Trip Report: Felsenthal NWR

[huntinark]

This past Saturday I took advantage of the cooler temps and went for a short trip to Felsenthal NWR. It was a beautiful morning in a very interesting place. You can see my full trip report at the link below with photos, a map, and thoughts from the paddle.

http://combinedpursuits.blogspot.com/20 ... gpost.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[cpresoz]

Thanks so much, Michael, for a fantastic report with beautiful photos, great route description and useful links. I want to go there badly now more than ever. Floating through the water lillies and getting so close to the wildlife makes this a trip as special as any one could have.

[c8mb]

Thanks for posting that. Nice pics.

[John Britt]

Excellent post, great pictures. Really liked the way you geo-tagged them. I am going to have to learn how to do that. Lot more area to cover and so little time.
Amazing how, until you have been out a few times, Felsenthal can look the same in so many places. I usually carry a compass and mapping gps when I am exploring a new spot. At 15000 acres the place can seem huge.

[huntinark]

Thanks all, it was definitely a great morning out on the water at Felsenthal Saturday.

I always try to do my due dilligence in preparing for any outing to a new place. I usually try to map a route and load into my GPS but one thing I've learned is that you cannot always depend on the GPS (batteries die and satellite signal reception sometimes is lost) so I always at least have a compass in my bag plus I try to print a map of the area with a Lat/Long reference grid for navigation back "home".

By education and profession I'm a map nerd! So for me a map with geotagged photo locations and a track log are the best avenue for me to tell any story.

-Michael

[paddlecouple]

where did you find that gator? I could not find any info in the photo stream, thanks
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[huntinark]

where did you find that gator? I could not find any info in the photo stream, thanks
http://tinyurl.com/3ldb5cm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I found the gator last fall (Middle of November) at a barrow pit in Choctaw Island WMA in Desha County. I thought it was interesting that I took that photo on the opening morning of duck season!

-Michael

[Butch Crain]

Really impressive use of ArcGis - I'm a little jealous.

Guess I need to finally pull the trigger on getting the software and using GPS for something other than fiddling around - time for the topos, pencils and waterproof field books to go into semi-retirement.

Nice blog - your dedication to faith and family are commendable.

[huntinark]

Butch,

Thanks for your comments.

I must say that everything you see in the blog was done with free software packages. Although I do have ArcGIS desktop everything that I used to make the maps in my blog are done elsewhere. If you're interested I'll try to put together a brief list of what I used.

I always have my GPS with me anytime I'm outdoors so I just tweaked some settings and now geotag all the photos I take while out and about. In my opinion it makes for an interesting presentation to put everything together onto a map. The map with photos and locationed based remarks makes the story/report all the more realistic and hopefully useful.

As far as your comments about faith and family...it is definitely a great pursuit. One that I daily have to make a conscience effort to do my best at.

Thanks again,

Michael