Marjie Ducey's favorite outdoor stories

Returning to Nebraska to film parts of the television series “RV There Yet?” had unexpected consequences for Lincoln native Patrice McCabe and her husband, Kevin.

After years of living in Florida, they’ve begun the search to purchase property in western Nebraska to live there — at least part time. The more central location will make it easier to travel for their show. Kevin is executive producer of “RV There Yet?” and Patricia is a producer.

Five years ago, Jon Hees thought every wild mushroom meant instant death.

Then he and girlfriend Erika Catranides did some morel mushroom hunting while on a fishing trip.

As the sun came up Saturday morning, Dave Baasch couldn’t believe what he was seeing at the Crane Trust near Alda, Nebraska.

Ahead of him in a field were 46 whooping cranes, one of the most endangered bird species in the world. It was the largest group ever documented in the United States outside of the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge in Texas, where they overwinter.

Flying high above Nebraska in his private plane, John Sidle was uniquely qualified to identify “something big and white’’ on the large lake below him.

A longtime veteran of aerial surveys for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Forest Service, Sidle realized that what he was looking at was a colony of American white pelicans nesting on an island in Garden County’s Wolf Lake.