New York - Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge

On my way out to Snow Farm in Massachusetts, I drove through northern New York state. I was driving in the campervan, so rather than stay at a hotel, I stayed at the Cayuga Lake State Park. It was nice, relatively quiet, and I was up early the next day to finish the first leg of my trip.

On the north end of Cayuga Lake is the Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge, so before I even had reached the freeway, I was on a detour. That was fine, I couldn’t arrive at Snow Farm until 3, and it was only 4 hours away. I turned in to see what it was about.

I found that the thing to do at Montezuma is to watch birds. They have a huge property, and I had found myself at Wildlife Drive, which was perfect for me. The Wildlife Drive is a three-mile, one way roadway that you drive down, and see the wildlife from your car. There was plenty of room to pull to the side to watch, but they discouraged you from leaving the car.

I saw a ton of birds, and it was very peaceful. Near the end of the three-mile drive, there was a pull off and platform that you could view from – I stopped there, next to the HUGE statue of an eagle.

After leaving the drive, I went through a bit more of the park, and went to a lookout that looked a lot like fire lookouts in the National Forests, but this one was especially for viewing birds. There were two guys up there excited about some specific bird they were seeing, but all I saw were about 100 Great Egrets. It was cool.

A few of the key take away from this:

1. It’s always helpful to keep binoculars in your vehicle.

2. Its more helpful to know where the binoculars are, so you don’t have to search through everything for 10 minutes before finding them.