Right down the street from the Air Force museum is another great place to visit called the Lee G. Simmons Conservation Park. The conversation is essentially a self drive safari where you’re guaranteed to get up and close to some animals like these elk above. I was worried maybe the elk would be out in the woods within their conservation and I wouldn’t be able to see them. There were maybe a dozen male elk in the first section of the safari and they are indifferent to your car since they see so many of them everyday. The idea of driving your car through a fenced area was something I always thought was lame, but I found this place to be a highlight of Nebraska.
Another section of the conservatory had a large pond filled with duck weeds. The were dozens of large birds here such as these pelicans above and the geese below. I also saw a few sand cranes among the pelicans. Above is a turtle I found coming out of the duck weeds. In another section where several caged birds like the owls below. There were also many birds of prey like hawks and bald eagles.
I spotted two black bears and two small deer in the conservation. Black bears are always an interesting animal to come across in the wild. Deer are more of a nuisance since I’m always worried about driving into one with a car and they are so common. The conservatory had a wolf section. I went to it but couldn’t find any, so either they escaped or our out of wolves at the moment.
This is probably the closest I’ve ever been to buffalo. There was a group of about 20 buffalo right along the road and I was unsure if i should drive past since I’d be so close to them. I figured people must do this daily so it’s nothing they aren’t used to. The buffalo on the upper left walked up to me and started to scratch his chin on the dirt. Then he rolled around the dirt and shook himself off like a dog. I’ve never seen a buffalo do this and was lucky it was only a few feet away from me.
While Nebraska was historically prairie grassland it has nearly all been converted to farms. Nebraska is famous for its cornfields, and several of my friends joked I should see the Stephen King movie Children of the Corn which takes place in Nebraska before visiting. I never watched the movie but I did see a guy with a Children of the Corn shirt in Lincoln. So the massive cornfields here are no joke. I actually mistook the upper left photo as a young corn plant. Anyone who knows anything about corn would probably laugh at me for thinking that. The left hand photo is a milkweed pod, but they still seemed common in Nebraska and I had never see one before. On the right is one of many enormous cornfields.
On one of my nights in Nebraska I parked close to a hotel and decided to be cheap and just sleep in the car. I had some partial success but ended up getting a room. I used to do this all the time about 10 years ago but wasn’t feeling it anymore. Anyway I left my car where it was and when I went to get it in the morning it turned out I had parked in front of a field of yellow flowers seen above. I wish I got a better shot of the gold finch but he didn’t seem to want to stay in one place for long. There were a few of them within the flowers above.
Within these fields of flowers where dozens of species pollinating them. Bees were an obvious insect to be found here, but I also came across some species that were new to me, such as the bean leaf beetle on the upper left and the soldier beetle on the right. I wonder if a human who suffered from allergies would die from having that much pollen on their face. The soldier beetle reminded me of an image of a kid’s face covered in chocolate after breaking into the cookie jar.
