Logjam Photos

I'm sure you've all been giddy with anticipation about the log jam visit. I know I was, and wow was I disappointed. These pics would have come up last week, except Blogger hates me. What logjam am I talking about? Oh, just that 3 mile one in the Neosho River a few weeks ago.

Let's get to the photoessay!

First of all, I picked a terrible day to go out there:

Literally the day before this it was almost 60 degrees and sunny, and the day I have schedule to go visit it is blowing freezing cold air from the north, snowing off and all, and below freezing all day. The next day it was sunny and 65. This is Kansas, in case you hadn't noticed. The pic above is from John Redmond Reservoir. Redmond is one of those huge Army Corps reservoirs that is filling in with silt, and messing up the river downstream. My understanding is that it probably had something to do with the log-jam being formed as well.

I stopped to grab a pic of the weather conditions, then spent about an hour trying to find the site from that map I showed the other day. Finally got there, and as I pulled up around 15 bald eagles just lifted up and took off. I tried to get my camera out, but only managed to get a few pics of a few that were sitting in trees. Actually, I'm not 100% certain they were all bald eagles, since it happened so fast. You can see that these guys are sitting just beyond the edge of my zoom ability. Probably didn't help that the camera was still on the 'baby pics' setting (click to enlarge).


As for the log jam itself: I didn't really get to see much. The whole river system was so flooded that I was limited to the road and what was left of the landing. The river is apparently in the process of cutting a new channel around the jam, and there was water everywhere. I had brought warm-weather waders, but nothing that I wanted to wear into that freezing water. Here's the best picture I could get of the logs near the landing. Apparently all that open water you see has logs just under the surface too (at least, that's what I've been told).

I tried driving to some other locations to get some other jammed areas, but the other landings were flooded even worse. In fact, I think within the past month or so the water was six feet higher than it is now. There was a line of debris in the trees at just about my height.

So that's it, unfortunately. That's a lot of large woody debris, but not as impressive as being about to walk the entire length of a 3 mile logjam. I'll have to come back when its less flooded.

At that point, I just started taking pictures of birds. Anyone know what these little guys are?


And for some reason I couldn't get the camera to focus perfectly on this gull flying around, but with the snow falling it still looks pretty cool.