Seeing the Scenes at Seney

Today I drove out to Seney National Wildlife Refuge to check it out. It's a little to the south of Pictured Rocks - just barely showing at the bottom of our park map. I was originally planning to do a longer hike today, but the weather looked better for tomorrow, so I switched my plans for the two days. It was supposed to have scattered showers today, but be sunny tomorrow, and sunny further south today, so it worked out.

To get there I had to drive across the "Seney Stretch" on Highway 28. Apparently this stretch of road is notorious in the U.P. for being 30 miles of perfectly straight road (because it goes through a lot of wetlands and had to be specially built, so they took the most direct route.) It's famous for being the most mind-numbingly boring stretch of road that will test the sanity of those who try to drive along its blank straightness...

...So, my dad's from Kansas.

Thirty miles of highway in a straight line wouldn't even have registered on my consciousness if I hadn't already heard of its infamy. In fact, it felt perfectly natural as I drove along!

There was a lot more fall color in the trees along the road here. I know I wrote a while ago about the colors starting up, but it's mostly still been just bits of color, and maybe a whole tree here and there. This drive took me past huge patches of trees that were all deep, bright reds and oranges. Apparently the colors are further along inland, away from the lake. It's the opposite of what happened at the beginning of the summer, when it stayed cool longer at the coast while it was already getting hot away from the lake. Now the lake is stabilizing the temperatures and keeping it relatively warm compared to the inland areas, and that is affecting what stage of color the trees are ate. It was a real surprise - I've been seeing the colors advancing in the park, but this really jumped things forward!

The first thing I saw when I pulled up to the nature center at Seney National Wildlife Refuge was a big pond stretching out into the distance - and two huge white birds way out on the water. Swans! I knew Seney was mainly wetlands, and had a lot of waterfowl, but swans visible from the parking lot! It was very exciting.

That white dot just above the center is a swan...

Earlier this week a woman came into the visitor center at Miner's Castle and said she was a volunteer at Seney, and was trying to see more of the area. The same situation as me! I told her so, and we talked for a while. Today when I walked into the Seney nature center, there she was behind the counter, with our positions reversed!

I watched the film, which was about 15 minutes long and very good, telling the history of the area and then showing scenes of it through the different seasons of the year. (I could just kick myself for not getting out there at the beginning of the summer, when all the ducks and geese and swans were raising their babies! It just wasn't on my radar at that point in time.)

Seney is unusual in that a lot of its wetland habitat was constructed, or reconstructed, by humans. The area was repeatedly logged and burned in the 1800's, and then the wetlands were drained so the land could be used for farming - which failed. In the 1930's it was made into a national wildlife refuge, particularly for waterfowl, and the CCC did a ton of work there - building dams and dikes to create a series of huge ponds. The level of the water in various pools can be controlled - right now some of it is being drained so that there is more shallow water to provide refuge and food for the birds preparing to migrate.

After watching the film, I was ready to get out there and see for myself! There's a 1.5 mile nature trail which covers a lot of terrain - ponds, marsh, woods, and grasslands. As always, I alternated between a brisk walk and stopping every ten feet to take pictures...

 High-bush cranberries. Not actually in the cranberry family, but taste similar. Not good raw...

 Arrowwood Viburnum - not good for people, but a lot of other things eat them!

Beavers have been at work here! 

 Surprise, surprise - a chipmunk...

 This guy kept yelling at me. Following me, and chattering loudly. He did NOT like that I was in his woods!

 There were a lot of different types of mushrooms.

Blackberries! Haven't seen these along the lakeshore! 

 This is the work of a squirrel.

 Rose hips. I saw a lot of these, too - it must have been gorgeous earlier in the summer!

 Ah, there's the one who's been leaving shredded pine cone bits everywhere! It's hard to tell, but he's working on another one in this picture...

 Chokeberries. Not to be confused with chokecherries - although both are only edible when cooked with sugar!

These rose hips were shaped a little strangely... 

 Cattail fluff!

 Looking through the trees, you see grassy wetland, then more trees, then more wetland, then more trees beyond...

 Not many flowers left, but there was some goldenrod still blooming.

 The path turned a corner, and there were a whole bunch of water birds, right there! 

 Geese, and a swan! And possibly some ducks further out!

 "We are down a-dabbling - Up tails all!" (from The Wind in the Willows - originally about ducks)

These ones are bright red! They really brought a lot of color to the landscape. 

Turtle! Right in the middle of the path! Looks like he just came out of the water.

 I flipped him over, for just a moment. I asked in the nature center when I got back - it was a Painted Turtle.

 This is one of the dams between pools. The section in the foreground is blocked, but the other sections are open, and water is flowing through into the next pool.

 Either these are some really big, flat mushrooms, or someone's missing their pancakes...

 Red Virginia creeper leaves against white birch bark.

Virginia creeper berries. 

 Swan! Zoomed in, but still, a swan! Very exciting.

When I finally finished the walk, I went and did basically a bigger version of the same thing: the scenic drive, a one-way gravel road along the dikes, between the different areas of wetland. I saw an amazing amount of wildlife, and finally got a chance at some close-up pictures of swans! (Although it was difficult to get them in that classic, graceful swan pose, because their necks and heads were almost constantly underwater as they were stuffing their faces! Such disillusionment...) The scenery was amazing - you never had the same type of view twice.

 Great white egrets! I see them all the time in Missouri, but apparently it's unusual to see them here.

 This looks like it's been drained recently.

 This appears to be an old beaver lodge or something similar...

 These turtles would have been long gone before I ever had a chance to flip any of them over!

 There wasn't much traffic, but I did have to share the road with a pair of sandhill cranes. I scared a few other pairs up as well as I drove along.

Here comes the Swan Sequence!

 And more geese, too, of course...

 These swans were napping, heads tucked under!

 Great blue heron! And he stayed put long enough for me to get a photo! I saw one flying on my walk earlier, but there was no chance of a picture, so I just stood and watched.

 Another beaver lodge? Maybe a muskrat house? I don't know.

Even when I wasn't stopping as often to take photos, the drive took a long time. I had planned to go south from Seney, taking a longer scenic drive and looping back up from Manistique, but I had completely failed in my estimation of how long I would spend at Seney! (This happens a lot... I need to learn to just double it every time. Triple it. Seriously.) It was still barely afternoon and I would have gone on, but I needed to get back to Munising to pick up a package that was supposed to be delivered to Headquarters. (It didn't come. When I called, they said, "Oh, it looks like we'll have to reschedule!" Grrr...)

While I didn't get as far as I wanted, to, I saw some really wonderful sights! Beautiful, scenic... and cute!