Necedah Wildlife Refuge and Three Bears Resort

 

Yesterday Tiffy couldn't talk in the evening since she was going to visit her mother, so she called me while she was driving and we talked a while. My neighbor and I walked, and I mentioned that the best chocolate in town is at CocoVaa, so she had me take her there, and we got chocolate. She got one of each flavor! I got some for me and some for Travalon. When Travalon came home, Jilly Moose came over and the three of us went to the Mexican restaurant not far from our house, then we went to Bierock and had small beers. It was surprisingly quiet there for a Friday night. I said we should go blacklight bowling, but nobody else was interested.

Travalon took some photos from the dock. Here the Tuxedo Duck is swimming under our dock with his lady love close behind.

Here is a close-up of the Tux Duck.

And I like this shot of a gull flying.

This morning Travalon saw this woodpecker out the window, so he called me to see it and took a photo of it. Apparently it is called a red-bellied woodpecker, which makes zero sense because its belly is white - as you can see, its head is what is red.

Then we stopped at the dam in Sauk and saw lots of pelicans.

After that we drove to the Necedah National Wildlife Refuge, stopping for lunch at a Chinese buffet in Mauston. The little custard pies were to die for! 

Of course Blogspot loaded these photos in reverse order. These are photos of the Sprague Mather Flowage, where we walked on the causeway.

There was a paved road to get there, but of course I suggested we go through the refuge on what I thought were paved roads on the map, but they were far from it. It was some rough going, but we saw deer and turkeys. We also saw an eagle just as we got to the flowage.

Here I am in front of Harvey Pond.

Before that, we went to the observation tower, where we saw very brown sandhill cranes.

And a swan going bottoms up.

Here is a blue heron and a nesting swan. We were told these are tundra swans.

Here is the blue heron.

The marsh in Necedah is very scenic.

For some reason this swan is labeled 29E. As far as we can tell, the others weren't labeled.

And this thirteen-lined ground squirrel kept trying to avoid us. It was so cute!

This island is cute too.

Here is another nesting swan.

And this swan appears to be talking to two male wood ducks, who are eagerly listening.

We didn't see any whooping cranes, but we did hear them, along with a sora we never saw. The pair who always nest near the entrance have not appeared this spring, so the ranger we talked to thinks something happened to them. We asked him if there were any pileated woodpeckers around, and he told us that between the Suk Cerney Flowage and the Boghaunter Trail there were a lot of dead trees where they can often be found. We headed there and didn't see any pileated woodpeckers; we did see several redheaded woodpeckers, but they were too quick for Travalon to get a photo. We checked out Suk Cerney, but while we were there, a car full of loud teenagers and an even louder school-aged boy arrived, so we left for the observation tower... and then who should come charging up the observation tower as we were looking at birds but the same group. So we left, and they did too, and they were following us, so we pulled over and let them pass. Weird. We were going the wrong direction anyway, since we were trying to get to Harvey Pond. Who knows where they were going?

In the evening we headed to the Three Bears Resort, where we are staying for practically free thanks to Booking.com and all the hotels we booked in Florida. We had to use our points before Memorial Day Weekend, so here we are. We wanted to eat before going to the waterpark, but the sit-down restaurant had a fifteen minute wait (even though most of the tables were empty), so we went to the pizza place inside the water park, but the woman there ignored us, so we went back to the restaurant. After that we went to the water park and enjoyed the Lazy River, which dumps into the wave pool. I wasn't expecting that! We also enjoyed the hot tub that is half outside - we spent our time in that half. The waterpark was allegedly open until nine, so about quarter to I said maybe we should start heading out, but then we saw all the kids were gone from the fun slides, so we went down them. The lifeguards whistled at us and said, "Get out! We're closing!" I said, "Aren't you open until nine?" and they said, "We close fifteen minutes early to clean up." I said that was false advertising, they should really say they're only open until a quarter to nine if that's what they mean. As we were leaving, we saw another hot tub with a small waterfall that we never got to try. But we have to go to Mass tomorrow, and the waterpark is only open from nine to one, so I guess we won't get to try that one. This place is a little odd. Even the drain in the bathtub is weird and automatically closes, so I had to hold it open after taking my shower. On the other hand, the shower head has very cool blue lights on it, so that's something. It's like showering in a disco.

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