Why I love Wyobraska: a 2011 photo retrospective
With just a couple of days left in 2011, I found myself reviewing the year by scrolling through my blog. I decided to collect some images from the year’s blog posts that help explain why I have fallen in love with Wyobraska. The original post in which each photo appeared is linked below the photo.
The Wildcat Hills
The scenery and the hiking opportunities in the Wildcat Hills (which includes Scotts Bluff) have provided me a lot of enjoyment, as well as blog fodder.
A quick shout-out: while you’re oohing and aahing over the wide-open vistas, don’t forget to thank a rancher. It’s the land’s use as cattle range that has allowed so much of the native landscape to remain, and it’s rancher landowners selling their properties to Platte River Basin Environments, Inc., that has opened up so much new public land in western Nebraska in recent years.
A visit to one of the newer public lands in western Nebraska
The sere, spare landscape
It’s possible to drive for miles on WENE highways and not see another human. The dry, high plains and sparse population develops one’s ability to find beauty in simplicity and desolation.
The bluffs are beautiful in all weather
“The West”
I still thrill to be living “where the deer and the antelope play.”
A Sunday drive through the Wyoming landscape
Agricultural diversity
I’ve gotten to learn what sugarbeets, wheat, sunflowers, pinto beans and potatoes look like in the field. I feel a bit better educated as food consumer, compared to my previous, urban/corn-and-soybean-landscape-raised self.
Western Nebraska has some amazing artists
What the heck do they do over at PREC, anyway?
Local foods
Speaking of food, I have also appreciated the opportunity to consume fresh, local foods grown, raised and processed by people I have gotten to know on a personal level, or fresh, local foods that we harvested ourselves. A few memorable meals from the year:
Vegetable season is in full swing
Goose hunt on the North Platte River
Things to do
Yes, the region is sparsely populated, but there are still plenty of things to do. During some portions of the year, you’d be hard pressed to find the time to attend all the local festivals and special events.
Biking up the bluff during Oregon Trail Days
Christmas events, Christmas giving
Shadow portraits and sunsets
The scenery and the quality of the light here on the High Plains makes it awfully fun to take shadow self-portraits.
Seeing Scotts Bluff from a new perspective
Biking up the bluff during Oregon Trail Days
Sunset viewing is made easier by the lack of trees on the High Plains horizon.
Sunsets make me jealous of people who live outside of town
Five awesome things from this evenings bluff hike
Nope. Still not used to the view
Thanks, Bugman, for landing a job out here and for being so supportive of your bloggy wife.
My husband, the FARM movie star
Copyright 2011 by Katie Bradshaw
YOU are much more precious than you know!!!
And we who have made WeNE our home for way too many years are glad you and Bugman enjoy it so much. It is truly is a great place to live and it’s very easy to share our vistas and fine folk with people we have met from all over the world.
Love having you and Bugman here!!
*Dr. Bugman, that is!