Sunday February 25th 2024

Today’s weather was a clone of Saturday and my activities were pretty much the same as well. Even though I did the same things, I had different results and observations.

Near noon, after a very leisurely breakfast I walked to the day use area on Lake Wauburg. There were fewer boaters than yesterday, but more people around. Today seemed to be a day for family hikes with the family dog. I saw several group of mom, dad, a grand parent or two along with two or more kids and a dog on the trails. It gets a little interesting when some of the dogs meet.

The turtles were in the same location as yesterday. One additional turtle had joined the sunbathing experience. Along with the turtles were two black water snakes. An “expert” looking at the snakes while I was there declared them to be venomous cotton mouth snakes. I have no reason to dispute the identification. All I know is they were black snakes that swam in the water. I am not getting near them either way.

During the afternoon I drove to the prairie again. Today, the wild horses were in view from the observation tower. They were a long way away and binoculars or a camera zoom were required to identify that the brown and black spots were actually horses. I’ve included a well zoomed and cropped picture in this blog entry.

After a few minutes on the observation tower, I ventured along the trail out onto the prairie. Keeping to the trail on the high ground, I walked along the edge of the prairie to an area where the water on the prairie passes under the trail. As is the case elsewhere in the state park, the water level is high on the prairie. Where the water passes under the road, the channel of water is deeper than the general prairie area. There were three young alligators trying to catch some sun.

My last adventure of the day was another walk to Lake Wauburg just before sunset. There were still a lot of people fishing and a few waiting for the sunset. All of the basking turtles and the snakes were below the surface. I still haven’t seen any of the typical water birds. The egrets and herons must be hiding somewhere else.