A Saturday Afternoon Hike

This has been a long, unusual winter weather-wise in the high desert of NW Wyoming. We have had way more snow than usual and the temperatures have been colder for much longer periods of time. When I got up yesterday, the outdoor thermometer read 3 degrees Fahrenheit. Then sometime around 10 pm last night the wind started to blow and this morning the temperature was 45 degrees. What a difference! And the warmer weather is now supposed to hang around for a week or more.

 With the warmer temps and bright sunshine, Ken and I decided to go for a hike this afternoon. The going was tough as we kept plunging through the snow drifts about every third step but it was worth it just to be outside enjoying the beautiful surroundings. We hiked about 4 miles, going north to visit the sandstone cliffs on adjoining BLM land. The double arches in the top photo have intrigued me for many years. The bottom hole is large enough for a person to walk through.

The second photo is a close up of the kissing pig and turtle, another favorite formation. The image below is a longer view of the same cliff with the Beartooth Mountains in the distance.

As we hiked around we were amazed to see field after field of large snow balls. Apparently last night's wind lifted small snow balls off the top of the ridges and they gathered more and more snow as they headed down hill until they lost momentum and came to a stop.

Goosed!

The goal of our recent trip to Nebraska was to view migrating sandhill cranes. We were thrilled to see and hear thousands of the large birds but we were also amazed by the sighting of what was  almost certainly more than a million geese. 

We started seeing large numbers of geese overhead almost as soon as the interstate began following the Platte River in Nebraska. The streams looked like undulating lines of skywriting overhead that went on for mile after mile after mile. At first we assumed the birds were Canada Geese but a closer look showed that they were primarily Snow Geese. Over the course of the next five days we saw some Canadas and a few White Fronts but the overwhelming majority of birds were the white and black Snow Geese.

 The birds tended to travel or feed in the corn fields with the sandhill cranes during the day and then bunk in to small lakes or on the sand bars in the Platte River during the nighttime hours.

 There were times when the sky was totally black with snow geese. The photo above looks like an insect hatch. It is pretty amazing to think that each one of those specks is a 5-6 pound bird!

The two color variations of snow geese can be seen in this last photo.