Thursday January 12th 2023

This was the last sunny warm day for a while. A cold front is due to pass through the area overnight. By Saturday the daytime highs are forecast in the fifties. Today was in the upper seventies with a strong wind out of the northwest.

The wind brought lots of dead leaves out of the trees overhead. The small leaves land on the roof with a sound similar to rain. It takes real concentration to know it is not rain. Some people really seem to get annoyed by the leaves. One of the campground hosts was walking along the campground road with a leaf blower this afternoon attempting to clear all the leaves. An hour after he passed by the leaves covered the road again.

The state forest service was conducting controlled burns in the park today. These small fires to clear out dead materials and underbrush really got in my way today. My attempt to drive to the visitor’s center parking lot at the prairie was blocked by thick smoke. A park ranger advised me to wait a couple of hours. Although she didn’t say I couldn’t drive through the smoke she strongly implied I’d be better off waiting until tomorrow.

I returned to my campsite and set out on foot in another direction. I found all of the forest service vehicles staging at the day use area. As I continued on the trail toward the picnic area, I found the trail blocked by caution tape and a sign. I had once again managed to find the area they were burning. My understanding is this is a one day event, but I’m surprised they picked the windiest day of the week.

Today’s bird sightings were mostly Anhingas, but out in the middle of Lake Wauberg there were several large white birds swimming. Using maximum zoom on my camera and a little additional cropping on my computer it looks like they were White Pelicans. It is to bad they weren’t closer to my side of the lake.