Hike: Seven Islands Wildlife Refuge

Today's adventure brought us to another of Knoxville's little-known green spaces.  Seven Islands Wildlife Refuge is only about 25 miles/35 minutes from my apartment, a ways East down I-40.    Seven Islands was originally farmland, but has since been taken over to provide a great area for walking and birding just outside of downtown Knoxville.

The refuge is managed jointly by Knox County Parks and Recreation and Seven Islands Foundation.  In addition to the walking trails, they provide many birdhouses and roosting sites to encourage the flourishing and returns of the avian species in the area.  The box to the left is just one of dozens we saw in the few hours we were there.

Quick summary: Groovie trip, couple of downsides as explained below.  Good for quick trips out of the city, or longer hikes and/or birding activities.





Here (in theory) is the route we took:




The trip was approximately 3.5 hours to go 6 miles, with a generous lunchtime and some time spent trying to find the right path back.

So, to get my biggest complaint out of the way - there are no really good maps of this area.  This Knoxnews article has the best map I could find, it lacks a lot of the available trails, and in general isn't terribly accurate.  As such, we got a little off-course and ended up having to bushwhack a tiny way up some hills and through a wash to get back to someplace recognizable without backtracking a few miles.  I'd love to see a more detailed map of the area, and would consider trying to build one myself if I had any cartography skills to speak of.



Other than that, this was a pretty good trip.  The refuge offers a lot of different terrains, which I find to be pretty cool.  It's definitely a different experience from hiking in the Smokies, or even some place like Frozen Head.  There are a lot of open fields and scrub-lands, along with some forested area and of course riversides.  The different habitats support a ginormous range of wildlife!  We saw:

• 4 or 5 deer
• birds!
• Indigo Bunting
• Easter Bluebird
• Gold finches
• Mockingbirds
• (possibly) Blue Grosbeak
• Red-winged blackbirds
• Cardinals
• Many others I can't name
• Giant spider!
• Many tadpoles, big and small
• A lizard
• Half a dozen turtles
• Lots of butterflies
• Some of the first dragonflies I've seen this year
• 2 or 3 different incidents of buggsecks, including some airborne acrobatics!  No pictures though.
• Many other types of bugs
• Unexpected numbers of wildflowers (indian pink, purple phaecelia, others I can't name)

So, all-in-all, a very cool ramble around the refuge.  As you can see from my maps, a couple of trails parallel the river.  They don't seem to get a lot of traffic, and made a great stop for lunch.  Unfortunately, the benches located in various areas aren't marked, so lunch was had sitting on the ground.  My other big disappointment was the lack of owl sightings.  I didn't really expect to see any while wandering around midday, but it still would have been sweet!

One neat feature is the Overlook Trail - you can actually see all the way to Mt. Leconte!  Check out the three peaks in the left-middle of this photo:

Deer seen near the entrance:

Eastern bluebird getting it grub on:

I have a few more pictures that I'll post over the next few days.  Unfortunately, a large number didn't come out well due to some equipment malfunctions.  More on that later....