Making a winter run

Since this was a holiday weekend, I  suggested that my family take a drive out to one of the state parks. We ended up going to Meramec State Park, which is about 75 miles from our house. My parents and I picked up my sister Joanne, who lives just two minutes from us, and the four of us hit the road. We had just had a quick bowl of cereal, so we stopped for a second breakfast at McDonalds after about 40 minutes. We read the paper. We worked on crossword puzzles together. We noticed the restaurant was starting to serve lunch...

Fortunately it was only another half hour or so to get to the park. We took a side road first, the "spur road", which took us up onto a high ridge with pine trees. The woods around there are mostly deciduous, which are bare and gray at this time of year, so the deep bright green of the pines was really eye-catching. The bare trees meant that there was a long view through the woods on either side.

We had to turn around at the end of that road and go out the same way, but from there it was only a minute to get to the visitor center. We've been in there many times, but we always have to walk through the exhibits! Favorites are the huge chunk of rock full of gastropod fossils that are partly crystallized and very sparkly, and of course the giant aquarium. While we were looking at the fish, a group that seemed to be two or three families traveling together, with a whole bunch of kids, came in - so it was fun to watch them looking at the fish!

We left the visitor center and Dad thought he made a wrong turn - so he overcorrected and made an actual wrong turn, and we ended up at a picnic area we hadn't been to before. We might as well get out and look around while we were there... and fairly quickly ended up in a creek bed. That happens a lot with us.

(I will be putting photos in at this point, and while most of them were mine, there are several that my dad took with his camera. This means there will actually be pictures with me in them!)

That's me on the left and Joanne on the right.

Critters!

This week my dad finally started putting birdseed out again. We usually feed the birds in the winter but the supply had run out and it took a while to get over to the hardware store. He still has to fill the feeders but he tossed seed out on the patio, on the back steps and on the cinder blocks out near the grass. The immediate result: squirrels!

We got some birds eventually, too, but the squirrels have been crowding the patio in their eagerness to forage here. Not only do we have sunflower seeds, but Dad also got some corn still-on-the-cob, and even tossed out some hazelnuts that he said had gone stale. Time for a party!

There are six squirrels that I can spot in this picture - two by the steps, two in the cinder blocks and two in the yard just beyond that. 

I'm not sure where that greenish tinge at the bottom came from...

Anyway, here's a closeup of the squirrel in the block. There have been times when all four holes were occupied, with a squirrel on top as well! (Also note the flattened remnants of the pumpkins I put out after Halloween...)

Finally, here is a picture of something I gave my mom for Christmas. I bought it at the Miner's Castle visitor center. It's a ranger doll, and it looks just like me!

Well, it's mainly the hair that makes it - this is pretty much what mine does if I don't tie it up or braid it. You should see it when I've just washed it and then brush it out - POOF!!!

It's my very own little avatar, that my mom can keep with her when I'm away park rangering this summer*. I just have to be careful not to do anything to upset her, in case she decides to start sticking pins into it...

*I am still applying for National Park seasonal jobs for this year, but my default assumption is that I will get a position somewhere!

Alternative Uses For Old Halloween Decorations

Neither my mom or I felt like going to all the trouble of cooking and scraping our jack-o-lanterns after Halloween, so I went and set them on the back patio, to see if squirrels would go for them.

After a couple of days with no activity, I went out and put some birdseed - mostly sunflower seeds - inside each pumpkin, and a little around the mouth of each one. Today when I was outside I took the lid off of one of them, to see if that made any difference.

A few hours later...

Scenes around the house

I'm taking a moment to post some photos of my yard that I've taken over the last few days.

Actually, the first few are of the bird feeder hanging from the eaves just outside the backdoor. This is not your typical bird feeder. It's an upside-down feeder, with the holes placed under the perches!

The upside-down feeder is filled with thistle seed to attract goldfinches, but it's the upside-down-ness that really draws them. They have no problem at all simply flipping upside down for a few seconds to grab a seed, and the bigger birds like sparrows and house finches can't manage it! For a long time we hadn't seen any goldfinches for a while, just the bigger house finches or purple finches, which seemed to be bullying them away. Then when we got the upside-down feeder, we started seeing goldfinches again! And we found out that they were still around in the winter - but they lost their color! Instead of the bright canary-yellow (on the males, anyway) they are a drab gray-brown with hints of yellow.

Touring the neighborhood

The other day I went for a walk to the park down the street. I am very lucky, because my house has a city park right behind the backyard, and another park just a block away! This is my green space, and it's a great place to go for a walk and get outside.

This time around, I decided to take some pictures to post here, since I'll probably write about going to the park as my main "rambling in nature", when I'm not taking a special trip somewhere else.

Enjoy your tour! We'll start with the park at the end of the street - it's a dead end street, so there are no roads bordering the park, just touching here and there. There's a nice asphalt path going around it.

Turning left...

 I love that there are a lot of trees here, and not just open space.

Heading south

Today we took yet another scenic drive! This time it was just my parents and me. We drove south of St. Louis, down into the St. Francois Mountains - in fact St. Francois State Park was our first stop (after breakfast at Burger King...) This is one of our go-to parks for "getting our nature fix", and we almost always go there to see wildflowers in the spring, and fall colors in the autumn. The fall colors aren't turning out to be as spectacular this year, but there were a lot of individual trees that had some nice color.

We drove around the main road, and through the campground - all the sites were full for a Halloween event that's happening tonight! There were a lot of pumpkins and decorations around - it looked like fun, and it was definitely perfect weather for camping. In fact, it was actually hot out! It felt strange to be wearing shorts outside when a week ago I was wearing my fleece jacket and stocking hat inside the visitor center at Miner's Castle!

We stopped at the picnic area on our way out to check out Coonville Creek, a beautiful little Ozark stream. There's a gravel bar right there, so you can get down to the water.

There are little fish in that pool - minnows, but also some bigger little ones. I tossed bits of gravel in, one at a time, to watch them dart for it to see if it was food. A regular feeding frenzy!

Leaves on the water.

Little frog on the leaves! This is about life size.

Apple Run

Yesterday my parents and sister and I went on our traditional trip out to Calhoun County in Illinois to buy apples. It's as much about the scenic drive as it is about the apples, although they are certainly delicious! We always cross the Mississippi River at Alton and drive upstream along the Great River Road, along the bluffs. We stopped this time at the tiny town of Elsah for a picnic at the little park there, which is by a spring. A family with two little kids got there just after us, so we got to enjoy watching them on the playground!

We drove on past Grafton to Pere Marquette State Park. We didn't have time for a real hike, but we did walk a little ways up the trail near the parking lot. It was nice to get out into the woods, even though we could still hear the traffic just below.

Actually, it took us a few minutes to get past this gorgeous sugar maple near the parking lot!