WHEELER NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE – Day 2.
Day 67 – It was 33 degrees this morning & sunny when we got up. Today we went back to the NWR to drive the rest of the roads & to visit the Visitor’s Center. We packed our lunches & left the campground at 10 a.m.
The Visitor’s Center was open and it was very nice. When we first walked in, in glass cases, there were two life-sized, very striking specimens: the first was a Whooping Crane, 5 feet tall & the second was a Sandhill Crane, smaller but still plenty big. Just gorgeous. We talked for awhile with the Ranger who said the Cranes had just flown north a couple of weeks ago; the Sandhill Cranes arrive by the thousands by December to winter over. This year they had 14 Whooping Cranes (about 1/10 of the eastern fly-way population!); they are very endangered. We just missed seeing them. After seeing a film of both these birds, we definitely want to come back during winter!
It turned out that we were visiting at a slow time for the Refuge’s wildlife. The wintering birds have left & the next batch of birds arrive next month. He said that at this time, we should see some ducks & a few warblers, and maybe an eagle or an alligator (this is pretty much the alligator’s northern-most territory). We took off to drive the sections we didn’t get to yesterday.
Today’s drive was less forested than yesterday’s; a lot of it was driving right alongside the Tennessee River. We only saw a couple of people – a fisherman & a couple of bicyclists. We’d thought we would see more because the Visitor’s Center was fairly crowded. We stopped for lunch right by the River. It was a very nice day, a high of 60 degrees, breezy & sunny. The Ranger had said that there’d been so much rain all winter that it had set new records. A few of the roads were still closed. We saw plenty of evidence of the past flooding; you could tell that recently water had covered the roads. We did see plenty of ducks, several hawks, a bald eagle, a few song birds, and no alligators. Also, there were plenty of cows, horses, chickens, roosters, sheep, goats & lambs on the surrounding farmlands.
Click any picture below to see a slideshow.
The Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge is 34,500 acres of land located on both sides of the Tennessee River between Decatur & Athens, AL. It was established in 1938 as a wintering area for ducks, geese, and other migratory birds. There are many roads running through the Refuge & bicyclists enjoy these roads often. Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge Visitor’s Center: 2700 Refuge Headquarters Road, Decatur, AL 35603; (256) 350-6639; http://wheeler.fws.gov.
Back to the RV around 4 p.m., we made a huge batch of Chili. Gonna be another cold night. Tomorrow we leave for Tennessee and Reelfoot Lake State Park. The girls don’t know it yet. They like it better when we stay longer at campgrounds.
Joe Wheeler State Park: 4403 McLean Drive, Rogersville, AL 35652; Reservations 1-800-ALA-PARK or www.alapark.com/joewheeler; Campground (256) 247-1184. This was one of those “resort” Parks with a marina, boat rentals, fishing, a golf course & pro shop, a children’s playground, tennis courts, a restaurant, a camp store, swimming, hiking trails, a gift shop, a lodge with rooms to rent, cabins in the woods & lakeside cottages, biking, a basketball court, security gates, 116 campsites with sewer/electric/water hook-ups, a dump station, restrooms with showers, a laundromat, a day use area, picnic area, and group shelters. We haven’t run across that many State Parks that are outfitted like this, and these fancy Parks offer much more than we really need. They must be mobbed in the summer judging from the size of the parking lots. Everything was clean & kept-up nicely and we liked our campsite well enough. We had site #A07. The bigger rigs had plenty of pull-through sites to choose from. Our site fit us just fine & we weren’t too close to our neighboring campsites. The cost to reserve a site online was a little over $39 per night, closer to $33 if you walk-in without a reservation. We would stay here again if in the area.