Yamhill – every day's just like starting over

Last Friday we hiked again at the Miller Woods Conservation Area in McMinnville. The sun was out and it was so nice to finally feel warm outdoors again! We had hiked at Miller Woods on February 3rd and were hoping to go back and see some wildflowers. There weren’t as many as we’d hoped, but some lovelies were blooming.

We started with the loop around the pond like we did last time. This time we actually saw a big froggie friend on his raft (in the rather blurry photo below).

We were sorry that we chased the geese away, but maybe it was just as well. I’m not sure how nicely-tempered they are.

Around the pond and throughout the woods are these wildlife cover boards. They have handles so you can lift them up to see if anyone is hiding underneath. Unfortunately once you do that, the little friends are disturbed and go find somewhere else to rest.

And THESE guys are the reason I didn’t lift any of the boards…what if something jumps out at me? I stood back and watched. Photo by Kangaroo.

Some of the nesting boxes. I think it would be fun to have some on our property. That is, if someone else were to be responsible for cleaning and maintenance.

We followed the trail up and around the picnic area. The Miller Woods trail builders placed benches along the trails in very convenient places.

After walking up and around, we walked down to the meadow looking for the woods trail. We found a service road and walked up that until we came to the red trail. Once you get into the woods the trails are pretty well marked at junctions, but from the meadow it was hard to find the trails. We looked at the map and decided to take the red trail to the yellow trail, and take the yellow trail back to the pond. In the end we took a shortcut down to the pond on a service road instead of doing the whole yellow loop.

On the way down on the shortcut road we did come upon these, which we hadn’t seen last time.

It was nice and cool walking in the woods. Kangaroo made sure to take a photo of this sign because she too was born in 1971! Sweet Pea had decided not to take too many photos and just to enjoy herself during the hike.

We made it to the “K.T.” Summit and rested there on a very nice large bench while we had a snack. I had something new to eat, pumpkin seed butter. It was with the peanut butter packets at the Natural Grocers so I decided to try it. It was pretty tasty, very mild and sweet. It does have sugar in it, but also lots of protein and fat for sustained energy. Win! During our rest time we were noticing bugs on the ground. Sweet Pea found a neon green spider, and I found this weird inchworm that looks like a stick.

The dark brown stick thing standing up from the bigger stick (lower half of the photo, towards the middle) is the inchworm. Kangaroo relocated him to a safer place off the trail.

Here are a few more photos from our hike.

There was a cougar in the area on 4/27. On the Miller Woods website it indicates that the Dept. of Fish and Wildlife captured and relocated the cougar. We were glad to know that.

The bush in the middle with the shiny leaves is poison oak. Leaves of three, leave them be!

This little plant with the red leaves is also poison oak! Beware!

Just keep walking!

~Ninja

Yesterday we hiked at the Miller Woods Conservation Area near McMinnville, Oregon. Kangaroo had discovered it on Google Maps and we hadn’t been there, so we wanted to check it out. The conservation area was donated to the Yamhill Soil and Water Conservation District in 2004 by Frieda Miller, who along with her husband had settled the 130 acres in 1967. They wanted the property to be used for nature education. Rain was forecast, and it was indeed raining when we got there. I got a lot of photos so this will be a bit of a long post!

The first thing we noticed when we drove in was this display of different kinds of nesting boxes for birds, bats, and bees. The one at the bottom middle of the photo above is a bat box. There is a small space between the front and back of the box, and the bats go up in there and nest. The photo below is the bee block for mason bees, which are great pollinators.

When we got to the trailhead, there was a group of elementary and middle school aged kids waiting to go on a nature hike. There were probably 13-15 kiddos and just a couple of adults to wrangle them. I thought they needed more adults, but we didn’t volunteer, ha.

We checked the maps and decided to go down to the pond on the Discovery Loop. It was about 0.3 of a mile and went around the pond.

We got down to the pond and saw a few interesting things, but no riparian wildlife. We assumed all the frogs and other pond-dwellers were hibernating.

*Interesting tree with large branches growing on the ground.*

Cattails. They look a bit scruffy this time of year!

These wildlife cover boards with handles were scattered around the area.

We (I should say Kangaroo) lifted up the wildlife cover boards we found around the pond and didn’t find any creatures hiding. I was uncomfortable thinking about what we might find (snakes!) but no snakes were found. Along the trail there were more cover boards, and under the last one we did find this guy!

Nifty gate for no reason – there is no fence on either side of it so it would be easily circumvented.

Across from the pond there is a large field that is being restored as a native prairie. They have even resorted to hand-pulling to remove blackberries and daisies and other plants that are invasive.