Checking out the Wildlife

The other day we had Blaubeere's kids for the day so we decided to check out the Necedah National Wildlife Refugee to see what they had.  I had read about it and it was on my list of placed to visit anyway.  It is a ways away so we set out pretty early.

At almost 43,700 acres, its a pretty big place and we knew we wouldn't be able to see it all so this visit we went to the visitor's center.

It has an interesting history.  Originally, settlers tried farming the area by draining the wetlands.  But that didn't work.  While technically not part of the geographic area of the United States that became known as the "Dust Bowl", it was at about the same time that the area suffered from much of the same conditions and most settlers gave up and left the area.  Then, during the Great Depression, the Civilian Conservation Corps, the "CCC" took the area in as a project and restored the wetlands by building dikes and damns to flood the area back to what it started out as. Then the area was set aside as a National Wildlife Refuge.  That was in the 30's.  Since then donations of land and the assistance of volunteer organizations made it what it is now.  And its a pretty interesting place.

We started in the visitor's center and looked at the exhibits they had there.  Pretty interesting stuff.  Quite informative, and interesting enough to keep the kids engaged.

I liked that they had plenty of hands-on exhibits.  The kids liked that, too.

The exhibit area was big enough to keep them interested but not so big that they lost interest before we'd seen it all.

One of the volunteers there, when they saw we had kids with us, told us about their "Go Outside" back packs, back packs with age appropriate activities for kids up to age 11 that the kids could do to earn a patch.  So we checked out a pack and gave it a whirl!

Out on the patio, enjoying the fresh air.  I can't say we enjoyed the sunshine because the whole time we were there it was on the verge of raining.  In fact, it did sprinkle on us a little, but not so much as to make us cut our visit short.

So we looked over the requirements and then got to work.

One of the activities was a bug catcher.  So we went bug hunting.  Then we carefully put our bug in the viewer and checked him out.  Dragon caught a cricket and Hero caught an ant.  Then there were some questions to complete and an identification card to find the bug on.  Then we carefully let the bugs go.  Managed to do that with no apparent harm to them.  That was cool.

The pack came with some small binoculars that each of the kids had fun taking turns with.  There were several identification cards so pretty much anything you saw you could try to look up and probably find.

Actually, we stayed pretty close to the visitor's center for most of the activities we did.  The trails were really nice and kid friendly.  In fact, every developed trail we saw was either paved or boardwalk.  Pretty nice.

We gradually worked our way out a little ways from the visitor's center.  We could see this fun looking boardwalk that went out across the water that we wanted to check out.

From what we could see, it was pretty long and looked like a good place to see some birds from.  So we headed out that way.

One of the things in the pack was a cloud viewer.  There was a little wooden frame to look through and frame up a cloud.  Then we looked on the identification card with several different kinds of clouds on it to see what kind of cloud it was.  So we looked and identified the clouds we were seeing.  That day were were seeing a lot of strato-nimubus clouds.  Pretty interesting.

While we were out on the boardwalk we ran into the most rain we got.  But even then it wasn't so bad.

Out at the other end of the boardwalk we found an observation area, complete with some telescopes.  The kids had fun taking turns looking through those.  I liked how kid friendly everything was.  The telescopes came with little steps for the little kids but they were movable so the bigger kids or grownups could move them out of the way if they wanted.  Nice.

Out across the marsh there were some geese.  That met another requirement on the activity pack, identify and describe some kind of wildlife seen in the refuge.  I thought it interesting how all the geese that were standing were standing on just one leg.  We also saw some cranes but didn't get a good picture of any.  There weren't very many that day and they were a long ways away.

But even without seeing a lot of birds, it was still a very pretty area.  Lots of green.

At the visitor's center there were some bird feeders.  The birds were pretty skittish and wouldn't hang around very long but I did manage to get a picture of one.

We hadn't realized it when we decided to go there, but all the organizations that help maintain and manage the refuge were there today, each had set up a booth showing what they did and how they contributed. So we checked them out, too.  Pretty interesting.  It was encouraging to see how all these groups were working together to preserve and maintain the refuge.  Sometimes current events make you wonder if that happens very much any more.

I'm not sure playing in the fountain was designed to be one of the hands on activities, but it was still pretty fun and interesting.

When we got all the activities done we took the back pack back in to see how the kids had done. Everybody got a patch and everybody was pretty happy.  It had been a fun time.

Then, while we were finishing up, each of the kids got a "tattoo" to remember the day.  As good as face painting, right?  The kids liked it.

They  went on quick and easy, only took a minute each.  Pretty fun.

It was a good time.  Good enough that we ended up being there a little longer than we had planned.  But I'm glad we went.  And we only scratched the surface of what's there.  We stayed near the visitors center, but as you might imagine, 43,700 acres can hold a lot more to see.  Because its a wildlife refuge its not developed with all kinds of recreational facilities like a park.  In fact, after our tour we looked for a picnic table to have lunch on but never found one.  But there are lots of trails to visit, roads to drive down, lakes and ponds to see, and even an observation tower to climb.  You can even go berry picking if you go at the right time of year.  We didn't get into hardly any of that.  We decided that we want to go back.  And when we do we want to go in either the spring or the fall, when the migratory birds are on the move.  We didn't see a lot of birds this visit but during the right time of year they say the place is packed.  We gotta go back!