Afternoon Run.
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Baaa.
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South City Motors.
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My apologies to blog followers by email. You may have received a bunch of emails yesterday evening.
I am in the process of moving some content from my former blog to my new one. I hope to be done with the task soon; the emails notifications will go back to normal thereafter.
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Withdrawal.
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Machine Shed.
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It was a bone-chilling 19 degrees when we awoke Saturday morning. It felt cold, but it wasn’t the cold that chills your core and burns your face, you know that type of cold that hits you around the end of January when you wish Winter were over. Cyndie & I, along with our good friend Linnae, arrived at Fort Snelling State Park shortly after sunrise. Traces of Autumn can still be seen, but for the most part the brilliant colors are gone – almost. We found some lovely color enhanced by the rising sun along the western shore of Snelling Lake.
Our primary purpose of this trip was to photograph Whitetail deer – specifically [& hopefully] big bucks. It is that time of the year when bucks break away from their traditional habits and venture out of the thick stuff in search of receptive does in the day light.
We found such activity quickly on Picnic Island. We noticed several scrapes and rubs. Pre-rut signs galore. There were no shortages of photographers on-hand to witness this spectacle. We spent a good amount of time watching a dandy 9-pointer pursue does all over Picnic Island. There were other smaller bucks darting about and avoiding direct contact with the bigger buck.
We decided to delve further in and explore another area of the park. Pike Island, a walk in only area, was just down the road. I am glad we opted to do this. The temperature was rising as was our excitement; we had buck fever.
We walked around the perimeter of Pike Island (mostly; except the eastern third) without seeing so much as a yearling. We decided to walk a game trail up the center. There were brush piles everywhere – all kinds of places for deer to bed down for a mid-day rest. It wasn’t long and we located a small buck. As I began to photograph him I noticed there was another buck behind him – a much bigger one. I continued to shoot and eventually saw the doe that was hunkered down in the grass next to them. I think we spent the next hour hanging out with those three deer. At one point a dozen or so turkeys came wandering down the trail and just walked on by like we were not even there. That was fun. What a great day.
*Just a side note on gear, you regularly see photographers hauling out the big lenses for wildlife. Thousands of dollars of gear. With the exception of the first few landscape shot, the balance of these images were shot with a Tamron 70-300mm f/4.0-5.6 – a $449.00 lens; not a $2500 or $10k lens. The 70-300 was attached to a Nikon D700 shooting at ISO 2000 between f/5.6 – f/7.1. I am not going to lie, I would gladly shoot with a $10k lens if I had it. This is a simply demonstration that you do not need all that if you want to get out there and have a great time – especially at this location. The high-ISO performance of a full-frame sensor was beneficial given the low light.
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Eisenhower Bridge no. 4
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SD – Black Hills / Custer State Park | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 6 | Day 7
Our last day in the Black Hills we headed to Spearfish. Our travels brought us through Hill City on our way to our first stop, Silver City, situated on the West side of Pactola Reservoir. It is a cute little town nestled in the hills with a small one-room church. We existed the town through Nugget Gulch on Edelweiss Mountain Road – the wrong direction – and ended up quite a ways south of the reservoir need Clear Creek. It was a beautiful drive and worth the time; the kind of back-roading I had wanted to do if not for the snow.
Spearfish Canyon Scenic Byway was delightful as anticipated. I hadn’t been here is quite some time (Cyndie’s first time here), but it was as I remembered. We stopped at the first dam to stretch our legs and take in a bit of the canyon. There was a nice little reservoir and cascades below the dam. Our second stop heading down canyon road was at Roughlock Falls on Little Spearfish Creek off of 222. Another picturesque place to get out, tromp about and snap some photos.
Further down the canyon we had brief roadside stop at the apply named Bridal Veil Falls.
My favorite stop along Spearfish Canyon had was Spearfish Falls. Once we found the trail to it that is; the trail to the falls was a bit obscured by trees.
After a lengthy stop at the DC Booth Historic National Fish Hatchery we made our way back up the canyon. We took the long way back to Custer, crossed into Wyoming for some different, but similar views. It was a long day and I was enjoying sitting back and driving. I couldn’t resist shooting this pano at the Salt Creek Overlook off of Canam Hwy (Wyoming 85) on our way to Newcastle.
We had a wonderful week in South Dakota. The next day we woke early, packed quickly and began the 10 hour drive back home.
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