© Brad Mangas
I have been spending time getting the Kansas 2015 calendar ready to be sent to the printer. I have made a few ascetic changes to it this time. Nothing major just some polishing of a couple of pages. The inside cover and back cover are different with description locations by county along with a grid layout of the images on the inside cover. The back cover I changed with a new layout and info, it looks marvelous if I do say so myself. I decided to utilize Serif Page Plus to do this. I have used Page Plus for a couple of years now for layout and design work. It is what all ebooks and .pdf files are made with. It is very equivalent to Adobe Indesign for a fraction of the price. It really does a nice job and now that I am comfortable with it I can layout new work quite easily. I should be wrapping the calendar up in the next week or so and will be announcing it available for pre-orders. Plan is to be shipping it out the first week of November.
Last weekend I got the urge to visit Konza Prairie and do a little hiking. I needed to get out and needed the exercise. There is no better place than the wonderful hiking trails of Konza. It can be a little brutal on the prairie in the middle of summer and hiking should be done very early in the day or towards evening. The weather has been great around these parts most of the summer as far as scorching heat goes. Lots of temps in the high 80’s and low 90’s which is nothing to complain about this time of year.
I headed down the road on the 50 minute drive to Konza around 5pm Saturday and planed on spending the last 3 hours or so of daylight hiking some trails, looking for wildflowers or just enjoying the vast open views of the Flint Hills. Got to do all three, Yippee!
After I had parked I thew on the backpack grabbed the tripod and was off. A quarter mile or so up the main trial I spotted a Doe, just standing there looking at me. I stopped and watched and then noticed a fawn next to her that still had spots on it’s back. Well, like many times the camera was still in the back pack! I did slowly get it out but, not before they had moseyed off out of sight! Oh well so it goes. It was still great to get to see such wonderful wildlife enjoying the evening as well.
It turned out to be a little warmer than I had expected and I worked up quite a sweat during my hiking time but, that was good thing, I needed it. There wasn’t an abundance of wildflowers on the trials I hiked mostly just the summertime tallgrasses covering the land. Some Snow-On-The-Mountain, Tall Sunflowers and Compass Plant were mostly what I found. I ended up concentrating more on the general scenery as the sun slowly set.
It’s never a disappointment when visiting Konza Prairie. The exerciser alone is worth it and the scenery along with the fresh prairie air is icing on the cake. Something I had forgotten, or just didn’t pay attention to was the moon phase. Sunday was the Super Moon! Some folks get all excited about this Super Moon thing. I can get excited about an opportunity to “shoot the moon” but general I don’t. The moon comes and goes and unless I plan ahead of time for just that I just don’t worry about it. Having said that, when I am out and the moon does rise early in the evening I do see if I can work it into some pictures. No need to ignore it. It wasn’t 100% full Saturday evening but it rose when there was still nice light available to play with. So play I did, stop and look I did, and enjoy the wonderful bounties of the great outdoors.
© Brad Mangas
