Confessions of an RVer: SANTA ANA NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE

The Valley had a cool front blow through yesterday, so the sun was out, the winds were mild and the high temp for the day was suppose to be 58 degrees. Mr. W thought it sounded like a hiking day and frankly, I did too. Now for you who have followed my blog, you know I am particular about my hikes. I want as much information as possible about how far the hike is, elevation changes, type of terrain, what I might see along the way, etc. So, Mr. W had checked on all that info and decided we needed to hike in the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge. It wasn't far from us. Mr. W looked it up on his trusty GPS and off we went.

I'm getting ready to chase a rabbit here. Has anyone else that comes to The Valley noticed that GPS down here is sort of a hit and miss? A big percentage of the time, the directions are either unclear or flat out wrong. Not sure why that is. With that said, it took us several turns down wrong roads to finally get the correct road/entrance to the refuge, but we made it.

Mr. W had shown me really cool pics of an elevated swinging bridge and an observation tower that we would hike to and the total hike was 2 miles round trip. After we got there, went to the Visitor's Center, and headed out, Mr. W said, "Wow, look at those beautiful greenjays." Wait, what? We have to look at birds? Where's a bench? I'm taking a nap....... If you know me very well, you know that I find bird watching B-O-R-I-N-G! Birds can be pretty, but to me, if you've seen one red bird, or one orange bird, or one green bird, you've seen them all. I should have known birds were involved when he asked, "Are you taking your good camera?"

Anyway, we headed out and part of the way were nice concrete walkways, but all of the trails were good. You can do several hikes in the park. One of the hikes is about a half-mile, one is 2 miles, one is a little more?, and one is 7 miles. There are also a couple of lakes on the land.

We finally got to the tower and the swinging bridge. I thought the bridge was pretty impressive to be in a wildlife refuge.

Looking up at the swinging bridge

Once we climbed up to the bridge

Mr. W getting ready to walk across the bridge

When we got across the bridge, we climbed down the stairs and headed to the tower that was up higher than the bridge. The tower was made completely out of aluminum and had a maximum of 10 people on it at anytime.

Our view of the bridge from the top of the tower

We then continued our hike and made it around Willow Lake and Pintail Lake before we headed back to the Visitor's Center.

Once we got back to the Visitor's Center, Mr. W wanted to sit at one of the bird viewing areas and try to get some pictures of some birds. Since you can't hear what is going on by reading this post, that is the sound of me yawning at this point. But, since I know it means a lot to him, I'll take pictures...... ;)