As I've stated in an earlier Blog, I love Landscape Photography. Living in Illinois there is a lack of pristine lakes in the foreground of snow caped mountains, sunrises or sunsets over the horizon in a beautiful ocean scene or magnificent red mesas and buttes surrounded by empty, sandy desert. What we do have however is corn fields as far as the eye can see, some rolling hills and some head turning lakes depending on where you are in the Land of Lincoln.

Before the corn and beans grew here there was prairie. It is estimated that in 1820 there were 22 million acres of prairie in the northern 2/3 of the state, the southern 1/3 was mostly forest. By 1900 most prairie was gone. In 1978 less than 2,300 acres of high quality prairie remained. Since then there has been a big push for restoration of the prairie.

Growing up I loved to go to Goose Lake Prairie Nature Reserve outside of Morris, Il. and in 1992 the government acquired roughly 19,000 acres of land from the Army in Elwood, Il. to form the Midewin National Tall Grass Prairie. It really is beautiful and recently they have added American Bison there. You should check it out! 

This photo is from Midewin in spring of last year (2016). _DSC0026