Oh, hey. We’re just three BALD EAGLES chilling in these trees over here. Don’t mind us.

28 by 28: See the eagles fly

Mission accomplished.

Check one off of my list. Yesssss.

If you’re not following, don’t worry. I’ll become comprehensible in a minute.

In the meantime, here’s some more eagles.

This is a little blurry… because the further you zoom, the more each shake is seen in the photo.

Alright, now to make sense of all this.

Earlier, I published my 28 by 28 list, the 28 things I want to accomplish before I turn 28 in February 2015.

The list isn’t really in any order… but seeing the eagles fly was the first thing I thought of when I wrote down the list.

I had already scheduled and booked the hotel room for the weekend in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, where they hold their annual Eagle Appreciation Day in late February.

I got there late Friday night, and barely found my hotel. I get no data service in Driftless Wisconsin, so I had to rely on smoke signals and whatever people used before GPS existed. It was a crazy three minutes in my car.

I woke up early Saturday morning, the day of the event, ready to get started. I drove into the city and immediately saw those first three birds.

They congregate on rivers and open water because they LOVE fish. (But also rabbits as I found out later.)

So I parked my car and walked back to the bridge where I first saw the eagles and took some photos.

The sky was clear, the weather was brisk, cold, freezing, but it was beautiful. And it was quiet. I was expecting a lot more people around for the event. Maybe the weather kept them away. I don’t know.

It was just peaceful to be there. (I just liked the look of this bar… I didn’t go inside. It was 8 o’clock. The rest of the downtown is also gorgeous.)

Yes, I was alone. But not lonely. I had a really good time. I drove around for a while, spotted a few more eagles perched on trees, then went to a few of the speakers the city had scheduled.

One of the speakers had a little tiny screech owl and some type of desert hawk.

The next speaker had a full grown bald eagle, and she fed him a hunk of rabbit while she talked to us.

It was so cool.

After all that, I went over to Iowa.

Can you believe I’ve never been? Iowa is even more quiet and peaceful than Prairie du Chien was. I don’t know if it’s the frozen river or what keeps it so beautiful, but I loved it there.

I went to the Effigy National Monument… couldn’t tour because of the snow, but I will go back (it’s on a secondary bucket list) in the summer.

Then I went to Pike’s Peak state park. That’s where that tree was.

In Marquette, Iowa, there’s a stop over or something for the Canadian Pacific Railroad, and that was too cool to see.

I’m not fascinated by trains at all, but it was still interesting. I think I was just in the right place at the right time… at the right height.

There are tons of scenic overlooks in the area. I guess people like to stop and look at the Mississippi River from up height.

Even frozen, it was beautiful.

When I got to work this morning, I had an email about my bucket list story… a company offering me zip lining for free. Awesome!

On to more adventures!

God bless!