Annual Pilgrimage to Crex Meadows

Last weekend, my sister, Holly the Pibble and I piled into the car for the annual visit to Crex Meadows in Grantsburg, Wisconsin to experience the Sandhill Crane migration.  I love Crex Meadows, it's one of my most favorite places in the world.  I could easily spend a couple days just driving around on all the roads through the wildlife area to see what's going on.  There are so many different types of habitat there, so you never know what you're going to see.  We were pretty excited to see these two adult Bald Eagles sitting on an Osprey nesting platform.

I did manage to get a photo of this pair in flight also.

There's a lot of water in the Crex Meadows wildlife area, from lakes to rivers and small streams and creeks.  This guarantees spectacular photo opportunities around almost every curve.....

The tamaracks were all displaying their golden fall colors.  It was neat to see them interspersed with the evergreens.  (Green & gold was appropriate for this adventure in Packer land!)

Holly is a very good traveler and loves any sort of new adventure.  She was happy the weather was warm enough to keep her head out the window.

Some parts of the wildlife area are quite boggy and this area of Wisconsin hadn't experienced a killing frost yet this fall, so I found these pretty fungi when Holly and I went off-road for a little walk.  Don't know what they are, but I thought they made a really pretty photo.

Pretty yellow leaves covered the roadway in this area sheltered from the strong winds.

And, of course we saw the sandhill cranes.  They are one of my favorite birds and I was thrilled to see this pair standing in an open field close to the road.

And there were plenty of flock flyovers also.  Such beautiful birds in flight.  I never get tired of watching them and even though this was a really quick and short trip, I'm glad we took the time to visit Crex Meadows again.