I got a chance to get outside yesterday, and I headed out to Burtonsville Island Natural Area. I haven’t been there this year yet, and there were a lot of surprises. There are coal mines and oil wells everywhere, and they’ve made it harder to access the natural area. There is the constant drone of mining machinery and I didn’t see as much wildlife as I often do around there. Once I figured out how to access the area (they’ve changed the roads around) I got my next surprise. The water on the North Saskatchewan River was still pretty high and there was evidence that it was about 8 feet higher at one point (which would have come close to submerging the island). No one else had been there and the trails were all getting very overgrown or non-existant. I still managed to get across the beaver dam to the island (at least the beavers keep things in good repair), but it was soggy going. I got entirely soaked pushing through the rain-soaked undergrowth, but it was a beautiful evening and I got to test out my new camera, so I’m happy. It will take me a while to get a good feel for it, but first impressions are that the Canon 6D is a very nice camera indeed, and a great update to my old 5d.<\/p>\n
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\nSorry for the gross image, but this is the flood evidence on the island.<\/p>\n
17mm, f8, 1\/500 of a second<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I got a chance to get outside yesterday, and I headed out to Burtonsville Island Natural Area. I haven’t been there this year yet, and there were a lot of surprises. There are coal mines and oil wells everywhere, and they’ve made it harder to access the natural area. There is the constant drone of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[729,732,41,87],"tags":[2586,2579,2583,2578,2588,2587,2582,2584,2580,2585,1096,1116,2581,2590,2589],"class_list":["post-2297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forest-2","category-landscape-2","category-photo-gear","category-photo-of-the-day","tag-beautiful-evening","tag-beaver-dam","tag-burtonsville-island","tag-burtonsville-island-natural-area","tag-canon-6d","tag-coal-mines","tag-constant-drone","tag-flood-evidence","tag-mining-machinery","tag-new-camera","tag-north-saskatchewan-river","tag-oil-wells","tag-rainsoaked-undergrowth","tag-roads","tag-surprises"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t