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Weird Winter Weather
Weird Winter Weather
This winter has been one of the weirdest that I can remember as far as the weather. It has been a rollercoaster as far as the temperature goes. This December and January has truly been full of surprises. Almost no snow with a brown Christmas. Rain instead of snow several times due to high temperatures. Our family planned a trip to Cabo in Mexico to get away from the cold and spend time together from January 17-26. It turns out that it was below zero for the first part of the trip while we were away but has warmed up to record highs (in the 50's) this week after we returned. The day after we returned, Fort Ridgely had the Candlelight Walk with no snow and such muddy conditions that we could not have people walking on several trails.
The lack of snow made it possible for the crew at the park to cut some excess brush and small trees in various parts of the park in late December. These 2 pictures were taken near airplane hill on the east side of the park shortly after Christmas.
Mostly sumac trees cut here
Mostly wild plum trees cut here and piled up in the ravine going down to the old primitive campground.
Horse Campground Part of Fort Ridgely
Horse Campground Part of Fort Ridgely
A not so well-known gem of Fort Ridgely is the Horse Campground which is several miles from the main part of the park. It can be reached by taking the gravel road north and west from near the historic site and then descend into an area that is at the end of a gravel road that descends into the valley made by Fort Ridgely Creek. It can also be reached from Fairfax by taking county road 29 past the Mayflower Golf Course and turning left on the first gravel road after the bridge over the creek. About a mile on this road leads to the gravel road on the left. There is a sign at the turnoff for the Horse Campground. The caption below is a quote from Joanne Svendsen.
"The rentable cabin at the horse camp area is called the ‘Farmhouse’. There are photos and more information about it on our website here. It costs $85 per night to rent, and is available May 1 through the third weekend in October. You don’t need to have a horse to stay at the farmhouse.
However, you do need a horse to stay at the horse camp, or be with a group of people that have horses. Regularly we have people without horses make reservations up there when the main camp fills up, unfortunately, even though the website plainly tells people not to."
There are 8 stalls like this for people to put their horses into.
There are many electrical hookups for camping and a high tie line to tie horses to.
There are lots of trails for riding horses and hiking. A second option for the Fair Ridge bike trail from Fairfax ends with an overlook of the campgrounds. You can hike the trails from here and leave your bike at the lookout or return to the main trail and go on to Airplane Hill in the main portion of the park.
This bridge crosses Fort Ridgely Creek near the red dot in the last picture. The other crossing is through the water and can be used only during dry weather.
Most of the trails go through the woods. I saw a group of about 10 deer when I walked this trail on February 1,
The north trails in the map have prairie with woods on one side and corn fields on the other side.
This is the bathroom building.
A new concrete corn hole game has been installed next to the bathrooms and also in the main campgrounds in the other part of the park.
The creek flows through kaolin deposits behind the campground. Kaolin is a clay that is mined in a number of places in the area along the Minnesota River.
These ponds that can be seen on the left side of the road as you leave the campgrounds were a kaolin mine.
Annual Candlelight Walk at Fort Ridgely on January 27
Annual Candlelight Walk at Fort Ridgely on January 27
Each year's Candlelight Walk at Fort Ridgely is different. Last year we had lots of snow. We put snow in the bottom of the bags and candles in it. This year there was no snow so sand had to be substituted for snow to hold up the candles. Here are a couple pictures of putting the candles out and then after dark showing how beautiful and magical it was. Several planned trails had to be substituted for ones that were not so muddy.
Candles being put on the road to the campgrounds as the path through the prairie below the chalet was too wet and muddy.
Some of the volunteers that put out the candles
Path through the prairie above the chalet
Line for hot chocolate outside the chalet
My wife's phone and one of the paths
Selfie with Becky.
Minneopa First Day Hike
Minneopa First Day Hike
A number of state parks across the state start the New Year with a first day hike. Kelsey Moe, the area naturalist for area parks, guided the hike at Minneopa this year. She had several stops along the way and taught us about tree rings and what they say about the tree and what it went through each year.
Kelsey at one of the stops.
Over 100 people showed up and walked the 2 mile hike. It was cold that day but as you can see everybody dressed for the cold weather.
Becky and I had to drive by the bison after the hike was done.
Baker Cabo Adventure
Baker Cabo Adventure
This is not about Fort Ridgely just like the above Minneopa walk was not. I send this to family and friends that are interested in our adventures and what we have been up to and I hope you will like what I put here too. We were not able to get together with our daughters for Christmas or Thanksgiving, so they proposed that we go to somewhere warm and one of them suggested Cabo. I had not heard of Cabo but was fascinated as I learned more about this place. We did not go on the normal vacation where everything is planned for you and you stay at an expensive resort. Our daughters reserved 2 Airbnbs in which we rent a whole house and buy and cook our own food or go to restaurants. Our first was in Cabo San Jose and the second was not far from Cabo Pulmo. Both of these places are at the end of the long peninsula (Baja California) that extends down from California all along the west coast of Mexico. It does not go down as far as Acupulco.
There is so much that I could say about our time there but since this is supposed to be a nature blog, I thought I would show you some of the similarities and differences between nature in Minnesota and this semidesert area, I'll start with birds.
Turkey vultures like these can be found in Minnesota and often fly over Fort Ridgely. These landed on an electric pole next to our first Airbnb.
The Pacific coast has the California scrub-jay which like our blue jays make very raucus noises. The jay in this picture is a Xantus's scrub-jay that is a subspecies of the California scrub-jay only found in Cabo.
I thought this was a female northern cardinal like we have in Minnesota. It turns out this was a pyrrhuloxia or desert cardinal found only in southwest USA and north of Mexico City in Mexico.
All these birds and more not in the picture were waiting near some fishermen's boats at one beach we stopped at hoping they would throw out some fish or their remains. Notice the turkey vulture, brown pelican (Minnesota pelicans are the American white pelican) and many different types of gulls.
This is a gilded flicker and is similar to our northern flicker but is only found in SW USA and very western Mexico.
This is a Costa's hummingbird and we saw many flying around our first airbnb. It helped that there were lots of these trumpet flowers in the garden behind the house. This one is going deep inside a trumpet flower to get nectar.
Two ash-throated flycatchers atop a Mexican giant cactus (its actual name).
These cool birds are crested caracaras. They are a bird of prey and are found all across Mexico and most of South and central America. These two were nice enough to pose for me atop another Mexican giant cactus. There was one with the group of birds mentioned above by the fisherman's boats.
Those were only a few of the birds we saw. Butterflies were also abundant even now in the winter.
This butterfly is from the same family as the monarch but never ventures as far north as Minnesota. It is still royalty and is named Queen.
This is a Mexican fritillary butterfly
This is a Pipevine swallowtail. Once in a while this butterfly is found in Minnesota, It is related to our black swallowtail.
Laviana White-Skipper
This smaller butterfly is called Dorantes Longtail. The unique flower it is pollinating was growing on some sand dunes near our second Airbnb.
White-patched skipper
Marcellina sulphur on a tall aloe flower.
Ceraunus blue is a very small butterfly seen everwhere on small desert flowers.
A honeybee on a very small flower called Seri sandmat. It grew in mats over the sandy dry soils and is native mainly to Cabo.
This is a tarantula-hawk wasp and it is on a milkweed called rush milkweed.
Our trip to Cabo was mainly for us to be together as a family and do adventures together. I am very thankful that my family is supportive and helps me see things in nature that they as well as I are interested in seeing. I took my camera on walks that we did together and ones that I did alone. I showed them things that I had seen and they shared what they saw. My two daughters took a Master Naturalist course in Montana before Becky and I did our course here.
This is a very small portion of the around 1000 pictures I took in Cabo. Half were of family and places we saw. The rest were of nature like the ones above. I sent 163 observations to iNaturalist to be identified and logged for scientists throughout the world. There were 108 different species among those pictures. If you want to see more like the ones above, you can go to iNaturalist.org and look for bibaker. That is my username. I have been sending observations for over 4 years and have over 7500 of them recorded with 1770 different species. The most recent observations are from Cabo but over half of them have been from Fort RIdgely and the area around it. Kelsey and a group of us are getting together next month to explore the possibility of having a Bioblitz at Fort Ridgely. Observers from all over the state would come, observe as many species as possible and report them to iNaturalist.
There have been some spectacular sunrises and sunsets in Minnesota this winter. I have finished at least one update with pictures of some I have seen. These two pictures are of a sunrise that we saw from the roof of our second Airbnb looking out over the ocean.
Before I close I have to show you the other thing we saw from the second Airbnb when we looked out to sea. We often had binoculars out and were watching whales out in the long bay from Cabo almost up to the border with California. Humpback whales migrate through this time of year and could be seen below in the bay. They splashed, dove back down or just came up to breath out with large spurts of air. The first picture was taken from a balcony in the Airbnb, the second from the beach below the house and the third is a link to a video our son in law Jeffrey put on Facebook taken while we were on a boat that went out and got very close to this young whale and its mom. Turn on the sound to hear the reactions to it being so close.
2 humpback whales splashing and spouting .
2 different whales jumping out of the water.
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