Waubesa Wetlands

I visited the site for my Natural Areas project, Waubesa Wetlands, which is just south of Madison off Hwy 14. The parking area was a little hard to find, but it’s a nice hike along the edge of a prairie to a wooded hillside overlooking a large marsh and Lake Waubesa in the distance. From the top of the hill you can see all the way out to the lake, but this is a view that’s unique to wintertime because of the lack of leaves.

What a great morning to be out - fresh snow and plenty of sunshine!
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State Natural Areas Project

So I’m starting a new project this week called the “Natural Areas” project. Wisconsin is well known for it’s natural beauty and most people are aware of the more well known scenic locations such as state parks. There is so much more out there though; so many more nuggets and pockets of wilderness that are just as wonderful.

The DNR has something called the State Natural Areas Program, which is designed to “protect outstanding examples of Wisconsin’s native landscape of natural communities, significant geological formations and archeological sites.” One of the amazing things to me is that there are 418 of them! For more information, look here:
here.

So what I’m going to do is hopefully every week or so go visit one or more natural areas and photograph what I find. I’m not sure how long it will take to visit all 418, but I hope to reach all of them eventually. I’ll probably see many seasons come and go through my lens.

We’re Married!

A new year and lots of changes - it’s amazing where life can take you in a very small amount of time! Valerie and I got engaged in early November, but we knew right away we didn’t want a long engagement or a traditional wedding. We decided the most cost efficient and memorable way to get married would be to fly off and elope! So we spent the week before Christmas in Fabulous Las Vegas. We arrived Sunday, got married Monday in a simple courthouse “jeans and t-shirt” ceremony, and then got all dressed up on Tuesday and spent a few hours with Ingrid of Images by Ingrid getting some fantastic shots around the strip and in the desert. It was all fabulous! Then the really fun part was coming home and telling our family all about it - many of them had no idea! It feels so good to start out the new year with such a beautiful new wife!