It's Crane season...

This weekend finds me headed to the last few places in Nebraska that I've yet to visit. Tomorrow, I'll return to Valentine once again. Today, the afternoon was spent chasing and admiring Sandhill Cranes in the Platte River valley.

I witnessed the cranes once on a family trip many years ago, but had not been back to see the migration since I started photographing Nebraska. This always surprises people.  I did my best to get some interesting photographs with my limited gear, and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. It's an amazing site to see thousands upon thousands of these elegant birds flying through the sky and coming to rest on the Platte River at night.

February

A few photographs from a one-day trek across north-central Iowa to see places I'd never seen before...

Places visited: Cedar Falls, New Hartford, Parkersburg, Aplington, Austinville, Ackley, Iowa Falls, Alden, Popejoy, Dows, Rowan, Alexander, Meservey, Thornton, Swaledale, Clear Lake, Garner, Duncan, Britt, Hutchins, Wesley, Algona, Whittemore, West Bend, Rodman, Cylinder, Emmetsburg, Mallard, Havelock, Pocahontas, Pomeroy, and Rockwell City, Iowa.

Kansas and Home Again

A few photographs from the last day of my meandering...

Visited: Dodge City, Jetmore, Ness City, Ransom, WaKeeney, Ogallah, Ellis, Hays, Plainville, Zurich, Palco, Damar, Bogue, Hill City, Edmond, Logan, Speed, Glade, Phillipsburg, Prairie View, Almena, Long Island, and Woodruff, Kansas.

We know this world is good enough because it has to be

Tucumcari is a long, long way from home. So I began the trip home by visiting the Oklahoma panhandle and found my way to Dodge City, Kansas for the night. I traveled through what have to be some of the least populated areas of the United States, where "towns" are 30-40 miles apart and there are far more roadrunners than humans. Tomorrow is western Kansas and home!

Some thoughts..

New Mexico Highway 406, which runs from Clayton up to Kenton, Oklahoma, is a fantastic drive. Incredible isolation and desert-like environment, then through rocky outcroppings with plenty of elevation changes and curves.

Kenton is one of the most fascinating places I have ever been. It's an incredibly small place in an impossibly remote location, located very near the northwest corner of the Oklahoma panhandle. If you ever really want to get away, I saw signs for a bed and breakfast near the Black Mesa Reserve, just a few miles outside of Kenton.

Tucumcari is very nearly heaven for a photographer interested in disappearing America. Much of the area is like a slowly decaying time capsule, a shadow of what it once was, but with enough preservation that there's still some life to the place.

I've learned that there is a very narrow slice of the Texas panhandle that should belong to New Mexico. Due to a old surveying error, the Texas state line is a handful of miles further west than it should be. If you look at a map, New Mexico's border with Oklahoma and the Texas panhandle don't quite line up as they should, and there are many border towns that should rightfully be in New Mexico, not Texas.

Visited: Tucumcari, Logan, Nara Visa, Clayton, Rita Blanca National Grasslands, and Seneca, New Mexico. Dalhart and Texline, Texas. Kenton, Boise City, and Keyes, Oklahoma. Elkhart, Rolla, Hugoton, and Moscow, Kansas.

Post title: John K. Samson - Winter Wheat