Dolliver State Park in Fort Dodge, IA

Earlier in the year, I visited Dolliver State Park up near Fort Dodge. It's a park similar to Ledges State Park in that it has sandstone bluffs. Dolliver's bluffs are composed of a slightly different mineral mixture than Ledges, called copperas. The park is pretty large and there are a lot of trails to explore.

 It was kind of rainy when I went, so there were some snails out and about. Here's one that was hanging out on a tree trunk. He was pretty large.

 This is where the creek that flows through the park meets part of the road so you can walk right up to it. It wasn't very high that day but it rained a lot afterwards so it might have gotten higher after I left.

 Here are some of the bluffs. There's a spot where you can get very close to the copperas and even see some petrified wood sticking out. It's very cool.

 Another view of the creek further off one of the trails. This is near the spot where you can get close to the copperas bluff.

Walking past the bridge, you end up in this forest area. There are lots of little green shoots in the area. Apparently they have a very high silica content and were used by early pioneers to make broom bristles. They're very stiff and unyielding. I had never seen them before so this was very interesting to me.

Olbrich Botanical Gardens: Outdoor Gardens

I'm late to this post, but here are the photos from the outdoor portion of the Olbrich Botanical Gardens. It was raining for part of this so I didn't get to spend as much time there as I wanted.

 Pretty allium flowers. They make the loveliest globes of purple blossoms. So nice!

 They had a lot of potted arrangements that were pretty. Lots of petunias and coleus.

 These are Nasturtium leaves! Nasturtium makes pretty flowers and are edible too!

 Here's a view of one of the fountain areas. You can see it was kind of grey and cloudy.

 It's hard to see but this was a field full of different kinds of tulips! There were a lot of colors.

 As it started raining hard, we saw this pagoda in the distance...and so we ran for it!

 But here's some closer pictures of those neat tulips first! See how pretty they are?

 Oh, and here are some snowdrops! These are so delicate and pretty too. I want to grow them.

 And another arrangement, including some decorative kale and pansies. Very colorful.

 Here's the inside of the pagoda! We took shelter for the rain here until it let up.

 The view from inside the pagoda. It was very beautiful inside and out.

 Lily of the valley!!! I think these are just beautiful and I want to grow them so badly!

 Here's more of those tulips. The whole field was just grass and tulips. It was pretty cool.

 There was a little waterfall up here. No koi in the pond here, though!

 This is a Redbud tree. I had never seen these until I moved to Iowa. They are so pretty and flower pretty early in spring, so they're kind of a harbinger that winter is really over.

I forget if these were bluebells or a flower called Dutchman's breeches or pantaloons or something like that, but they are blue and very pretty too.

Now that I've gotten all my pictures from May up, I'll start slogging through my summer pictures. They're mostly on my phone, so it might be a pain for me to upload them. We'll see.

Des Moines Botanical Center: Christmas Cactus

 I never finished putting up my photos from the botanical center back in March. Whoops. Anyway, this is a Christmas cactus. I thought this one was really cool because it was started from a cutting here in Iowa in 1810. This cactus is over 200 years old!

It had a few blooms on it. They're really pretty. I have a Christmas cactus myself, that my grandma started for me from a cutting from her plant. It's been growing really well over the past year and hopefully in another year or so it will bloom!

Tubing!

Dan and I went tubing on the Skunk River! It was a lot of fun. We started up near Ada Hayden Heritage Park. We got out near Carr Park because it turned out that where we thought we would get out was on  a different fork of the river. Oops. We had to walk to that spot and I have a million blisters now on my feet, but the tubing part was a lot of fun. There weren't a lot of people on the river, and the water temperature was really nice. Some parts of the river were too shallow and we had to get up and wade, but for the most part we could float. I saw a bald eagle fly over the river, which was super cool, and Dan spotted a deer looking at us from the riverbank. There were lots of cool little birds around and we even saw a freshwater mussel while we were wading at one point. It was really neat, and it was so quiet. We were floating through places in Ames, but from the river you couldn't tell where you were. It was like we were in a completely different world. I had so much fun (even with the walking barefoot for more than a mile and getting blisters lol) and it was my first time tubing so that was doubly fun. Next time we know where the best place is to get out so we won't have the same issue again. And Dan was really sweet and brought over epsom salts and rubbing alcohol for me so I could lance some of these blisters and get them healing. Overall, it was really fun.

Nice Weekend

I actually had a pretty good weekend, which is refreshing after the stress of final exams and the general stress of switching programs. On Friday, Dan and I went down to Saylorville Lake. I had never been there before and he had only been there once, so it was new for both of us. It was really hot out and I was sweating like crazy, but otherwise it was a lot of fun. We went down to the spillway, where they release all the water into the river. It was really open and the water was really gushing out like crazy. There were two guys there fishing with bows, which I had never seen before. They had caught a couple of big carp so I guess it works as a fishing technique. Anyway, Dan and I walked along the river, and to some of the parts of the lake further back, and then we drove around to the boat launch area so we could walk out on the rock pier in the big part of the lake. It was really cool and it made me feel at home, being out on this rock outcrop in this big lake. It was really nice. Afterwards we went to Buffalo Wild Wings. I'm not a big wing person, but Dan likes them, and I had a cheeseburger which was actually really good. Then we went back to my place and watched a Godzilla movie. I had a great day and my only wish is that I could see Dan every single day, because I love being with him.
Saturday was a laid-back day for me, just hanging out, watching Ghost Adventures and playing video games. Today I went down to Mike and Tessa's for Mike's 40th birthday party. It was great to see them again because I hadn't seen them since February, which is way too long. Since Tessa is done with school and I'm essentially working full time this summer, hopefully we'll be able to hang out together some more. And I was happy to see the kitties Satine and D'Artagnan, because they are adorable kitties.
I just finished grocery shopping and I think I'm just in time because the weather is looking like it will storm again. It stormed like crazy this morning, so much that water actually leaked in one of my windows. It wasn't a lot, but it surprised me because it had never happened before. I'm going to relax for the rest of the day, and try to be calm about starting my rotation tomorrow. I start tomorrow at 10am, hopefully everything goes really well!

Des Moines Botanical Center: Koi

 There are lots of koi in the stream that goes through the botanical center. They're really pretty fish, even though they're related to carp, which are kind of ugly looking. Some of them are really big.

 Most of the koi in the pond were orange, but they did have some of the white varieties. They are my favorite.

While I was looking at the koi, I noticed this painted turtle! Painted turtles are from Michigan, so I had to take a picture of my Michigander turtle friend.

Des Moines Botanical Center: Palm

This is some kind of palm. I took a picture of it because of the leaves. You can see that some parts of the leaves are attached to each other near the stem, but as the leaves grow outward they are separated. This actually is because of apoptosis-programmed cell death. As the leaves grow, the cells that attach the leaves to each other undergo apoptosis and die, letting the leaves separate. How cool is that?

I went fishing

I went fishing for northern pike Up North, and I caught no fish. I did, however, catch this:

Yep, that's a bald eagle sitting on the top of that tree. I've seen bald eagles in the wild before, but never has one stayed put long enough for me to take a picture. This dude hung out for almost an hour, and he was talking to another eagle that was somewhere in the woods. It was epic.

Presque Isle

Presque Isle is a little island just off of Marquette in Lake Superior. Every time I go Up North, I go to Presque Isle because there are some totally sweet rock formations you can go walk on and it's a lot of fun. It's extra cool for me because I've been able to spend the past 20 years watching the beginnings of biological succession occur and I'm a dork so I think it's awesome. This is also one of the best places to look at Lake Superior. It's hard to explain what the lake is to me. It's an integral part of my life and holds a special place in my heart. It's really hard to explain how it feels to be out on these rocks and there's no one but you and the lake, but it's awesome.

 The day I went up there it was cloudy and only 59 degrees. It was so nice. I really don't like super hot weather so it was perfect for walking around. It was also really windy so the lake was all crazy.

 I saw these little purple flowers growing in the rocks. I've never seen them before and they're cute. Succession in action! Someday the rocks will all be dirt and there will be trees growing here.

 Lake Superior gets really deep really fast. There's no sand here at all and the bottom of the lake is solid rock. It literally drops off from standing on these rocks to about 20 feet deep right away.

 There was enough wind that the lake had some pretty powerful waves coming in to shore. It took me about ten tries to get this picture right as the wave is crashing over itself.

 There's a lot of copper and iron in the cliffs, which is why mining was such a big industry in the Upper Peninsula. The orange colour is the iron.

 Another picture showing how unsettled the lake was. I like this one because I inadvertently caught the spray from a wave in it.

I'm standing on top of the cliff here and looking down at the water. I'm probably thirty or forty feet up in the air. After you hit the water it's about sixty feet deep there. Absolutely crazy. I don't recommend jumping off; there's a powerful undertow right there in the water. There's always a couple of stupid people who jump off for fun and die every year. Respect the lake, seriously.
That's my pictures of Presque Isle this year. I really enjoyed going back and being able to stand there again, just me and the endless water.

Baby apple trees at the apple orchard

They're cute, okay?

Night Blooming Cereus

I meant to post this ages ago, but it's a bloom from a plant my grandmother has. She says it's a night-blooming Cereus. Anyway, I guess it only blooms once a year, in the evening, and the bloom dies after that. So she brought one over to show us.

Lady's Purse

This is a weird flower at the Phipps Conservatory. It's called a lady's purse.

Silkworms

There's a butterfly room in the Phipps Conservatory, and in this case they had silkworms. I'd never seen real silkworms before, and they're pretty cool!