Hiking at Uncle Bob's

My husband's Uncle Bob lives in a gorgeous log home on several hundred acres along a river not far from us. The only thing on the property is his home, the rest is mostly timber, two ponds and a little bit of prairie. Eric goes deer hunting on the property once a year and sometimes helps his brother cut wood there. There are a few logging trails cut through the timber that have made a perfect trail for hiking. We've started taking the kids out there to hike and play in the snow. I love, love, love walking around the property. It is peaceful, unspoiled and so beautiful. 

This Sunday the weather warmed up a bit, so we loaded the kids up and took them to Uncle Bob's for another walk. It's a bit of a haul around the trail so we usually take a sled or two to pull the kids around on when they get tired. 

This time Eric did all of the heavy lifting and I got to walk around taking in the views and snapping pictures. I could have stayed out there all day. 

Wildlife is abundant on the property, but this time around we only saw the evidence and not the actual animals.

Even though the landscape is predominantly gray and brown there is still so much to look at. I love the texture of these plants. I wish I knew what their name was. 

I love this rusty orange color and the way the leaves curl up into little packages. 

I ran across these pretty purple viny bushes. I wanted to spend some more time trying to capture them in some sort of creative way to accentuate their color agains the landscape, but it was fairly difficult in the time I had since I knew my kids were still forging ahead of me. I do like this photograph though, because if nothing else it reminds me of one of my kids scribble drawings. 

I found a little more color in the evergreens.

And then there were these . . . plants. I wish I knew what they were. The yellow color was stunning to catch against the snow. 

I had fun finding shapes in the curls of the weeds. I love how the tops of the weeds all curled down and echoed each other making beautiful patterns. It would have been fun to see how many ways I could capture the shapes, playing with f-stops and such. It was a real challenge in the large clumps of weeds however, to capture their silhouettes without it ending up looking like indecipherable clumps of brown. Hopefully I can get outside with my camera sometime soon to try again. 

At the end of the trail I came across some milkweed. It is so lovely. On the overcast day, it was hard to get the subtle colors to come out very much. Such great texture though.