Scenic Explorer

I visited Boerner Botanical Gardens last month and had an enjoyable walk around the grounds. While its not as big as other botanical gardens I’ve been to, it does have a nice variety of plants and flowers. It also has a very large rose garden.

There were a lot of dragonflies around at Wehr Nature Center last weekend. Here’s one of them.

Here are two photos of Mallard Lake and the Falls at the Wehr Nature Center.

Also from the nature hike at Wehr, some of the many wildflower photos. I will be adding more to the gallery as soon as I sort through them all.

I went for a nature walk at the Wehr Nature Center over the weekend and saw quite a few butterflies out and about. In fact, I think I’ve seen more butterflies in my last few weeks in wisconsin than I have seen anywhere else. I’ve also seen a lot of dragonflies around and have dozens of photos of them to go through yet.

Here are two views of a fairly large yellow butterfly that was quite a ways away.

I decided to explore the downtown Milwaukee area this morning, specifically the waterfront. I started out at Veterans Park around 9am, rode down to Lakeshore State Park, back up to Big Bay Park in Whitefish Bay, down to Brady Street for the Festival, back to the Art Museum to check out the art fair there, then back to Veterans Park. All in all, I figure I biked about 15-20 miles. This was my third trip to Milwaukee’s downtown area since interviewing here in February and I am rather impressed with it. Not only are the paths along Lake Michigan in great shape and provide some really great scenery of the city, but the Riverwalk is a great way to stroll along the Milwaukee River while stopping at some great shops (The Cheese Mart and Milwaukee’s Public Market to name a few). Its also really great that many streets have either dedicated bike lanes or are wide enough to allow for bikes and cars to share the same road, which has not been the case in most places I’ve lived.

Here are a few photos from the day’s cycle around Milwaukee…

I just finished putting together a collection of 13 images of wildflowers from southeastern Minnesota and central Wisconsin. I took the photos on my way into Wisconsin about 2 weeks ago with stops in Great River Bluffs State Park (MN) and the Wisconsin Dells Area. You can see the rest at the MN and WI Wildflower Gallery

While hiking along the nature trails at the International Crane Foundation in Baraboo, WI I came across this little guy, who was very hard at work at getting as much pollen as he could. I think the small tree he was on was a dogwood, but I’m not really sure as I’m not very good at recognizing different kinds of trees.