Saturdays are great days to hike!

Too nice to be indoors on a warm, 73 degree, partly cloudy February day, so we decided to visit another NWR in our neighborhood: Weeks Bay NWR. We were bummed out when the man in the Visitor Center told us there'd been a prescribed burn on the refuge the week before....



Charred and blackened stumps and shrubs and not much else. We walked the entire boardwalk anyway when he told us someone spotted a bobcat that morning. We saw nothing and the smell drove us away! We moved to the pitcher plant bog across the hiway and walked the boardwalk there, but not much to see this time of year as nothing is blooming yet. They'd burned in this area, too. Pee-yew! We decided to drive south to Gulf Shores and check out Bon Secour NWR. Eat our picnic lunch there. (Clocked Bon Secour at 50 miles from our condo.)



This was a delightful surprise! We didn't know when we started walking the Pine Beach Trail, that it was a four-mile out and back hike. Guess we should've read the sign! Nevertheless, hi-ho, hi-ho, off we go. The first mile led us thru a mixture of woodland hammocks and wetland swales, piney and live oak forests. And it's a wide, easy trail. The bridge over the water above took us around the west end of Little Lagoon and east end of Gator Lake and was the beginning of mile two. The trail soon melted into fine white sand... not easy walking in that stuff, but a sign said, "to beach," so we continued till I could stick my toes in the Gulf water!


More to see at this NWR, inc bright red yaupon berries and beach rosemary that was in full bloom. Smelled good.


Big ol' beetle crossed my path. I walked barefoot in the sand, till I realized these caterpillars that were devouring the scrub oak were ALL over the sand. Bleah! The caterpillars had denuded the oaks.


No, this is not SNOW. This is SAND. Water was uh, not cold, but not warm, either.



Finally, we spotted this handsome fella just as the trail heads off in the sand toward the beach. Great blue herons don't let people get this close. Could it be sick? We each took several pictures and continued on to the beach. When we saw it standing in the same place on our return, and it let me get this close w/o moving, we sort of figured it might not be standing there the next day, if you get my drift. Up this close, it was a real beauty, but I wasn't going to get any closer -- that beak would still be dangerous! We saw quite a few birds on this hike, no alligators and no snakes.

A new hiking area for us -- we enjoyed it very much. Over five miles today and we were ready for the couch when we got home! But, we'll go back....