August 28

Cheyenne Bottoms Wildlife Area and Quivera National Wildlife Refuge were first on our dance card for today. Let me back up just a tad. Since we planned on birding we wanted an early start we planned on getting up early. I figured if we were up at six we could be on the birding trail by 7. Yesterday we had crossed in from Mountain Time to Central Time. My fitbit watch normally corrects for local time since it syncs with my cell phone in turn syncs with local cell signals. Well last night I could not get my watch to sync with my cell phone so it continued to report Mountain Time which is one hour later than Central Time. This morning I woke up at 4:30 AM so I thought it was 5:30 local time. Time to get up and start the coffee. By the time I am finishing my first cup I realized my watch had corrected itself to Central Time and I really got up at 4:30! Oh well we were up.

Cheyenne Bottoms Wildlife Area is a large freshwater wetlands and associated shallow lakes that are part of the migratory route of several birds on their way north in the Spring and south in the Fall. Quivera NWF is a large saltwater wetlands and lake system. That also supports birds migration. Many species fly through including Whooping Cranes. We were too early in the season to see them on this trip, but we did see lots of birds.

In the afternoon we headed east to Tallgrass National Preserve. It’s a collaboration between The Nature Conservancy and The National Park Service. They have 11,000 acres of tallgrass prairie they are attempting to restore. Only 4 percent of the original tallgrass prairie exists today. I view it as way too little an effort to save and preserve this unique ecosystem.

We are now camped at a city campground that has water, electric, showers, and toilets for the price of zero dollars, Chanut, Kansas. It’s free for the first two nights then it’s ten dollars a night afterwards. It’s been hot and very windy today much like yesterday with winds out of the south about 45 mph and temperatures in the lower to mid-nineties. We are running the air conditioner now.