Farmington Bay

 

The weather has slowly been warming up, and I have been itching to go out and hike, however a peek over at the mountains shows they are still covered in snow, so I started to look for things to do here in the valley.

I remembered seeing a story in the newspaper that Farmington Bay is a great place to see bald eagles this time of year. That sounds just awesome! So, off we went! To get to the Bird Center take exit 322 off of i15, keep right at the fork, turn right onto the frontage road, then turn right 925 S/W Glovers ln. go about 2 miles and it will be on the left.

This, I’m assuming, water tower caught my eye. (DBP)

The first thing we noticed was there was a small parking lot here, with a gate over the road that goes to the bird center. According to the sign, their hours vary on the weekends and you should check online. Oops. But it did say it is still open to hikers so we went in.

Cool manmade nesting poles.

The bird center was closed so after looking around for some trail guide of some sort, and not finding anything we decided to just explore the area.

Bones.

Better shot of the ball!

Some geese.

I kind of like this shot.

I’m not sure what this is, looks like a crane of some sort. Might be a great blue heron.

Still some ice on the water.

Cattails!

Ducks! Seeing them fly remind me of that old game Duck Hunt. Goes to show how even limited to 8 bit graphics, the attention to detail they put into games.

I liked the blue and gold.

We weren’t having much luck but I saw a bunch of people grouped together out in the distance. Landis thought he saw a sign for a wildlife management area before the bird center so we thought we would go check that out.

Sure enough a little ways east there is a right turn onto a dirt road that is a wildlife area. We got to the area I saw all the cars and discovered another gate that was closed. Guess its on foot now.

This is what the dirt roads look like. Pretty well maintained so even a little car can do it.

Tons of birds!

Nice shot of the mountains.

Not sure what this one is either but I like the kind of derpy pose it is in.

Just a common seagull, but I rather like this shot.

Pelican.

It just keeps going.

another canal.

Ew. Those are some big fish though, I wonder if fishing is allowed here? Probably not.

As we entered the area there was a sign saying the gates will all close at 5 PM. we were running out of time so we decided to head back. Wow, didn’t realize we went that far!

Hey look Lagoon.

Some sort of observatory at the top of the mountain. I have actually been off-roading right next to these things quite a few years ago. It was uh, really high and steep.

And we can see the area we went hiking last fall, Davis Creek.

Well, it wasn’t in the woods, or up a hill, but we can still call this a hike. We didn’t see any bald eagles as we had hoped but there were tons of birds and it was a nice little adventure. Going to go ahead and give this 7 stars.