kland01s, Due to the the light and different blind, the crane viewing and photography were better 3 years ago, here is a photo from that trip as the very first cranes settled into their roost for the night:
http://www.mightymac.org/neb3.htm is my trip report from that year. Alsom if anyone wants to see a few more photos of the attractions I visited on this trip, there are a few more at
http://www.mightymac.org/08ksnebraska2.htm After checking into the Roadway Inn in Grand Island (cheap but acceptable), I headed out on the back roads towards Rowe Sanctuary, stopping to photograph sandhill cranes in the corn fields. The most interesting sight, was a raccoon right next to the road by a crane carcass. Several cars stopped to look at "him," but he was not going to move away for anything.
At Rowe Sanctuary I checked out the gift shop and crane cam which can be panned & zoomed from the Center
http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/cranecam/ and waited for the groups to gather for spots in the blinds at 6:30. It was getting colder and windy, so I put on a long shirt, jersey, heavy wool sweater, and mid weight jacket. I still could have worn more.
On this visit, I was in the "hay bale" blind, a light plywood structure lined on the inside with hay bales for insulation and to deaden noise. There were 30 of us in this blind, plus three guides. This blind, located a few hundred feet down river from the Center, didn't work nearly as well as the closer, L shaped blind I was in, in 2005.
People that had been in the blind before grabbed the best spots, setting up their tripods and cameras with long lenses. But the photo opportunities weren't that great and the location in the blind didn't make that big a difference. It was mostly cloudy and was getting too dark for good photos before long.
We saw a turkey across the Platte River, as well as deer. Slowly the cranes started gathering into small groups in secondary roosts. Finally the first ones settled into the running water and as the fight failed, thousands of cranes settled into the river. The estimates are that there were about 300,000 of the large birds along the river and perhaps 60,000 at Rowe Sanctuary.
Cranes assembling in one of the secondary roots before flying into the river.
The coolest thing is the sound, Sandhill cranes have a loud call and a single bird can be heard up to a mile away. The sound of thousands of them has to be heard to be appreciated
I had a late supper back in Grand Island. I was debating between two local steak places that were recommended here at Roadfood.com: Texas T-Bone Steakhouse and Uncle Ed's Steakhouse. The hotel had a coupon for 10% off at Texas T-Bone, so that was the one I tried. It is going for a roadhouse feel with peanut shells on the floor and loud country music videos playing on TVs around the dinning room. I didn't arrive until after 9:30 and the servers were trying to clean up. I noticed that the buckets of peanuts were removed from every table that still had customers.
The meal was pretty good. I had a decent Caesar salad, 16 ounce rib eye (beef), and steak fries. The steak was much better than the previous night. If I stopped there again, I would probably try the smoked sirloin steak.
Keith
