The Silver Fox

Back in April I came across a silver fox when I was hiking up the backside of Castle Hill in Placentia.

I just learned that a silver fox is really a Red Fox with a coat color variation. "..Red foxes that are more brown and darker than red are known as "cross foxes". Red foxes that are black are called "silver foxes"." (Newfoundland and Labrador Fisheries and Resources website)

I was even quick enough to get a video!

The Red Fox diet consists mainly of small mammals (such as voles, lemmings, squirrels, hares, rabbits, and mice) in fall and winter and is augmented in Spring with nesting waterfowl and in summer with berries and plants. They are also known to eat young birds, eggs and lake trout.

Here is a rock I painted of the silver fox, and an otter too.

Hoping to get around to those posts I keep promising...now that summer is really here the days are flying by too quickly!

The Lynx

In early October I thought I'd take a drive over to Argentia and see if I remembered where the Silver Mine was located.

My favorite view - The Isaacs

Any time you can get a view of The Isaacs is a good day, and that golden hour before sunset on an early fall evening can't be beat either.

 I kept an eye out for blueberry patches, and while I found a small patch that had been unpicked in September I wouldn't say it was a blueberry picking destination.

 But that's okay, because as usual I was running out of daylight and wanted to find the side path to the Silver Mine while I could still see well.

I was a little unsure I'd picked the right spot at first, but was rewarded for my efforts in the end.

No time to go down and poke around on that day, but I intend to go back in the spring and start cutting a good path out to the water through the overgrown trees alongside the stream.  You know, before fly season begins!

After I got in my car and started driving back out I met up with a lynx on the side of the road! (Of course, only an iPhone, that's always how it is!)  Everyone got in a tizzy that I hike out there alone with wild animals like that on the loose but Mr. Lynx has little reason to be interested in the likes of me as long as there are plenty of snowshoe hares which makes up 75% of their diet.  Newfoundland lynx prefer dense undercover which is why people seldom see them.  In times when hare populations are low they will eat rodents and birds, so I think I might be a bit more than they want to try to take down!  As a hiker who is often on her own I always make sure I know what the local wildlife might consist of and what their behavior is. Mountain lions are something I take seriously but lynx is the biggest cat in Newfoundland to my knowledge so all is good!

Morning Visitor

When you come to Newfoundland you know it's likely that you will see moose, but there is other wildlife on view if you pay attention.

I wonder what our cat Celia was thinking as she stared it down on her morning walk around the campsite?

Celia on the far left, fox on the hill 

The diet of the red fox consists mainly of small mammals such as voles, lemmings, squirrels, hares, rabbits, and mice so while they eyed each other with interest I wasn't concerned about our cat's safety.

We were thinking the fox must have just had a snack because it even laid down and closed its eyes!

In the Spring they will also eat nesting waterfowl and in summer snack on berries and plants. They are also known to eat young birds, eggs and lake trout, so all the B'ys out fishing now better keep an eye on their trout.

It is finally warming up a bit more here, and today the sky is blue and the sun is blazing.

The fox stuck around longer than I thought it would, but eventually had to get on the move.

We will be on the move from the campground ourselves on June 17th; we finally found a place to call home permanently yesterday!  I wonder if I will get any backyard visitors there?

Astoria Sunrise Serenade

I'm going to post this one in "real time" because I was just too excited!  I left early yesterday morning and spent some time in the capital city of Olympia, then took a waterfall hike in the woods, and then I pointed my car toward the Oregon border.

I crossed the Columbia River just before dusk and wanted to head toward the coast to get some variety in this trip.  It was a pretty hairy ride once it got dark in the rain, but I took my time and I could tell that in the morning I would be glad I had come because even in the dark it was undeniable that the scenery was going to be fabulous.

I checked in to my hotel in Astoria and as I always do I opened my window to air out the room....and heard the unmistakable chatter of sea lions!  I wondered how I would ever go to sleep knowing that I would wake up to sea lions!

The sun was breaking through the clouds bright and early and I hustled to the docks just outside my hotel.  I hustled a little too quickly and slipped on some ice on a railroad tie, but you take the bad with the good, right?  Look at all these sea lions!!

I enjoyed watching all the little dramas unfolding in the different groups.

I'll have to look into seal behavior later, but I assume this is all in good fun...or maybe a little rivalry?

Either way no one was hurt, though one did get knocked off into the water which was a hoot.

A few were above all the nonsense.

Dignified and regal, though you should have heard the deep throated bellow that came out of him.

And he seemed as happy to greet a sliver of sun as I was!

Off to discover the coast!

Cougar Sightings in Wisconsin

I'm sure this isn't national news, but there have been 5 confirmed cougar sightings in Wisconsin since December.  The DNR is pretty sure that the recent sighting in Brookfield as well as the others are the same cougar, a young male looking for new territory which would require a mate and food source.  To their knowledge there is no breeding female here.  First a fox sighting, then a wolf sighting, will a cougar sighting be next? Guess I better be alert on the trails as I travel around the state and not just assume I am seeing dog tracks - and maybe start carrying my hiking stick just in case!  Seriously though, the risk is small to a grown adult, only 13 people have been killed in the last 100 years in all of North America.

hiking last week near on IAT in Monches, about 20 miles
from most recent cougar sighting - all I saw was deer tracks 

If you click on this Wisconsin DNR link and then click on the sightings tab you can get access to a list of the confirmed sightings accompanied by photos.  I'm not going to be hiking in Wisconsin for the next week and a half because by the end of the week I will be hiking in the Seattle area!!

Arts, Falls and Two Groundhogs

From Levi Jackson we took a few side trips, once to Berea to check out the art scene on a rainy day.

And once to walk along Cumberland Falls.  We are just suckers for a visit there! 

Was this my 4th visit?  My 5th visit? Who can keep track?

I've been there for fall color, a wintry moonbow, spring wildflowers, waterfall hikes, bears at night while I slept in my tent, and even butterflies and Easter with my mother. In comparison to all that this visit was rather uneventful, but it was fun remembering all of my previous visits as we walked along.

After leaving Levi Jackson we headed over to General Butler State Park near the Indiana border to get a little closer to home.

Once again we had half the park to ourselves, and the nicest hosts.  The cats couldn't wait to get out and explore every day and try to make friends of their own.  See who was just a few campsites over?  A groundhog set up base beneath that tree...Jewel was eager to make friends but we steered them around.

Most of the sites were on the shorter side so a visit in the summer with a larger rig might be difficult.  This park had a little more hiking though and I walked in the woods and up the hillside to the resort a few times.

Here's a better groundhog photo, though not the same specimen!  We saw one again when we drove through Clifty Falls Park in Indiana.  More on Indiana next!

Calling Kettle Moraine Home

Wayne has been off work most of the summer due to some issues with his back.  He finally got in for some minor surgery that will hopefully solve the problem.  He has bone spurs in his vertebrae that are impinging on nerves and the procedure basically shaved those down to open up the channel for the nerves that pass through.

His doctor is a partner in practice with the doctor who is the innovator of this minimally invasive procedure.  Ironically the result is similar to the carpal tunnel surgery I had last fall, though in a much more dangerous location where they are cutting bone instead of ligament!

Anyway, after already being home for weeks before the surgery Wayne was stir crazy post surgery.  A short hour down the road is the Ottawa Lake campground in Kettle Moraine State Forest so he decided to convalesce somewhere a little more scenic.

That worked for me, I just called it home too and had a shorter drive to all my work appointments for the most part.  It was also easy to dart home to do laundry and check on things there.

Of course at the state park 2 weeks is all you get before you have to move on.  When I got back from "work" every day we did a lot of nothing except go to the grocery store and walk around the campground with the kittens.

Recovery is going well, mostly light walking and ice and good judgment.  Surgery was outpatient with only a band-aid but there is still healing to be done where we can't see it.  Physical therapy starts in a week and then he gets re-evaluated a few weeks later to determine readiness for work.

We're not calling Kettle Moraine home anymore, but after a few days at home he moved on again to another location that was convenient for my work schedule.  Stay tuned to find out where!

The Long Way Back Part One

I'm not a big fan of the shortcut.  All the good things happen when you take the long way back.

So instead of taking the direct route on the TCH back to St. John's on the day before our early morning flight we left before noon and headed out for an adventure, keeping an eye peeled for wandering moose on the road, of course.

So off to the east coast of Trinity Bay I went.  After having a good laugh at the roadside ghouls in Blaketown that I featured in my Halloween post it was on to Dildo.

Oft visited for its name alone, the small village has a population of about 1200 residents.  Cory was too tired to wake up and appreciate its charms, so I looked it over from the car on my own, and even got out to battle Pokemon and captured the gym for Team Valor while I was there.  Dildo Days at the end of July sounds great with boats filling the harbor and fireworks after dark.  Maybe next year?

After Dildo my next five minute stop was in the town of New Harbour.  I spotted a cool mural depicting the Newfie Bullet which was a passenger train that crossed the island from St. John's to Port Aux Basques before the Trans Canada Highway was built.  It ran on the longest narrow gauge railway system in North America with a total track length of 906 miles.

The next thing that caught my eye was the Lassy Wall in Spaniard's Bay.  Built around 1830 it is located on the Conception Bay Highway and the purpose of the wall was to shore up the bank between the highway and Church Hill.   It was built by the members of the community who were paid in molasses, hence the name "Lassy Wall".  I like molasses, but I don't know what I think about it being used as currency.  However, I wouldn't want my community crumbling beneath me either so there you go.

Sometimes icebergs make their way to Spaniard's Bay, but that's not what I found in the water.

A seal!  Cory woke up long enough for a quick look but he wasn't as excited as I was.  Here's a closer look, he was checking me out too.

I filmed a quick 12 second movie, take a close look behind the seal and tell me what you think was in the water behind it! Not being an expert on marine life I will not hazard a guess myself.  My sister in law thought it was a whale but surely the water wasn't deep enough unless smaller whales frequent the area...

Our next stop was Bay Roberts but I found so much to photograph there that I'll keep you in suspense and share our adventure there tomorrow!

Never Enough Time in South Dakota

Whenever we pass through South Dakota we stop at Badlands National Park.  I just can't resist.

We had time for a drive through the whole park in the evening after checking into Sleepy Hollow Campground in Wall, our recommendation for a park in the area.  We also got a National Park Pass...so who knows where we will decide to go next year to take advantage of that pass?

I wasn't worried about not spotting Bighorn Sheep in Colorado or Custer because I knew we'd see them in the Badlands.  

We didn't see any big rams, but you can't have everything, right?

I couldn't wait to get up early in the morning and get into the park again, hoping to get some of that great light that makes it all worth it.  And another look at the Bighorn Sheep of course, this time from Sage Creek Road just inside the park boundary.

The prairie grasses were aglow, such a great contrast to the layers of time lurking in the background.

The prairie is what it's really about here in South Dakota, and nothing is more important to the ecosystem than the lowly prairie dog. Their burrows provide them with shelter from both the weather and predators, and many other species can take shelter in the prairie dogs' tunnels too including burrowing owls and unfortunately for them even snakes.

They aren't a favorite of the ranchers and the farmers, but their presence is critical to the overall ecological community of the mixed-grass prairie. I walked through Robert's Prairie Dog Town, trying not to alarm them too much, but intrigued by their system of relaying yips and barks to each other to warn of possible danger.

And then right across the road I walked, and immersed myself in the prairie some more.  I wandered across the grass and up and down the hills for half an hour before turning back and reluctantly heading back to the truck.

And then one last look at some bison before it was time to pack up and leave South Dakota.

I haven't read them yet, but I got the kindle editions of "Black Elk Speaks" and "Lakota Woman".  I'll be continuing my journey through South Dakota in my mind and through learning more about its history.

It's not all hiking and outdoor adventure in South Dakota, we made time for some silly fun at Wall Drug.  Where else can you ride a jackelope after all?