Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge

Twin barns from the old farm

Puget Sound & Anderson Island just beyond the Nisqually River Delta

 The last pavilion at the end of the boardwalk

Heron

Visitor center & freshwater pond

These photos were taken in May 2015

Click here for more photos of the Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge.

On a dark day with scant rain, I went for a hike in the Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge.  You might consider this a walk.  But it is a considerable distance from the visitor center to the end of a very long boardwalk.  There are actually 2 boardwalks. an old one & a new one.  The old one takes you from the parking lot, along a freshwater pond to the twin barns that are about the only remnant of the farm that was created here in 1904.  There is also a piece of the old dike, built to keep the waters of the Nisqually River & Puget Sound from invading the farm land, as they had for time immemorial.

The new boardwalk takes you a long way out across the tide flats of the delta.  This is not an experience often to be had.  There is a whole lot of mud out there.  The mud, intricately carved with channels of water & dotted with patched of green, is infinitely beautiful.  The Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge was created in 1974.  More than 20,000 migrating birds, from 275 species, visit the refuge.  It is located just off Interstate 5, between Tacoma & Olympia.