Scheeff Natural Wildlife Preserve on South Bass Island

Our next stop today was the Scheeff Natural Wildlife Preserve.  It was time for a nice walk anyway although we'd been having fun buzzing around on the golf cart.  We parked our cart by this lovely scenic view and watched a Dad trying to teach his two daughters to skip rocks for a little while.  He was really good at it.

Beside rows of grapevines, the preserve’s land entrance is at the northeastern tip of South Bass, near the end of State Route 357. The entrance is marked by three boulders and fencing that makes the property accessible only by foot.

One of Many Vineyards on the Island

We headed through the gate below into the preserve which had several trails through it. 

Entry to Preserve Area

The preserve has unmarked foot paths cut through meadows and tall grasses.  They led us around the perimeter of the preserve and to the shores of Lake Erie.

Gourd Houses For Purple Martins

The Preserve

As we were walking the paths, we noticed a lot of little blind areas where there were mats set out for birders. Unfortunately, we were not lucky enough to see any until we reached the shore of Lake Erie and then we found a few.

Lake Erie

We found out later that what appears as a white sand beach is a product of Lake Erie’s waves grinding 20 years of invasive zebra and quagga mussel shells into tiny fragments. Stones of various shapes and sizes are mixed in with the crushed shells and native sand.  This is not a beach to walk barefoot!  The water level around East Point is extremely shallow, only deep enough for kayakers and canoes to paddle ashore. 

Natural Path to a next door island

The only wild life we saw on our hike

After our hike, we got back on our golf cart to see what else we could see.