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Hello Everyone, hope all are well and staying healthy.. We are now heading to Washington State for our next hosting job. We have left Desert National Wildlife Refuge and will miss it and our beautiful view we had all Winter. We will also miss the people we have met and some staff we have worked with. Wishing them all the best for the upcoming year. Please stay healthy and safe.

All Winter we had one Coot in the pond at the Refuge, and he had the pond all to himself till just a few weeks ago when some American Wigeon ducks were passing through the area. Our Cute Coot was photo bombing my pictures of the Wigeon ducks.. lol

While we were at our RV site at the Refuge, we had a group of trees near us, and we had a lot of little animals; Jack Rabbits, Antelope Squirrels and a Road Runner, and many birds outside our windows.

I tried to take a picture of our local Road Runner and he was so fast that I could not get a clear picture… Beep Beep

We had a great experience hosting at the Desert National Wildlife Refuge. This is a place that everyone should visit when possible. Found outside of Las Vegas: Corn Creek, NV.

There are many places to see outside of Las Vegas. It’s not just about the glitter, lights and casinos of the Vegas Strip. Many other great sites to see all around Las Vegas. Red Rock is a National Park we went to visit.

We are heading North and hitting a few places on our way and plan to take our time so we don’t run into any snow or bad weather on the way. We will take about 40 days to get to Washington State, Federation Forest State Park, in Enumclaw, WA. It is about 30 or so miles from Mount Rainier. We can’t wait to go to that National Park. Looking forward to our new Summer Gig…

Inside of the visitor center at Desert National Wildlife Refuge is a large raised geographic map of the Refuge. Jodi took a picture of the northern boundary of the refuge, and you can see a white spot on the left and our boundary on the right, that is how close we were to Area 51….

We stopped at a small town called Ash Springs near Area 51. We traveled on E.T. Highway (Extraterrestrial Highway). Our first stop was the Alien Research Center which of course, had a lot of alien souvenirs and t-shirts. We got “Paul” our refrigerator magnet. This place is found in Alamo, NV, outside of Ash Springs, NV.

Checked out the Black Mailbox that has made it in some movies out in the middle of no where. One movie you need to see, funny as Sh-t, is Paul. This mail box is for people to communicate to the Aliens. You may leave a letter or something for them. As we were driving we saw off the road, a cow head??? Hmmm, experiments!!??

We drove a little farther on E.T. Highway to get to the infamous Little A’le’Inn. A nice little place to get an Alien Burger with fries and a few drinks. Cool place. Got to hang a Dollar Bill on the ceiling over the Bar. This small Bar Restaurant was very popular during the Storming of Area 51 back in 2019, which did not happen by the way. We did not try to drive the 12 miles from Little A’le’Inn to Area 51. Driving to Area 51 just gets you into lots of trouble when you get too close, and you can’t see anything anyway, just a gate with signs saying stay out. It’s all a dirt road and I don’t want to do miles of that. We did that at Desert National Wildlife Refuge a lot.

Little A’le’Inn found at Rachel, NV. Outside of Area 51.

Just down the road from our RV Park, there was a little area they call Ash Springs Rock Art Site. We drove to it and here we see the Petroglyphs all over some rocks. I like to see this old ancient kind of art. Found at Ash Springs, NV.

We are slowly heading North and we are still hitting places with snow on the ground. Ely, NV had a snow storm a few days ago, and it was 18 degrees in the morning, and mid 50s during the day. We do hope we are not going to run into any snow storms in the next few weeks. We are in Ely, NV now and have about 7 more places to stop at before getting to our hosting job at Federation Forest State Park, Washington.

Hope all is well with everyone and staying safe and healthy…. When we get settled in at Washington, we will update you on our new summer gig… Take care and stay in touch, and see where we will Bobble to next.

The Bobble Head Travelers, Mark and Jodi

From our RV Home

Hello Everyone, Jodi and I want to wish you all a Happy, Healthy and Safe Holiday. We do hope you are all staying healthy and avoiding this horrible virus… We just want to update you all on our new Winter hosting adventure here at Desert National Wildlife Refuge outside of Las Vegas; Corn Creek, Nevada. We are about three weeks into our fun working here.

There are a lot of really beautiful and interesting sights in this refuge; many Joshua trees, cacti, and Yucca plants. Then when you get higher up at 6,000 ft. elevation you have many different types of trees, mainly pines that mix in with the Joshua trees. It’s unique and feels special. This Refuge we are working at is the Largest Wildlife Refuge in the contiguous United States. This Refuge has 1.6 million acres of land and contains six major mountain ranges, including the Sheep Range, Las Vegas Range and Desert Range, just to name a few. This Wildlife Refuge was created to protect a variety of species, but specifically to establish a protected habitat for Desert Bighorn Sheep. Desert National Wildlife Refuge is home to 320 bird species, 53 mammal species, 35 reptile species, four amphibian species, and over 700 plant species. Pretty impressive!!

Just a few of the Species… None of these are pictures that I took..

Some of our duties while here at the Refuge are to do trail maintenance, and setting up an information table outside so we can meet and greet visitors. Due to Covid the Visitor Center is closed but we try to answer questions at the table or while walking around the trails. A very important duty of ours is to take care of a Refugium (Refuge Aquarium) that holds about 100 to 200 Pahrump Poolfish. These fish are considered an endangered species that are found in only three other places in the world. Here at DNWR (Desert National Wildlife Refuge) NV, Spring Mountains State Park, NV and Shoshone Springs southeast of Ely, Nevada.

There are 5 walking trails less than a half mile each that surrounds the visitor Center. On these trails you see many birds and animals, and maybe at times even a Tortoise. There is a pond for the endangered Pahrump Poolfish, an orchard with all types of trees that a family, the (Richardson’s) planted back in the 1920s. They were Mormon ranchers. They planted Pomegranate, Walnut, Pecans, Peach and Apple trees among a few others.

While during our second week, Jodi and I had a chance to drive to the rough and bumpy backcountry roads of some of this refuge. Also very impressive! This vast landscape includes flora and fauna from both the Mojave Desert, as well as the Great Basin Desert. It was breath taking, and also very bumpy. We drove 25 miles to the only campground with 6 very nice primitive camp sites, that includes picnic tables, fire rings and a nice pad for a few tents at each site, with two pit toilets. There are a few spots about a mile or two on each road going into the Refuge for campers to dry camp. The rocky 25 mile trip took us an hour and a half one way. Did we mention it was very rough and bumpy? HAHA. A high clearance 4×4 vehicles is recommended for any travel to the backcountry of this Desert Refuge.

We are looking forward to heading to Washington State for our Summer hosting job at Federation Forest State Park, a day use park. It’s outside the town of Enumclaw, close to Mount Rainer. We are excited to check out that National Park.

We will be enjoying the couple of months here and learning more about the Refuges around Nevada. Near Death Valley is another Refuge called Ash Meadows Wildlife Refuge, we did visit that refuge and it was a nice place full of interesting history. There are other endangered fish there that they call Amargosa Pupfish. The Pahrump Poolfish are here at Desert National Wildlife Refuge and the Dace Fish at Moapa Valley National Refuge. All 3 of these endangered fish are about 2 inches big, they’re NOT related to each other, and the only kind in the world.

While we are here we plan to check out Red Rock National Conservation Area, Moapa Valley National Refuge, Pahranagat National Wildlife Refuge, Lake Mead National Recreation Area, Henderson Wetlands and the Hoover Dam. All right outside of Las Vegas. Valley of Fire is a very beautiful State Park that we visited last year, and that is a must place to visit. That is another place to see Big Horn sheep. I took a few nice pictures two years ago. It’s not just all about the Las Vegas Strip, gambling and the bright lights… lots of other beautiful areas to see all around Vegas.