Modoc National Wildlife Refuge, A High Desert Oasis

Leaving Lake Almanor we drove about 130 miles NE and landed at Sully's RV Park in Alturas, CA for one night. Sully's turned out to be a great place to stop over. Their short term sites are easy access paved pull throughs, lots of green grass and beautiful shade trees. It's quiet too, even though you can see hwy 395 about a quarter mile away, you cannot hear it.

The best part though was the proximity to Modoc National Wildlife Refuge. A one mile drive brought us to the three mile Auto Tour Route through the refuge. We let the day cool down a little bit and arrived there about 6pm and proceeded to walk the Auto Route and a short paved path, maybe four miles total. We saw very few cars or other people during our walk, making it a very pleasant way to wind down a travel day.

Spring and fall are prime time on the refuge, many birds migrate through here and most have moved on by now, but we still saw quite a variety of birds including a few sandhill cranes. This is a beautiful preserve, the colors and views are wonderful. I'd love to return during migration to witness thousands of birds passing through.

The dead end road at the RV park leads you to the edge of the Modoc National Wildlife Refuge.
The views everywhere in this valley are expansive and colorful!

When we arrived at the Refuge the clouds over the Southern mountains were beautiful.

I was excited to see Sandhill Cranes, I figured they would have moved on by now.

Mule deer are abundant around here.
That's a blind behind her, it was full of mosquito's!

Love the pink legs on the Black Necked Stilt!

Those clouds in the second photo above morphed into this in about an hour.

Peek a boo!

We've moved on to Burns, OR for a night. Tomorrow we'll settle for a few days in Sumpter, OR. We'll be happy to have these three driving days out of the way; Rosie is not at her happiest on travel days!