Hiwassee Wildlife Refuge

 If you have been following my blog for sometime you know hubby and I love to travel. Now that we are both retired we can up and leave whenever the weather is nice. This trip to Tennessee was planned just the night before we left, we wanted to take advantage of some mild weather for our drive to Tennessee. I had been watching  EBIRD the site to see if any Sandhill Cranes were still being seen at the Hiwassee Wildlife Refuge. 

We arrived at the Hiwassee Wildlife Refuge on the morning of  Feb 18th. The cranes fly into and out of the wildlife refuge daily. Numbers of  Sandhill Cranes and an occasional Whooping Crane can be seen at the wildlife refuge from November to February. We met some wonderful nice birders at the refuge, I believe the  local birders were looking for the elusive Whooping Crane. All the people and birders we met in Tennessee were super friendly and helpful.

We stayed in a nearby town Dayton, located just miles away from the refuge and not too far of a drive to the Falls Creek Falls State Park. The Hiwassee Wildlife refuge 6,000 acres is located where the Hiwassee River and the Tennessee River meet.

There were a lot of white-tailed deer in the area of the wildlife refuge. I am sharing one photo of the deer with this fence shot.

The observation deck is a good distance from where we saw the Sandhill Cranes. You know me by now, I still had to take photos even with the great distance.

A pretty blue sky with the Sandhill Cranes in flight.

In four days we drove more like 1,700 miles after sightseeing around the parks and Tennessee. We had a total of four days traveling, 2 of the days were taken up on the drive down to Tennessee and the drive back home. So we had just 2 days to see everything we wanted to see in Tennessee, not a lot of time.

A pretty view from the overlook of the Tennessee River and the Hiwassee Island.

Another favorite image was the moon over the Hiwassee Wildlife Refuge.

I will have a lot more from our trip to Tennessee and of the Cranes coming soon.
As always I hope you liked my photos. Thank so much for stopping by.