Ledges State Park Iowa

This morning, my younger daughter Victoria and I took almost a 3 hour hike around Ledges State Park. This park is such a fun and surprising place to visit. As you drive through Boone County past cornfield after cornfield, suddenly you find yourself in a beautiful wooded area. During the summer, as long as the park isn’t flooded, you can drive down, down, down to the lower area. The Des Moines river flows near by and when it floods, the park floods too. This time of year, visitors must walk down from the top, but there are many paths both paved and unpaved that wind their way down towards the stream at the bottom.

Victoria and I arrived about an hour after sunup and for about the first hour and a half, we were the only people we saw. In spite of the warm sunny day and it being spring break, we only saw 4 people the whole time we were there. As we began walking, we saw a dead raccoon by the side of the path. We were there to photograph wildlife, but I am not so cruel as to want to post that on my blog! For a long time, we didn’t see any other wildlife, but we did see a lot of weird trees! I thought, here we woke up before dawn just to drive to Boone to see wildlife and all we see is a dead raccoon, some robins that look just like the ones at home and some animal shaped trees! Well, I thought I would share one of these trees with you.

When we got to the bottom of the park, I saw the light hit the water as it flowed over and between stepping stones that line the edge of the road. I thought I would share them with you.

As we were leaving the park, I did get some bird photos. I am still having trouble photographing birds in flight, but I am working on it. We saw a hawk fly overhead a few times, no photo. We heard lots of new bird calls, but could never see the bird to photograph it. Here is a redbellied woodpecker.

A Downy Woodpecker.

A white breasted nuthatch.

and finally I saw at least one ground animal, a chipmunk!