. The several block-sized area is a reproduction of what a cow town of the old west would look like and how it operated. There are reenactors who portray the people that worked and lived in the town. We saw a blacksmith working the furnace, watched a mock gunfight, toured an actual working farm that only uses equipment from the 1800s, rode in a horse-drawn covered wagon, and watched the carpenter use a hand-cranked saw to split a 2x4 board. The interesting thing is that most of the tools are the same design as they are today only now with a motor instead of a hand crank attached to a system of pullies. Hey, if it isn't broke then don't fix it!

On a final note, one of the most enjoyable things we did in Wichita was go to two dinner theaters. The Mosley Street Melodrama was a comedy play with a singing/comedy variety show as well, which were both very funny! Basically, it was actors dressed as cowboys who poked fun at stereotypes. Then the other dinner theater was part of the Cow Town experience where real cowboys sang real cowboy/campfire songs and told jokes besides. Somehow I got assigned a seat front and center and I was so close that I could tell the time on the guitar players watch. The 2 dinner theaters were very different in style and content, but both were immensely enjoyable and I would go back in a heartbeat.

This concludes my review of some attractions that Wichita has to offer. I encourage you to check out the biological and cultural attractions in your surrounding area because you never know what treasures lie in your own backyard!

Re-Visited by a Sphinx moth

2008-08-11T21:20:00.011-05:00

I had another lovely visit from my local sphinx moths. I came home from walking on the Tally Trail and ran inside to snatch up my camera and clicked away as the moths hoovered around my petunias. Their wings beat as fast as hummingbirds, so it takes time to get a perfect picture. I hope to have more chances! This is only the second time I've seen these moths at my apartment and they only show up at dusk.

Yaa! I won a cool plant!!

2008-08-03T21:08:00.005-05:00

I won the door prize tonight at my Horticulture Club annual picnic! I saw the plant sitting there beforehand and I was chanting to myself "please let me win". This plant is a garden variety of a native plant with the scientific name Liatris and common name(s) Blazing Star or Gayfeather. Liatris is a prairie plant that blooms in the fall, and is also a popular addition to flower arrangements and is grown commercially for that purpose. Who doesn't love a purple flowering plant?? I am going to keep it in the pot for now because my flower bed's soil is quite sandy and sucks up a lot of water and I'm afraid the Liatris will dry out and die in this summer heat.

The last time I won a door prize was earlier this year at an Eagles Club monthly supper. It was Valentine's Day and I won this huge stuffed dog, which I gave away to my coworker's 8 year old great-nephew and he loved it. I won't be giving away my Liatris though. This one is a keeper!

Garden Friends...

2008-08-03T17:24:00.008-05:00

I have noticed these little toads outside my apartment. They are about the size of a quarter and love to hang out around my flower garden, probably due to the water. I'm just afraid that they'll get underfoot (literally)!

*Update* Jeff Hansen with the KS Native Plant Society told me the toad is either a woodhouse toad or a great plains toad. It depends on if their stomach is speckled or not. I guess I'll have to look next time!

**Update** The toads have gotten bigger! Plus they are going into my garages to get out of the cooler weather and I found one that had crawled up into my shopvac hose! That could get annoying...

Always something new to see...

2008-07-11T13:16:00.011-05:00

As I give tours of the Sandsage Bison Range in Garden City, I tell visitors that I always see something new. This past Wednesday July 9th was no exception. For the first time I saw a rattlesnake on the bison range! This was about 7:45 in the evening. The snake slipped down a hole, probably hunting rodents. I have been a tour guide since May 2007 and given nearly 40 tours to date and this was the first time I saw a rattlesnake! I have seen several other reptiles, including 3 bull snakes, a toad (see Bob on the right), several different lizards, and tons of turtles.

I've seen 3 other rattlesnakes up close and personal in my lifetime. One was in northwestern Nebraska on a gravel road as my colleagues and I drove around photographers for Nebraskaland magazine. That was a cool first encounter because there was a lightening storm rolling in over the bluff as a backdrop. The second was in western North Dakota on a gravel road as I was driving in my Forest Service truck and I took some of the wickedest pictures ever. Too up close and personal to post, for the timid readers. The third and scariest time happened as I was walking through sagebrush headed towards the Little Missouri River, again in North Dakota. I was going to the opposite side of the river to look for a rare plant as part of my botanist job. The little snake slipped down a hole as I caught a glimpse of it, but that was enough to make me beat the bushes the rest of the day to scare any others away. There's nothing quite like being alone out in the middle of nowhere and hearing that buzz just a couple feet away!

Vacation at the Spring Creek Prairie

2008-07-09T09:36:00.010-05:00

Over the 4th of July holiday I drove back to Nebraska to see friends and family. I also took time to check out a tallgrass prairie located 15 minutes from my hometown of Crete. I visited the Spring Creek Prairie Audubon Center (www.springcreekprairie.org) and took a 2-hour stroll through a portion of the 808-acre area. There were tons of wildflowers, probably due to the recent rains in the area. I did not recognize many of the wildflowers, and for the first time I saw "butterfly milkweed" in person. It is a beautiful orange flowering plant (seen in the picture above). All together I think I took around 350 pictures with my digital camera.

The really neat thing about the Spring Creek Prairie is that there are hilly grasslands, low wetlands, and also a wooded area all accessible by hiking trails within a square-mile area. After walking though the grasslands and around the wetlands, I felt like I was in another zipcode as I entered the woodland draw because it's a totally different habitat. I also saw tons of songbirds and a family of Canada geese hanging out around the wetlands.

A cool history side-note is that you'll also find wagon wheel ruts in a couple spots from the pioneer days. On a personal note, my grandparents used to farm part of the area, and there is a wooden bridge on the hiking trail that is dedicated to my cousin Chris Juricek who died in a car crash when I was in junior high.

The Spring Creek Prairie is truely a gem and I look forward to going back in the fall to see the late-blooming plants. I can't believe I've never been out there before this week! The Audubon Society happens to be looking for a manager for the Spring Creek Prairie and I probably would be perfect for the job, but it would be a big pay cut. I don't plan to give up shopping anytime soon, so I guess I'm staying in southwestern Kansas for awhile! Maybe some day...

A week in SE Colorado...

2008-06-29T14:46:00.008-05:00

I just spent the work week in southeastern Colorado driving around crop fields for our June inspections. We check up on those fields a couple times a year to see if the fields are illegally being irrigated with surface water that is supposed to go to Kansas instead. We had an interesting tour. Not so much the work, but we had several technical difficulties of the computer-kind. I also learned how to replace blown fuses in both the Kansas state truck and the Colorado guy's state truck. You can always rely on fried fuses to lighten the mood between KS and CO water officials. We had a pretty good laugh as we drove around to 4 stores trying find the right fuses. The culprit that blew the fuses was a bad inverter box that my laptop was plugged into. Of course the inverter died when I only had 20 minutes of power left on my laptop. I did get a nice picture of a showy milkweed plant along an irrigation canal and a picture of a deer jumping a fence. Enjoy!

Wildflower Weekend at the Bison Range

2008-06-16T15:48:00.010-05:00

Sundrops on the Range

This past weekend I spent Saturday morning helping with wildflower tours at the Bison Range. The Friends of Sandsage Bison Range have this wildflower tour event every other year, so this was my first year participating. Despite the dry prairie conditions, I think we had a great time. It's amazing that just a week or two before the prairie was teeming with amazing wildflowers and now their gone.

Some of the plants we managed to find include spiderwort, sand lily, prickly poppy, purple poppy mallow, tall velvet gaura, purple prairie clover, sun drops, white aster, sand snowball verbena, buffalo gourd, sunflower, wild four o'clock, prickly pear cactus, pink barrel cactus (without flowers unfortunately), and a few others. I was excited because we saw 2 ornate box turtles, burrowing owls, a 6+ foot bull snake (who didn't appreciate being cornered under a sagebrush by a certain tour guide named Chelsea), 3 adult male turkeys, pheasants, quail, and of course bison. We had the whole herd walk by the tour trailer, and one of the cows had a cow when she couldn't find her calf who was on the other side of the trailer. I've never heard a bison grunt that much before! Oh, someone also found an intact snake skeleton! Too cool!

Then on Sunday I gave another tour to a youth church group from Kansas City. I think several of the teenage passengers were quite horrified when I found a dead turtle with the head and feet still attached. It's a really nice specimen and completely intact, so I had them pass it around to look at. For kids who live in Kansas City and wear flip flops to the prairie, it was probably pretty gross. I decided not to pass around the bison "meadow muffin" lest anyone jump out of the trailer trying to avoid it. Hopefully they will share those one-of-a-kind experiences with their friends and family and spread the appreciation for our native prairies!

Visited by a (sphinx) moth...

2008-06-06T23:00:00.009-05:00

The evening of June 6th I was watering my flower garden and I took some cool pictures of a couple big moths feeding on my flowers. In the close-up picture you can see the moth's long, brown tongue sticking out! A couple of these moths were flitting around like hummingbirds, so you are seeing action shots here. I didn't even know the moths had red and black on their wings until I looked at the pictures!

*Update* I checked my insect book and the moth is called a striped hawkmoth, or also a whitelined sphinx moth. Its common in North America.

An Evening on the Sandsage Bison Range

2008-06-02T10:39:00.010-05:00

Nothing says "summertime" quite like grilled buffalo burgers and a sunset tour of the sandsage prairie. On Sunday June 1st I joined my fellow Bison Range tour guides and board of directors for a relaxing evening of burgers and bison watching. Our expert griller was Tom Norman, the Wildlife and Parks manager of the Bison Range. While we enjoyed the meal we were serenaded by several species of songbirds. As it turns out, we were sitting right under a finch nest. The agitated bird-parents sat on a nearby telephone wire plotting our demise while we merrily enjoyed the good food and good company.

After supper the group loaded up on the tour trailer and took a 2-hour spin around the Bison Range. I was so excited because for the first time I saw pink barrel cactus, seen in the picture above along with a yellow-colored Englemann's daisy. I also photographed rusty lupine, which is a purple-flowered native plant that is only found in one spot on the Range.

Then for the first time this year I saw the whole bison herd together with all the babies. The current count is 32 calves. Too cute! We also saw pheasant, jack rabbit, cottontail rabbit, 10 mule deer, and 5 ornate box turtles! At dusk we also saw burrowing owls swooping in and out of the bison herd. The owls were after the grasshoppers that the bison were kicking up as they walked. Overall it was a wonderful evening and an experience I hope to share with many guests who come to see the Sandsage Bison Range!

Wildflower Tour in Barber County, KS

2008-05-12T13:24:00.016-05:00

Hello! On Mother's Day weekend I participated in an annual wildflower walk in Barber County. The area is close to Oklahoma and is half way between Wichita and Dodge City and about a 2.5 hour drive from Garden City. The Barber County wildflower tour has been taking place for over 20 years, so they are an organized bunch! There were about 75 participants who were mostly locals plus a few of us from across the state.

I stayed overnight in Medicine Lodge and then Saturday morning we were treated to a slideshow of the wildflowers we were going out to see. My pictures never seem to turn out that nice... The area is a "mixed-grass prairie" so there are tall grasses like Indian grass, big bluestem, and switchgrass and also short grasses like buffalo grass. The Medicine Lodge area is beautiful because of the rolling gypsum hills, also called the red hills. Here is a website I found with a nice write-up on the gyp hills: www.naturalkansas.org/gypsum1.htm

The two half-acre sites we visited had small flags put in the ground to mark specific plants and the tour guides read a short blurb about each plant. Just FYI, a "meadow muffin" a.k.a. "cow pie" has nothing to do with baking. I was already familiar with several plants such as: buffalo grass, prairie groundsel, yellow wood sorrel, wavyleaf thistle, yucca, scarlet gaura, scarlet globemallow, Missouri milkvetch, common/Ohio spiderwort, white milkwort, prickly pear cactus, wild onion and purple poppy mallow. Species new to me were: prairie (native) dandelion, blue wild indigo, lemon paintbrush, rose verbena, and catsclaw sensitive briar. What a cool variety of plants!

Work Trip to Westcliffe, CO

2008-05-03T19:51:00.008-05:00

Hello again! My travels took me to the mountainous region of Westcliffe, CO this past week and it was such a beautiful area! Westcliffe is about an hour west of Pueblo, which is south of Colorado Springs and Denver. I was attending the Arkansas River Basin Forum, where I listened to presenters talk about river issues near the headwater region of the Arkansas River. I went on a field trip tour of the valley just below the mountains where local ranchers are working to protect the natural area from housing development.

Unfortunately, I dealt with altitude sickness for over half of the trip. Aside from being sick, I had a great time in the mountains and enjoyed the fresh air and open spaces.

On the way to Westcliffe, our group stopped at a really cool place that everyone should see sometime. It's called Bishop Castle (see the picture I took at the top of this post). Tourists can climb all over the castle and sometimes it feels like you are walking on air! Below is a story I found online about the castle and its eccentric creator...

For 40 years, Jim Bishop has been building a castle on a mountainside in central Colorado. "Did it all myself, don't want any help," he says mechanically as he unloads a pile of rocks that he's hoisted to the 70-foot level on one of the castle towers.

Every year since 1969, Bishop has single-handedly gathered and set over 1000 tons of rock to create this stone and iron fortress in the middle of nowhere. Bishop calls it "a monument to hardworking people" and "America's biggest, one-man, physical project." "I always wanted a castle. Every man wants a castle," Bishop continues, his voice a broken record, answering the same questions he's obviously been asked thousands of times before.

Bishop's goal is to complete his castle before he dies. He has no thought of slowing down. Although the castle is still just a hollow shell of cemented rocks and ornamental ironwork (Jim Bishop's regular line of business), his future plans include a moat and a drawbridge, a roller coaster mounted on the castle's outer wall, a balcony big enough to hold an orchestra, and a second castle for his wife.

Address: 12705 CO-165, Rye - Beulah, CO
Directions: I-25, turn west at highway 165 going through Rye or Colorado City approximately 27 miles to Bishop Castle.

April Fool's Day Surprise...

2008-04-07T11:43:00.004-05:00

On April 1st I experienced a once-in-a-lifetime coincidence at the local horticulture club meeting. Several weeks before the 1st, I made plans to attend the horticulture club meeting upon recommendation from a Bison Range board member, Doug Floto. Then I got a call at work from the president of the club, Mike Ramsey, who was looking for someone from the Division of Water Resources to do a presentation about the non-native shrub/tree called salt cedar/tamarisk. I agreed to do the presentation because in grad school at North Dakota State University I helped give educational seminars about salt cedar identification and control.

Fast forward to April 1st. I went to the Finney County Extension office for the hort club meeting, and as I pulled in the parking lot there was another car pulling in and I noticed the driver looking really hard at something. I assumed the person was new to the club like me and was just looking to see if he was in the right place. So I went inside the building and found the meeting room and headed out to my car to get the laptop and projector for my presentation. I opened the door and standing there was a guy I knew from grad school in Fargo, ND. In fact, he worked on part of my grad school research project. We had no idea each other was in Garden City. What a shock! It took me a couple seconds to recover and shout "Ankush! What are you doing here?", which is probably what he was wondering about me!

Turns out that Ankush has been in Garden City for only a month working at the KSU extension research station as an entomologist (insect biology). He came to the hort club meeting because he heard the topic was salt cedar control by insects, but I bet he never imagined I would be the one giving the presentation! I laughed at his email the next day which said "April has never fooled me better". I found out that his wife (from New York City) and 10-month old daughter will be arriving in Garden City in 2 weeks. I hope to make them feel as welcome as my co-workers did for me about 17 months ago!

If running into Ankush wasn't weird enough... later that same week I got a visit from another grad school friend. Lesley from Cavalier, ND (see January post about Manhattan), was in southwest Kansas with her boyfriend Mike and we spent a day going to the zoo and bowling before they headed to Dodge City and then Ashland for a bull sale, which is why they were in the area. I had to laugh because the temperature here was a cool 50 degrees but they were loving it because in northeastern North Dakota there is still snow on the ground!

First Bison Tour of the Season...

2008-03-11T13:46:00.003-05:00

At last! On Monday March 10th I gave my first bison tour of the season to an after school program group of 16 students. I was also training 2 of the 7 new guides who have signed up to help out with tours this summer. I feel all the effort that went into guide recruiting at the recent coffee hour on February 23rd and subsequent training on March 8th was well worth it!

I predict that I will do around 30 tours for the Bison Range in 2008. I also look forward to going on my own wildflower tours of the range this spring and summer. There are several species of wildflowers that I hope to photograph, including the sensitive cat's claw and the pink barrel cactus. I have decided that a plant collection is too cumbersome and photos will retain all those vibrant colors of the wildflowers, and are much easier to turn into a PowerPoint presentation! I just found out yesterday that there are 37 recorded species of grass on the Sandsage Bison Range. Talk about a hotspot of plant diversity!

Report from recent annual meetings...

2008-02-13T08:51:00.010-06:00

I attended a couple meetings that are worthy of mention. First was the Friends of the Zoo annual supper meeting on January 31st. I enjoyed hearing about the successful zoo programs for which I volunteered, and the staggering amount of money the zoo raised with the support of our generous community. The highlight of the evening was the speaker Joe Collins, a herpetologist from Lawrence, KS who showered us with his vast knowledge of reptiles and amphibians. I was impressed that Joe and his colleagues recently discovered the first new frog species in the U.S. in over 20 years in the Mississippi/Louisiana area. I was equally impressed that Joe is still alive considering he's been bitten countless times by several species of poisonous snakes over his many years in the business. There were a few flutters in the audience when Joe opened his briefcase and pulled out a bag with something moving inside it. Yes, the guest of honor was a non-venomous 8-ft black western rat snake. The species is common to eastern Kansas. I thought it was cool.

Then I attended the annual meeting of the Friends of Sandsage Bison Range on February 9th. I was voted in as a new board member and the highlight of the evening was a presentation about the old west cowboy Buffalo Jones and his many adventures. Buffalo Jones was an important part of saving the buffalo/bison from near extinction from over-hunting. We were treated to restored footage of Buffalo Jones trip to Africa in 1909 where he famously roped animals like white rhino, zebra, and giraffe, just to show the world that you don't have to kill an animal to enjoy it up close. I enjoyed learning the local history and was fascinated by the stories of the man called "The Last of the Plainsmen" by the famous writer Zane Grey.

Weekend trip to Manhattan

2008-01-13T20:54:00.001-06:00

One of my new-year goals is to get out and see more of Kansas. So, this past weekend I drove 5 hours to Manhattan to meet up with my grad school officemate and good friend, Lesley. She came to Kansas all the way from Cavalier, North Dakota, which is located in extreme northeast North Dakota, about 15 minutes from the Canada border and 15 minutes from Minnesota. Lesley and I spent about 2 years in the same 10 ft x 10 ft office with 3 other grad students at North Dakota State University in Fargo and she now is an extension agent in Cavalier. We had a great time catching up while exploring Manhattan and the surrounding area.

This was my first trip to Manhattan and I was looking forward to driving by the Konza prairie, located south of Manhattan. There wasn't much to see in January besides dead grass, so I look forward to stopping again when the wildflowers are in full bloom. I loved the landscape though. Lesley commented on how the hills look red from the grass, and I guessed that it was probably little bluestem. The Garden City area is flat land so its nice to see hills and trees, other than salt cedar, once in awhile.

We hiked around the beautiful Sunset Zoo. Our favorite exhibit was probably the flamingos, although the mating snow leopards were a close second! The zoo is set on a hillside facing west and the landscaping was pretty cool. I think I bonded with the 53-yr-old chimpanzee because she was upset when we left. I kind of teared up when I noticed how gnarled and arthritic-looking her hands and feet were. It sucks getting old no matter what species you are.

Next we stopped by the Riley County Museum and the historical Goodnow house which was built in the 1860s. We got a tour of the whole house from a volunteer and it was cool walking through the rooms that were furnished with original furniture and personal belongings. I'm glad we've advanced beyond chamber pots! I would also take my queen-sized mattress over a rope-bed any day. The funniest thing was that one of the museum volunteers has a sister that lives in Denton, NE, which is about 15 miles from my hometown of Crete. *Cue Disney music* It's a small world...

Then on Sunday we went on a driving tour. We checked out the K-State University campus and marveled at the building architecture and pondered the nightmare that must be finding a parking space in the same zip code. Then we drove across the Tuttle Creek Reservoir dam and ended up circling around the entire reservoir as we were cruising the highways. We were both amazed at the extent of tree damage caused by a recent ice storm. It almost looked like a tornado went through the whole county.

Overall it was a great weekend getaway and I was glad to have someone else to bum around with while exploring Manhattan history, culture, and nature.

About the Sandsage Bison Range...

2008-01-11T15:54:00.001-06:00

The Sandsage Bison Range and Wildlife Area is nestled directly south of Garden City. The 3,670 acre area is located west of the (old) Business Hwy 83 just east of the Sunflower Electric Plant. The Bison Range is home of the oldest publicly owned bison herd in Kansas. The FOSBR provide guided tours of the range and bison herd. Check it out on the web (http://www.fosbr.com/).

Brief History: The Bison Range was established in 1916 and the bison were first introduced on the range in October 1924 when one bull and two cows arrived from a refuge in Oklahoma.

Sandsage Prairie description: The Bison Range is one of the few tracts of native sandsage prairie that has not been converted to irrigated cropland. You'll find grasses such as sand bluestem, sand lovegrass, big bluestem, buffalo grass, blue grama, paspalum, and prairie sandreed. You'll find forbs such as sand sagebrush, buffalo gourd, bush morning glory, sand snowball verbena, spiderwort, Devil's claw, and Indian blanket flower. Some of the critters you could see include lesser prairie chicken, kangaroo rat, scaled quail, black-tailed jack rabbit, mule deer, western hognose snake, and ornate box turtle.

Point of Interest: Did you know there was a (planted) national forest in southwest Kansas? Well, for a short time anyway. Prior to becoming the Bison Range in 1916, the land was part of the federally owned and operated Kansas National Forest. By 1915 more than 800,000 seedlings had been planted, but only a few surviving trees remain to this day. As you can guess the project was a failure and the land was turned over to the State of Kansas and so the Bison Range was born.