JUST PASSING THROUGH...

Here's Luke viewing Sandhill Cranes from the blind on the South Platte River.

Well, we journeyed down to the Platte again this year to watch the cranes arise from their night spent in the shallow waters of the river. We crept down in the early morning darkness to a blind at the Rowe Sanctuary and watched thousands of them take off to feed in the local fields for the day. It seems they hang around the neighborhood long enough to rest and fatten up before launching off toward the north to do that crane thing they do up there in the summertime.

This time our journey was a family affair... making up crane jokes, crane puns and singing crane songs along the way... like 'Uncrane My Heart' by Ray Charles, 'Driving That Train, High on Cocrane', and my personal favorite, Aretha Franklin's 'Crane of Fools'.

We were all acting like a bunch of craniacs and by the end of it, I had a splitting micrane.

Ain't nature grand?

Happy landings, cranes...

Tom