A Nice Afternoon

Yesterday afternoon was very nice-it was 80 degrees and sunny, with a slight breeze.  We took advantage of that to sit by the firepit for a while with the dogs.  They just kinda made their spot in the shade and stayed there instead of running around like they usually do.  Here's a few pictures.

My "Big Doggie", Ruger

My "Little Girl", Roxie

Both dogs enjoying the shade together

Looks like it's going to be another nice day today!

Time Flies

Time flies when you're having fun, they say. It also flies when you have WAY too many things going on at once. The last few weeks have been that way for me.


I'm hoping to get out again into the woods and do some more hiking and get some great pictures very soon.

As I was getting ready for work this morning, I heard a different kind of bird making noise in my yard--it was a male phesant! We had a female one that hung around a few years back, and got her to the point where we could throw handfuls of birdseed and she would run up and eat it. Hopefully we can make the same progress with this guy. I put out some corn for him this evening when I saw him again, so will be watching for him to come and eat it. Here's a picture of him!

A Walk On The Munger Trail

I had a nice walk on the Munger Trail last night.  I only walked a couple miles of it, but really enjoyed it.  Lots of great scenery--you can go off the beaten path in several spots and walk around in the woods.  Here's some photos~

Live Loon Cam!

A friend showed me this cool loon cam!
There's a man by the name of Larry Backlund in central Minnesota who has had loons nesting on his property for over a decade, and he has this cool way to observe them. Here's a quote from the site about the webcam.

"About The Live Loon Cam:
The LIVE Loon Cam is a live webcam on the nest of a common loon. Located in central Minnesota, USA, this nest has been the site of many incredible moments. Larry Backlund is our resident loon expert and shares what he can see from his vantage point on the edge of his property. This nest is 100% wild and 100% natural!

A loon family has taken residency of Larry's nesting platform for over a decade ever since Larry first started putting one out. New for 2010, we are now bringing you sound and night vision. We also encourage you to follow along with Larry in his regularly updated blogs. If you want to interact, you can head to our Loon Chat Room and now for the first time, you can stay connected as a fan on Facebook."

Here's a link so you can see!
http://www.mnbound.com/live-loon-cam/

The loon wasn't in it's nest when I looked, but I'll keep checking. If you know of any other "animal cams", let me know and hopefully I can post it here.

A Visit To The Grand Canyon

This past Labor Day weekend, we took a drive to the Grand Canyon in Arizona.


We were in awe of it from our first peek through the trees as we drove next to it going into the park. We couldn’t come close to doing all the things there are to do there in the time we had, but took advantage of many of the scenic pull-off spots and took pictures and video. A few spots had trails you could walk on to get different views of the canyon. Pictures can’t describe how fascinating this place is.



If you’ve been wanting to go to the Grand Canyon, I would highly recommend it. If you are a camper and don’t want to spend a lot of money for a campsite, Ten-X Campground, just south of Tusayan at the South Rim would be a good choice. It was $10 per night with a minimum of 2 nights. They have tent camping and pull through sites. We were tenting it so I don’t know about power hook-ups. You can get water from spigots around the campground, they have “outhouse” type toilets, and the campsites are spacious. I was worried about it being kinda “desert-y” since it was Arizona, but there were plenty of trees and grass-even a little humidity during the day. Temperatures were in the 80′s during the day, and about 55 at night.

Here’s a link if you want information about the campground.

http://www.fs.fed.us/r3/kai/recreation/campgrounds/TenX.shtml

Here's a photo album of our trip.