Yesterday was the first hike of the season.  We left at 4:30am for Big Stone National Wildlife Refuge.  After arriving there at 6:30am we grabbed our packs and started out walking.  We hiked a total of 10.09 miles.

We saw hundreds of ducks, the biggest concentration of ducks we've seen ever.  That is probably due to many of the lakes in the area still having ice on them. There was a large variety of ducks, everything from Mallards, Blue Winged Teal, Greater Scaup, Hooded Merganser, Gadwall, Bufflehead, Ruddy Ducks, Northern Shoveler, and American Coots. During our visit at Big Stone we also saw a Western Grebe, Pied-billed Grebe, Horned Grebe, Black Crowned Night Heron, Great Blue Heron, Lesser Yellowlegs, Northern Harrier, Laughing Gull, Killdeer, Song Sparrows, Yellowheaded Blackbird, Redwing Blackbird, Robins, 13 Lined Ground Squirrel, White-tailed Deer, Painted Turtles, Common Garter Snake (he even dared to have a go at me), and a River Otter. All in all I'd say we had a good day.

Aaron also witnessed a guy have his pants fall down at Dairy Queen.  After telling me about it I nearly choked on my food laughing so hard.