Well, the title really tells it all…

Our plan was to head west about 35 miles to the Big Muddy National Wildlife Refuge on the south side of the Missouri River for a 3.2 mile hike along the Little Muddy Loop Trail. We got there OK and after spraying our legs with bug repellent since there are a lot of ticks in the woods started off on our hike. About a quarter mile in…we stopped and sprayed the rest of us as the skeeters were pretty numerous. We got to the first pond…and saw precisely nothing. Hiked another quarter mile to the second pond…more of the same. Entered the wooded section along the dike where we thought we would have some river views and you guessed it…nothing. No river, no wildlife, no nothing. There was a serious number of downed tree limbs on the trail from the storm that rolled through the other night and after about 300 yards of climbing over them we asked ourselves if we really wanted two more miles of this. The vote was unanimous…we would gladly climb over them if there was some payoff at the end of the hike but with no river or wildlife out decided it just wasn’t worth it. So we backtracked to the car and decided to call it a day.

Heading off to our second destination of the day…the Les Bourgeois Winery and Bistro. This is situated on the bluff overlooking the north side of the river just about opposite where we were hiking. After parking we wandered down to the bluff edge and grabbed a few photos.

Looking at the last shot which is a pano of the river…we were about 250 feet up and were hiking in the woods right across the river…it’s pretty easy to see why we couldn’t see anything as the woods are really thick right to the edge of the river.

By this time the Bistro had opened and we had a nice lunch looking out the windows overlooking the river…a Waldorf Chicken Wrap for Connie and a French Dip for Neil…along with a nice glass of wine each. Both were good although we really had to stuff to finish them…since our hike got cancelled we were having lunch at 1100 instead of our planned 1300 and it really wasn’t quite lunch time yet. After lunch we headed home and had a nice nap for an hour or so.

After that Neil decided to wander over and get some more bird pictures…it turned out to be a nice sunny afternoon so he figured he could get some less grainy, more sunlit shots. He was reasonably successful…more shots of the Ruby Throated Hummingbirds, some of a Blue Jay and a White Breasted Nuthatch.

Once again…there were 30 or 40 of the hummingbirds buzzing around the feeders…unfortunately the one that had the nicest light out in the sunshine was empty…hopefully the owners will fill it back up and there will be another sunny day for more pictures.

Dinner was leftover pizza…but we had so much left over that we saved 2 pieces for lunch tomorrow. It’s supposed to rain all day but Connie has a last few letters to send out for her students and Neil has some relatively large files to download so we’ll probably run up to the library for awhile and then maybe hit one of the local winery’s for a sample…ya never know. Guess Neil will have to figure out something for dinner tomorrow…we’ll look at the store in town and see if we can find a piece of fresh fish to cook maybe.

Cyas.