[Music] [Music] it's a beautiful place to look around and an even better place to learn about I'm Wei's Lacy Spence and in this episode I'll share why you should take a hike to Ballard Nature [Applause] Center take a hike on weiu is supported by R king America's Farm and Home Store camping supplies kayaks fishing and pet supplies and more find your store and more information regarding r King at rolling.com hi I'm Wei's Lacy Spence I've lived in Central Illinois my whole life and if there's one thing I've learned you don't have to go too far to find the beauty of the Great Outdoors come along with me as I visit a variety of parks and natural areas across Illinois and share why you should take a hike to each episode's location adventure and fun await in take a hike the miniseries welcome back to another episode of take a hike the miniseries I'm your host Lacy Spence and today we have packed up hit the road and we are at Ballard Nature Center near Altamont and so we're welcoming on the show today we've got Sammy cherson here welcome to take a hike well thank you thank you very much for having me and for coming to Ballard of course so I have to ask what is your connection to Ballard so uh it's it it goes back a little ways actually I uh I started volunteering here back in high school so in the not to give it away the early 2000s um and Ballard had just we're probably just up and coming and uh started volunteering when I was in high school I just grew a passion for for Science and just loved it and education and I decided that that's what I wanted to go to for school so I ended up going to get my um master's degree at Eastern Illinois University and actually came back to ballards and I'm now a board member out here uh still living the passion living the dream I get to bring my kids out here uh it's it's a good time yeah and so uh as we're talking about Ballard today do you know anything or can you share anything about the history or how things got kicked off here sure sure so um we'd be remiss to say if we didn't mention Ernie Ballard who was who is responsible for this property in this place it was his dream his vision to have something such as this and it started in the early 60s um I can't remember the exact here but he bought about a 40 acre parcel from a local uh landowner Mr Russell and uh started working on it right away just started um doing some natural resource Community restoration putting in Trails his goal was to get people out here on the landscape get one with nature and ironically the the person he bought it from was so excited of what Ernie was doing he offered more land so in the 70s or so um Ernie purchased all of this property and started working on it and he kind of did his own thing for a couple decades not really for sure I'm sure of where to go for help it is it's huge you think about it and he had such such dreams and visions of having a place for education for people to get out in the natural maybe even experiment for scientific research just he wanted people to be able to get out and be one with nature and so he realized that this feat um probably probably wasn't going to be done by himself he needed some help and he Enlisted the help of the Effingham County Soil and Water District okay and so they they stepped up and they helped Ernie and Ernie talked to him about the visitor Center and his goal for having um displays educational displays environmental displays and he wanted trails and he wanted wetlands and he wanted his Woods to be um brought back in they were getting a little rough with maybe some Exotics and the more that the Soil and Water District started working with Ernie the more they were also realizing that they probably didn't have the manpower to do everything that Ernie wanted so um he started that I believe uh in 97 um talking with the board and eventually in 1999 a board of directors was formed for the ballor Nature Center non for-profit and that board still is obviously active today and it was because of that initial board member of I don't know eight 10 people they're they took over it was deed to them and it rest is history they've they've done an amazing job they built um The Visitor Center they've built a new maintenance shed there's awesome Community types uh Wetland restoration Woods um they've done a lot of work in the woods and they've done a lot of prairie Restorations as well it used to be all AG field our pasture land and they've completely rehabbed it to what would have maybe mimicked what was here pre- settlement time so that was 1999 so we're over 20 years in business here as a non-for-profit wonderful yeah it's really cool so as far as you know getting everything collected into what it is today about how many acres are we talking so uh total right now we're sitting right around 2117 the original purchase was from the the Russell family and then there's been another donation of uh about 7 Acres was donated by Glenn with's family he was an outstanding board member here for a long long time and passed away unexpectedly and and they donated Seven Acres uh in his memory as well so we added on just a little bit so about 217 and it's amazing when sites like this can make such an impact and have such a connection it really is it's it's um it's almost it almost gives you chills um that you know I started here and I remember helping seed some of these prairies and I remember being out here teaching kids in classes and now it's tenfold you know almost 20 years later my kids are are doing the same thing that I helped get started so it's pretty cool to be a part of it still and see how it's just it's really just grown and most of it's due to amazing people um and volunteers that have have done this throughout the couple decades sure definitely okay so we're out here today it's gorgeous this is my first visit here so glad that we welcome we made the trip thank you so glad we we took a hike here uh so for folks who maybe aren't from the area or didn't even know that this is in their own backyard guilty uh what's a big draw for Ballard what's some things that people can do here I think honestly the biggest draw is the fact that it's completely 100% public accessible and we have over six miles worth of trails out here so you can you can hike if you want to if you want to go out and you want to get a long hike in most of our trails are Loop trails so they're not like out and backs they're Loop and you can kind of cut them if you're really feeling like a Long Trail you take you can take the longer route but most of them have smaller uh loop trails that kind of intersect all the trails are really well marked so the chances of um getting confused and taking a little extra longer hike is a little less uh hopefully uh that's a little less and most of them are you know ranked that easy to moderate Trail um difficulty there's a few out here there's a trail called um heart attack Hill um and it'll make make you feel uh like you might have a heart attack cuz it's a very steep Ridge climbing up challenging yeah it is a challenging one so they may they named that one just so uh people kind of knew might be a little bit more but we have one um awesome handicap accessible trail that goes all the way around our Wetland it's about a mile um mile long and we have a beautiful Boardwalk so you can um you can have any sort of accessibility for that trail and all of our trails are really really well managed so you can push strollers and everything so it's really nice that it's all these trails and it's not just a Woodland Trail if you want to go hiking and you want to see a wetland and you want to get up close with those frogs and snakes we have that if you don't want to do that then we have Prairie Trails but that's not to say that you might not come up close with some awesome amazing animal as well so it's just we've got a good diversity um of things to experience and then on top of that we have a beautiful Visitor Center that has uh interactive educational displays for kids of all ages um to get out and enjoy we have a kid fishing pond so if anytime you're out at ballards and you want to fish you're more than welcome to come to the desk and ask for a fishing pole and you can fish it's a really fun thing for the kids to feed the fish so you see a lot of fish and the turtles love the fish food too so um those are probably the biggest the biggest draws it's just a great Community Asset for getting out getting one with nature and seeing everything from you know your your snakes all the way up to the birds in the sky so it's really fun well you unpacked a lot there so let me uh let me sneak back through and have some followup so the Ada Trail does it have a name just so if people want to askland Boardwalk Trail okay and it's right behind the visitor center and we have really good guided trail maps that um you can pick up they're in a mailbox outside at the trail heads so you can usually see where you're going and they're marked pretty well um but it is it is marked very well it's right it's one of the main ones right outside the center and then if you pick up one of those papers make sure you throw them away do not leave them on the trail or better yet recycle them recycle them even better you can just take them and throw them right back in that mailbox for the next person to use use them even better yeah don't leave them out that's a good point yeah uh and then if I'm someone who's wanting to bring a kiddo to fish uh does that cost anything that is free completely free of charge there's there's limits um that are set in place to keep the pond stocked sure so you have to follow there's a big board that tells you all the rules and regulations but um really it's it's um free for kids and we asked you know just mainly for kids to use it but if if there's a mom or a dad you know fishing too we're not we're not going to go after them or anything uh Wildlife so you mentioned snakes yes well little creepy crawly for me but you know snakes frogs uh what other kind of wildlife can we maybe expect to see out here yeah so you know we've done a lot of surveys and there's so much more to be done but you can see the the white tailed deer is very prevalent um you'll see them out here wild turkeys often are in our bird feeding area so you get up and close with some wild turkeys we have um 27 species that are listed as species in greatest need of conservation here at the Valor Nature Center so this property here not only provides really unique for us as as humans to come out and enjoy it but it's it's definitely uh a monument and very much a key role for a lot of species that are just kind of struggling and finding habitat so that's a really cool thing um barow which um used to be listed in the state of Illinois have roosted here on the property and they're owls are my favorite my favorite animal so I'm so excited when we see them here that's that's a really cool species to have and then all your creepy Collies we got some we've got over I think 16 or maybe it's 26 a lot of different herps whiches reptiles and amphibian so yeah you'll see everything from um some really cool Birds um the birer the birding here is phenomenal people come from all over just to sit at the Wetland um to see what kind of birds are using the Wetland and stuff like that so you get the common stuff but then uh there's also some really cool stuff that you might be able to see when you're out on the turtles too yeah it's ex exciting and so you mentioned the Nature Center and we're going to save that for the second half of our episode but uh even as we're here today there is a buzzy bees demonstration that's supposed to be happening um in addition to that can you kind of talk about maybe the different programming that happens here throughout the year yeah so uh the naturalist here is Karen GRL and she is amazing at putting on educational programs for kids of all ages so um she will host a lot of programs um for pollinators um she will do programs for birding there's been some programs that she'll do at night for night hikes and those those are almost every season she tries to get some sort of of night hike um she'll also do some like species specific so like a program about frogs or a program specifically about night creepy crawlies that aren so creepy crawly once you get to learn a little bit more about him um but Karen Karen also does a lot with uh with the school group so she does uh educational that kind of just goes all over I think there's over 300 or 3,000 kids that visit spring and fall and they get to see a whole bunch of different stuff but that she does also a a Halloween hike so every year uh there's usually some sort of haunted not so scary hike out here that's really fun to do as well well let's say I'm trying to find these events is it uh best to look at a website social media where can I find this stuff U Facebook is probably your best to go um Point she she tries to keep everything up to date on programs and I think you can even register for programs from um Facebook messaging uh we also do have a website which is Ballard center.org and that usually is up to date on our calendar of events it also has a trail map on it as well so um that would probably be those two places are the best uh go-to to stay up on activities and happenings out at the ballor Nature Center and then to take that even further if I'm someone who wants to give back or get involved do you have any sort of cleanup days that happen throughout the year or so we do have a few days where um we will open it up for volunteers to come out and help you know Trail maintenance or cleanup or sometimes in the fall we'll have like interseeding so we'll get some seed from the Prairies that we have and we'll spread it around and and those are also usually posted on um social media or uh on our website and then we're always having a running list of volunteers so if there's ever anything that um people would really want to get involved with our doors are wide open we if it wasn't for volunteers we wouldn't have this beautiful place that we do so um all of our Mowing and and housekeeping and stuff is all ran by volunteers so if if they want to get involved um we definitely would be able to find something to to keep them busy I'm sure well before we got started today you were telling me that um there's someone at least within the vicinity I think that it's doing prescription burning yes how important is that too to keeping this place you know looking beautiful yeah so um we do a lot of prescribed burning here at the Balor nature centers um on both Woodland and Prairie and it's it's definitely um critical if you think historically um fire was on the landscape much more prevalent than what it is now in this day AG just because of settlement and everything that's happened um over the last couple hundred years so our goal is to reintroduce a semi type um inter interval fire program here and fire helps I mean it brings brings life to the Prairie prairies are Disturbed oriented habitats I mean you think about bison and and everything uh that used to would have historically Disturbed a prairie so we try to get those prairies um active with fire fire helps keep the Woody species out which we don't really want to see in in our prairies and it also helps with um exotic control um Exotics are probably the greatest threat to our natural communities especially here at at the Nature Center and fire is is I wouldn't say the easiest but the most costeffective management tool that we have to keep some of those things at Bay is there anything about Ballard that I haven't brought up that is definitely worth talking about um I think just keep in mind that you know we're our mission here at ballards is to provide education um and provide an environmentally sound place for people to visit and we do that by managing these areas as they would have hopefully been pre settlement so you'll see maybe if people come out and Hikes they might see you know a place that's been burnt or a place where there's um plants that have been sprayed because they're Exotics and invasive and unwanted uh but we are trying to build this place up and to keep it in like that status of what would have been here historically and without again without those amazing volunteers board members um and Karen who is who's the full-time person out here at the Nature Center that none of that would be possible so it's it's a uh it's a group effort uh I'm from the south I I'd say like you know this is a ballards we all try to do something and we'll say y'all you know y'all want to do this but this out here is really an all y'all thing like there's a lot of people working together to get out here and make this place what it is and it's um it's it's so impressively humbling to be a part of it and I know that we talked about cleanup days but is there is there another step to getting involved in that all of y'all I mean if you're trying to really give back and invest in you know your outdoor space that's local to you right so the best place again would probably um come out here and talk to Karen at the Nature Center or if you'd like to talk to a board member Karen also has lists of all the board members I mean you can reach out to me there's most board members out here are static to talk to people who want to help and make this place better and and I think there's even a volunteer sign up on the website that you can uh you can volunteer your time or if you want to volunteer funds um I think there's a place for that on the website as well now do you have a favorite spot out here that if someone's never been they have to make sure they see this before they skidadle there is um a large Wetland that's here right behind us and there's a perch back there and it's called Leo's perch he was an amazing volunteer out here and he helped build it um and it overlooks a wetland and it's just a really peaceful Serene like just get yourself back in that um State of Mind of you know everything's going to be all right it's just a really calm peaceful place to be and that's probably my number one place to go to wonderful well Sammy thank you so much we are going to take a quick break and then we're going to dive into everything that the Nature Center has to offer so don't go anywhere take a hike we'll be right back [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] welcome back we have made it to the Nature Center we've still got Sammy here our guide extraordinaire and she's going to show us kind of what this Nature Center has to offer for our young nature enthusiasts so what do we what do we have in here so we have an awesome um exhibit room is what we call it and it's natural exhibits and educational displays for kids of all ages so we start here uh in kind of the younger uh Explorer room and it's got a quite a few different um things that a young Explorer can mess with they can make prints in the sand to see what kind of animals around here what kind of Prince they have and then there's even an eagle quilt on the wall where you can see the the wingspan of an eagle and what your wingspan is compared and then it even has a butter or a hummingbird on it as well so you can see the huge difference between um different birds and then there's other things that you can touch and feel for kids there's walnuts there's skulls there's antlers there's turtle shells stuff that maybe they they might not always see on a hike but they can experience here in the center and even in this cool little tree that we had made for us when a when a kid gets inside there and looks up or adult if they want to try to crawl in there too uh looks up there's there's different displays inside of animals that might use old uh tree cavities for Habitat as well so it's a really it's educational um but it's fun and it's really fun as well so from there we get some more Hands-On activities probably one of the favorite things for for kids to visit is to be able to touch pelts so we have pelts of different mammals that can be found in Illinois maybe not all of them here although I would bet most of them could be found if you looked hard enough and were pretty quiet which doesn't usually happen when we're on trail Heights so they get to touch them we've seen kids put them on their heads you know we get uh it's nice to get to feel exactly what what a beaver might feel like or a badger or skunk stuff that they might not see up close in person so this is probably like super exciting the other thing that really kids really love are the mystery boxes behind you so you don't know what's inside the mystery box but you have to stick your hand in there to feel and guess what it is don't worry there's no live animals you're not going to get bit by anything in those boxes but it just gives another kind of edge to experience different textures in nature so it's it's a got feel in one do it see if you can guess it before you pull your hand out I don't even feel anything oh is it am I feeling in the wrong spot no there should be oh here's one oh I picked the wrong side you picked the wrong okay uh it feels like it wants to be a claw oh it might be you you can pull it out and see and it was a little pointy I gave it a shot but I can see that be F yeah it's different um that there seed pods in there so yeah it's different things are in every box and I think this one even has some cool little muscle shell as well so again things that exist in nature but just taking a hike might not you might not always get to see it so you get some hands-on experience and it puts a little edgy fun in it as well the other cool thing about um the center here is we have interactive displays kind of interspersed throughout the entire exhibit room um even in here uh it might not show up too great because the lighting is a little different but it's different animals that are nocturnal and how they how they use spaces available so we try to get as much as we can in these exhibits um again for kids of of all ages and we want to be like Ernie wanted the educational aspect of it so it's fun but kids are learning too so um this is probably the the the cream of the crop uh when you come to the visitor center and you get to see um our bird watching display and it's really cool because all of these windows are mirrored so you can see out but the birds cannot see in so usually you get a little bit better um bird viewing activities because they're not scared of you we're dealing probably with a rest time for birds so they're probably not super active in the middle of the afternoon but um Karen does a great job of managing it and we're redoing our fishing our little Pond here to make it deeper and more effective so we can get maybe some Tad poles and kind of have a more diverse bird viewing area but there's some folks that'll come and just sit and this is just the most peaceful thing we even provide binoculars for kids so you don't have to have them have them with you and um Karen probably FS those bird seeders more than she'd like to admit but this is so cool and I can imagine coming to this area and being like Mom mom I have to go get my own set of binoculars just to have one at home I'd be SOC usually we have to remind the kids to slow down and take it all in cuz there's just so much to see um that even for for little dudes it's kind of hard to take it all in so that's why we put those those fun interactive displays in as well all of our exhibits here were either donated um by volunteers or the Nature Center might have had to purchase some stuff but most of it came from people who wanted to give back and didn't know what how to help and they said oh we have a a turkey mount can you use that at the center and we're like yeah we can make a woodland display of Woodland Critters that you could find in southern or South Central Illinois so um that's how that one is made they made the tree and everything they put they brought in the Little Fawn and the raccoon everything that you can kind of maybe see when you're on a hike and all most of those animals um would probably you you could see them on a trail on a trail hike if you're super quiet and stealthy well you were saying earlier too the wild turkeys were getting a little closer to the Nature Center viewing area it's like a buffet sometimes for the wild turkeys cuz they're like oh free food we'll take it love that especially when they have their PS they're young it's super cute when they all come uh running up and then you have a whole bunch of little turkeys and then the mom turkeyy just sitting there like get your Phill kids come and get it so um we keep moving uh through there's tons of displays we try to even include not just you know animals and plants we're doing minerals and fossils and stuff to kind of get get a little bit of everything of the natural resources as a whole not just you know just plants and animals how it was formed um what was here historically and and why maybe we are trying to keep the Prairies the Prairie and why we're trying to keep the woodlands in the same type of condition and maybe even improve upon them because of what was here you know historically in pre- settlement time um and then one of the coolest exhibits that kids love is the aquarium terrarium and that's because they get to see some life Critters in in their quote unquote natural habitat right so Karen does a great job of managing this and they've done some work to it over the years to make it even better um she's got a couple painted turtles that looks like in there right now and a goldfish and we used to have a tree frog but you can never see it cuz they're so stealthy that it's hard find but this is probably one of the kids' favorite things because everybody loves to see nature up close and personal yeah is there anything else about the center that we might have missed or there's ours and they're listed on the website it's not always open usually 8 to 4 Monday through Friday during the winter I believe we're closed on Monday so always take a look at that website make sure that the nature center is open but um when the doors are open it's you are more than welcome to come and explore and just enjoy learn get a feel for things and then um if you have the opportunity get out and take a hike while you're here as well awesome well Sammy thank you so much you have shared so much knowledge I can't understand why anyone wouldn't want to come take a hike here to Ballard so thank you for being here today thank you for us of course and thank you to our viewers for joining us for this episode and I hope to see you next time [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] take a hike on weiu is supported by Ry King America's Farm and Home Store camping supplies kayaks fishing and pet supplies and more find your store and more information regarding r King at rolling.com