Black Dog Preserve

I thought about doing the usual visit to the wildlife refuge today (the Long Meadow unit of the Minnesota Valley National Wildlife Refuge), but since it's fall and the prairie flowers are in bloom I opted for the Black Dog Preserve. It's about a 20 minute drive from home, a very welcome change from the 4+ hours of driving the past couple weekends. 

There's only one 2-mile trail in the Black Dog, and it doesn't look like it gets a lot of use based on the overgrowth in the initial stages. There were some good views and lots of flowers to be seen.

At about the halfway point, the trail opens up as Black Dog Lake comes into view on the left, with a small pond/marshy area on the right. There were a bunch of frogs jumping off the trail and splashing into the pond, a little muskrat house, a few deer and lots of birds. And snails. I stopped once to look at something on the ground, then noticed a snail slowly moving across a leaf. As I watched it, I saw more and more snails around me. It's really cool watching them inch their way along, eating bits of grass and such.

And that pretty much concludes my hike. With only 2 miles to walk there's not a great chance of seeing something exciting like a bear or wild muskox, so I settled for lots of flowers and snails, and butterflies. 

As always, the rest of my photos are here.