The Agatelady: Adventures and Events: Seney Refuge Snowshoe

Tuesday, February 25, 2014

Seney Refuge Snowshoe

Last Friday I was supposed to head out of town with friends, Jamey and Lois, to celebrate Lois's birthday. The freezing rain, high winds, and possible blizzard conditions caused us to postpone until yesterday. Temperatures were in the single digits and the roads were icy, but we went anyway. Our first stop was the Seney Wildlife Refuge for a snowshoe. The Seney National Wildlife Refuge is a managed wetland in Schoolcraft County in the U.S. state of Michigan. It has an area of 95,212 acres. It is bordered by M-28 and M-77. Just for comparison, the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore is only 73,236 acres.

We parked off Robinson Road, accessed from the south side of Germfask. Since we wanted to go to Manistique to go shopping, and then to Curtis for Lois's birthday dinner at Chamberlins -- we limited this snowshoe to just short of two hours. Our route is shown below in red. Come along on the snowshoe with us.....

Putting on snowshoes...

Notice the wind whipping up the snow....

Jamey spotted an eagle, but I didn't get a good photo. So here is a picture showing that we had some blue sky to begin the trek -- but then it snowed the last half.

For what ever reason, there were not as many snow sculptures at the refuge compared to what we have in Grand Marais. But there were some...

It is hard to make out the detail in the picture below, but there is a 30 foot branch hanging from a tree. In the pictures that follow, you can see that it is not touching the ground, but is caught up in the other tree.

The gathering of broken and fallen branches was artistic.

The tree below had lightning strike damage.

There is usually more open water flow downstream from the water control gate, but not this year. It was still nice to see some open water. There were animal tracks in the area -- I am sure the critters appreciate the open water, too.

Jamey checking out the flow through the gate...

Heading back....

We started talking about how we would survive if we had to spend the night in the woods. Jamey went in search of insects -- just in case you needed to find food -- he found a hibernating spider...