North Platte National Wildlife Refuge: Stateline Island

Today was Sierra's last day of first grade. What a strange school year it's been! She started out at Falls Elementary in International Falls, Minnesota. After Christmas break she and Noelle moved to Gering, Nebraska with me and Sierra started attending Geil Elementary. Then Coronavirus and school has been mostly at home for the past 2 months. Anyway, we decided to get out of the house for a little adventure close to home, and so we opted to head to Henry, Nebraska on the Wyoming border to check out the Stateline Island unit of the North Platte National Wildlife Refuge.

We arrived to the parking area

and it was colder and windier than I had expected. We opted to hike the trail along the North Platte River first.

The hike along the river was pleasant, if unexciting. We followed the river trail to the point where we lost it. We searched in vain for a few minutes to see if we could find where the trail connected to another to form a loop, but instead all we found was high grass, the first ticks of the season, and a witness post marker.

We turned around and followed the river back to the start of the trail. By now the sun was coming out and the temperature was warming up.

Along the way we saw some birds. All pretty common species including magpies, red-winged blackbrids and Canada geese. When we were at the start of the trail we headed out on the two track road section of trail that traversed the lands a little ways from the river.

We passed a pretty little creek where we saw some yellow warblers and continued on to the point where our trail ended at an old bridge abutment.

Besides the warblers, we saw a wild turkey, hairy woodpeckers, northern flickers and some other birds. Sierra picked a bouquet of flowers that included fragrant sage and mint.

We ended our visit with a walk in the section of the refuge on the west side of the highway. It was a short walk and nothing too spectacular. While we enjoyed our walk at Stateline Island, it is definitely not the type of place worth going out of your way to visit.