SEQUOYAH NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE.
Day 173 – We were up around 7:30 this morning, 32 degrees and sunny. The girls are on the dashboard enjoying the sun & watching the River flow by. They had their heated pads last night & were so glad we had electricity at this campground. Today we’ll explore the area and go to the Wildlife Refuge.
We left at 10 a.m. and it didn’t take too long to get to the Refuge. Sequoyah National Wildlife Refuge is located below I-40 southwest of Vian, OK. “The Refuge name honors Sequoyah, a Native American who invented a Cherokee alphabet that allowed his tribe to preserve their traditions and history in writing.” from a Refuge brochure. It is well-maintained and new gravel had just been put down on the Auto Tour roads. The Wildlife Refuge consists of 20,800 acres of corn & alfalfa fields, lakes & streams, wetlands & riparian forests, & has several boat launches & two very nice walking trails. It’s a popular fishing location; there is a visitor’s center & there are restrooms available throughout the Refuge. In addition to all the ducks, geese, and other wetlands birds, there are many hawks & various raptors. We saw quite a few bald eagle nests with eagles in them. One of those nests which is near the Visitor’s Center has a eaglecam & you can look online and see the two young eagles. When we stopped to take a picture of that nest, we saw two adult eagles there taking care of the chicks. We also saw lots of armadillos & red squirrels.
After leaving the main Refuge, we drove to a separate Refuge Unit to check it out. The drive through the farmlands was nice and we saw another bald eagle nest with an adult in it, and at a different section of the Unit, we saw a bald eagle on the branch of a tree looking for prey at the River. Then we took side roads back towards the campground so that we could drive through the two small towns of Webbers Falls & Gore, both peaceful little towns on the Arkansas River. Gore calls itself “the Trout Fishing Capital of the U.S.” We didn’t get back to the RV until almost 4:30 p.m. The high today was 67 degrees, sunny & breezy. We had a good day, the weather was perfect, and we even got a good hike in. When we got “home”, we sat outside by the Illinois River. There were only four other campers, including us; not bad for a Friday night.