I took a lot of photos during our recent trip along the Cowboy Trail in Nebraska, and finally got a couple of subsequent trips completed, so I wanted to share these.
The photos will be shown in the order I captured them, beginning at the western end of the trail in the Valentine area and continuing to the eastern trailhead at Norfolk.
The western end of the trail started in the Sand Hills, which I learned was formed from an ancient desert. The dunes are now mostly covered in vegetation, but still very much visible.
As the trail proceeded east, we noted it ambled through rangeland, then into farmland, and finally into a more populated area.
I could identify some of the species of plants and animals we saw, but there were quite I few I didn’t know.
This photo of a bench beside the trail is typical of of the terrain you’ll see at the west end, near the Niobrara River bridge.
A couple pretty yellow flowers.
A yucca about to bloom. We call these yucca candles.
This pretty flower looks a bit like a sweet pea. Maybe a relative?
Saw this little box turtle sunning itself on the trail.
We have lots of these in Oklahoma. Don’t know the name. They look like giant dandelions.
We saw lots of these little garter snakes. This one was on its last legs (so to speak), but it was the only one I was quick enough to photograph.
These kind of look like foxgloves.
A really pretty pink and yellow flower. The petals look a bit papery.
We watched this tiny dung beetle roll its prize across the trail and up a small gravel embankment.
This huge snapping turtle was not impressed with us.
The Long Pine Creek valley was a lovely verdant surprise.
This pasture is typical of rangeland you’ll see all along the trail.
Of course, there are a few tree tunnels, too.
This is soapwort, also called Bouncing Bet. My mom had it growing in her garden when I was a kid. The bee seemed to love it, too.
It looked like some predator made short work of a yellow and black bird. I found these at the campsite in Stuart.
These trees were covered in lovely white flowers. My friend, Candy, identified them: “The tree with the white flowers is Black Locust, a great source of nectar.”
There are lots of possum grapes along the entire route. We kept riding into invisible clouds of a delightful lovely and sweet scent, and finally determined it was coming from these mounds of possum grapes.
A pretty little five-petaled white flower.
I think this is mullein.
We saw several blackberry patches. Wish they’d have been ripe!
Milkweed.
Another foxglove?
Kind of an unusual purple three-petaled flower.
Pink prairie roses.
That white stuff lining the sides of the road? Cotton from cottonwood trees. It sticks to sunscreen, lip balm, and chain lube very, very well.
And finally – sand plums! They weren’t quite ripe yet either.
We saw lots and lots of wildlife, but I was way too slow to get a photo of most of it. Besides the turtles and garter snakes, we saw whitetail deer, coyotes, turkey, countless ducks and geese, hawks, and several different kinds of lizards, including horned lizards (we call them ‘horny toads’).
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