blog – Velox Seeker

Is This a Fishing Blog or Not?…

I know my blog is primarily about fishing, but unfortunately I cannot fish 24/7 and provide my intended content. I work full-time and have a family so I create other content for this blog.

Sometimes the additional content will be somewhat political, philosophical, nature oriented, contain life stories or whatnot. I do this NOT to be controversial or to get views…it’s simply me sharing ideas, concepts, thoughts or various and sundry other things.

I do appreciate EVERY view or comment or like, but my overarching goal is to just share things. I learn something from each blog post and continually strive to improve in all aspects. I hope you bear with me during the coming winter months as fishing will be difficult to say the least. But I try hard to keep this blog active and will continue to do so. I have several ideas for future blog posts and will share them when they come to fruition.

THANK YOU ALL!

Our Elders…the Missing Link?

I was speaking to a friend the other day and he was lamenting the fact that he feels abandoned by his parents. For reference, this guy has a family, has his own home and is doing well. His parents sold everything and moved to Florida unannounced. Personally, I don’t have a problem with their decision per se, but what baffled me is that his folks just disconnected from the family. They want to just enjoy their remaining days and cannot be bothered with anything else.

My point to this blog post is that traditionally we have looked to our elders for wisdom and guidance. If they just disconnect, we lose that. We know they have had rough times in their lives and can give us perspective on said occurrences. Especially now, in these seemingly tumultuous times…we NEED them.

Personally, I have heard the excuses. “I’m too old” or “I’m tired” or “nobody wants to hear what we have to say.” Yet, I think we need to hear their perspective and the wisdom they can share. I know it seems like the current culture wants the adults to sit down and shut up, but we know better. We were taught to respect our elders and should continue to do so. 80 years of life experience is valuable and should be shared to any and all who are struggling. Seriously…would you take marriage advice from someone married twice in 10 years or someone who has been married for 60 years?

The buzzwords of discrimination ( OK Boomer ), inclusivity ( they created the problem ) and diversity ( they’re too old to be relevant ) seem farcical when compared to the actual dialogue going on in todays society. The fact is that we are ALL guilty to some extent and we ALL need some guidance and wisdom.

So the message to our Elders is that we need you and value your experience and to please share what you can. You are still valuable, have purpose and are appreciated.

Happy Holidays and remember your Elders…

Went For A Drive Today (9OCT2021)…

Some of you may know that my wife drives a Subaru Forester, the green one we drive on most of our excursions. Hers has Method MR502 Rally rims with Falken Wildpeak A/T Trail tires which make it more suitable for driving to the places we like to go. I also drive a Subaru Forester that is silver. We’ve been saving up for months to add those same rims and tires to my vehicle. So after having them put on last week, we decided to take mine on an outing for its first trip.

We set a leisurely schedule without any firm itinerary. It’s been a rough week for both us and we wanted to relax. We had never been on most of these roads and it was fun to see “new” areas.

As the day progressed and the heat increased, so to did the wind.

Interesting scenery…at least we thought so

As we were driving down Bronco Road heading East to Caney, Kansas…I noticed a huge patch of Equisetum. I was pretty excited, but I’m a nerd.

Equisetum is the only living genus of the Equisetaceae family. A vascular plant that reproduces via spores. This particular species has been around since the Jurassic Era! Now you know…

We had a great time together and returned home at a decent hour so we could still get all of the chores done despite the temps being back into the mid-90F’s.

I’m still working my way through the camera manual and trying to learn all of the features this camera has. I hope to share some more photos in the near future so stay tuned for more. Thanks for reading.

Local Lake Outing 12 Sept 2021…

I was talking to my Dad last night via Facetime and he was giving me a little grief about not fishing. He said, “you say its too hot yet you’re running around all over doing other things.” He was right! We were trying to come up with something to do today so opted to hit both of our local lakes. We got up early to beat the heat and headed out.

The first lake was a bust since it is completely overgrown now and fishing from the shore is virtually impossible. We caught zero fish after walking all the way around it. As usual I was on the lookout for plants. Here is just a few of what we ran across.

Indian woodoats (Chasmanthium latifolium)

After getting skunked and picking all of the burs and stick-tights off of us, we opted to try the other lake near us. As we were driving down the gravel road we were witness to a Bobcat crossing the road carrying a rabbit in its mouth. We watched as it loped across the road and coursed up a steep hill. We thought that was pretty cool…especially with how big it was.

We reached the next lake and chatted with a local. He was out on his 4-wheeler with the grandkids and was letting them burn off some energy. We know the feeling all too well.

All told we caught 5 largemouth bass, a perch and a crappie. I wanted to get a few pictures for the blog and quit fishing after an hour. Remember me mentioning that this area was covered by the Western Interior Sea during the Cretaceous Period 145 million to 66 million years ago? I took some pictures of the fossils that cover a large portion of this area.

As we were roaming around the area just looking, we ran across this guy!

Eastern hognose snake (Heterodon platirhinos)

It was pretty docile despite the flared hood. They come in a remarkable range of coloration.

After interacting with the snake we decided to move on and see what else we could find. As usual, there were numerous plants in bloom in the area.

Honey locust (Gleditsia triacanthos) Watch those thorns!

Common whitetail dragonfly (Plathemis lydia) When reeling in I hooked some weeds and it rode them all the way in.

We had fun with the few hours we were out. We tend to free-range the chickens on the weekends so we decided to head home to let them out for the day. As I sit here typing, I’m surrounded by foraging chickens. There is shade at the moment and a breeze blowing through the tree tops.

They do a good job of keeping the raised beds tilled up…so I don’t have to do it!

Thanks for reading and have a great day!