Here is a cold prairie walk for this #wednesdaywalk by @tattoodjay
January and February are the worst two months for cold in my area. But it is better to keep up the walking habit for health and deal with the harsh cold weather. Out in the prairie I spotted a raccoon skull buried in snow looking kind of ominous. Sort of like seeing a cow skull in sand in the desert.
Winter seems to kill off all sorts of things like this pale faced hornet colony. Without the leaves on the tree you can spot many of these huge hornet nests abandoned in the trees. I believe the queen hibernates under tree bark and emerges to begin building a new nest in spring. The whole colony dies off each winter except for the queen.
The sky was dark gray and overcast, but there were a few sunrays breaking through in areas.
Earlier in the week I had tried going for a walk here with my fiance but the snow had melted then froze again making it too slippery to walk without cleats.
Here she is trying to walk on the crunchy and slippery ice. We ended up having to turn back after slipping a few times. It would have been a nice walk because the sun was out.
Now with our cleats attached to our shoes we are able to walk here. But now we are missing the sun.
All the little pond areas are frozen solid. We didn't attempt walking out on the ice just in case it had a thin area.
Instead we just walked the prairie land looking at the desolate landscape.
I did happen to see a few #featheredfriends trying to deal with the harsh winter. This is a red tailed hawk looking out in the fields for voles. More soon on this guy for #featheredfriday (he did manage to catch some prey).
Now the walk has ended, the cleats are strange to walk on and seem to reduce shock absorption of your shoes. At least we weren't slipping everywhere this time. The water tower in the background signals we are coming out of the desolate prairie and back to civilization. After our walk we went to an Indian restaurant and got hot chai tea to warm up.
That's all for now thanks for looking :-)
Beautiful place and amazing snow. Have a nice day,
Snow is probably pretty rare for you to see over there right?
Ahhh, yes, very familiar with the ice-snow combo. Happens every time it snows here because it doesn't stay cold enough during the day to keep the snow fluffy.
Beautiful shots! Of course the snowy skull was my favorite. Second favorite was your superbundled fiancee. :)
I brought the skull home with me for future photoshoots. My poor fiance was really having a tough time, but I was the one that actually slipped and fell in a clumsy dr. evil sort of way then we decided to go home.
That ice is deadly.
Looking forward to the skull shoot!
Hopefully it will turn into something creative, otherwise maybe one of my tarantulas can web it up in a spooky way.
yessssssssssss
What kind of cleats do you use? I rely on Yak Trax to walk on icy surfaces safely.
I used to use yak trax but they always seem to eventually fall apart so I started using these instead. They work even better than yaks in my opinion. https://limmgroup.com/products/traction-cleats
Yeah, the rubber does tend to wear through, especially under heavy use, making them essentially a consumable, disposable option. That is a downside.
I also noticed some fancy all metal chain ones that might last longer. They might get rocks stuck in them though.
I am always impressed by the posts you share. All the pictures that are displayed are very good
Thanks for looking :-) it was super cold out on this walk.
You're welcome. Yeah right it looks like that.
👍👍👍
Thanks :-)
ahahaha. I see that you are frozen
the sun in winter is frost.
Yeah its even more cold outside on the sunny days.
Cold walk!
Seems the worst part of winter here is mid january to mid february. All the ice makes it a bit difficult to walk without ice cleats.