Minnesota Nature Tour By Water

When we were traveling the country and living in California, I felt like I was constantly taking pictures of the awesome nature surrounding us. And the other day, I realized how much I missed that.

Just because our Wandering Dolphin is stationary right now, and we’ve lived in this state for practically our entire lives, doesn’t mean that we can’t (or shouldn’t) enjoy the beauty that it has to offer.

When you live in a place for a long time, you tend to stop seeing the details and beauty surrounding you. It becomes so common that you tend not to focus on it or appreciate it the way you do when you visit someplace new.

With that thought in mind, we set out on the water for a nature tour. We wanted to disconnect from the rest of the world. So, armed with just a camera and no other technology, we hunted for whatever we could find — and we found a few neat things.

Our first encounter: an osprey eating a fish on a dead tree branch.

We didn’t want to make him nervous, so we kept our distance.

Andy drove the boat so I could take pictures and look for critters. Piper and Teddy enjoyed the ride.

We saw a group of what I thought were possibly grebes.

But upon closer inspection, they looked like juvenile common loons.

I was keeping an eye out for anything — turtles sunbathing on a log, a deer at the water’s edge.

We’ve seen muskrats swim near the dock, so I looked for those, too. No luck. Though I was happy with the osprey sighting, I was beginning to get discouraged, thinking maybe it was too chilly or too late in the day for much activity. We hadn’t even seen a great blue heron by this point, and they are so numerous on the lake.

“Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

But we rounded a corner of reeds and found one.

It was a relaxing evening on the water, and our minds had a chance to reconnect with nature and with each other.

As we headed back to the dock at sunset, we made a quiet promise to one another that we would do something like this again soon. And we would try to take the time to enjoy our surroundings and not overlook it.