Big Bend National Park. Fort Davis State Park. 1,700 miles, and we never left Texas. Birds in 15 counties. I have no idea how many birds altogether yet, but I’ll tell you later. County-birds. Year-birds. Lifers. This was a trip about birds and it was very good. It was a camping trip too. Jon brought the tent. He brought a nice big tent with those long bendy shock-corded poles. I brought a brand-new air mattress that has a built in foot pump for inflation. It worked great. Jon brought a borrowed air mattress with a duct tape patch. He called it his sleep-number bed. Every night he blew it up with a portable electric pump to about a 98. By the next morning it was always about a 2. We had temperatures ranging from the 100s at Rio Grande Village, with about 90 degrees in the Chisos Basin where we camped the first two nights, to the low 40s in the Davis Mountains in the mornings. Sometimes it was hard to sleep from the heat. It was cool enough to cover up at night in the mountains. We did all the usual camping things. We got caught out on the trail in a thunderstorm. The tent got caught in the thunderstorm too, so that first hot night in the tent could best be described as “swampy”. We spent a night in a windstorm with the tent repeatedly flexing and collapsing on our heads before springing back into position about 800 times. Ungainly javalinas invaded our camp; clattering about on those dainty little hooved feet. A fox walked between our folding chairs. A bear passed within 25 yards of us. Elf Owls called at night in the Basin. Common Poorwills and Western Screech Owls sang from right above our heads in the dark at Fort Davis State Park.
Home again
A great trip. It’s good to be back.
Roughing it
Five days, four nights, camping. I can cook while I’m out. Judy wanted me to have something nice though, so we ended up cooking all day today. Hamburger patties, grilled chicken, baby-back ribs, and chicken enchiladas. All cooked. All sealed in vacuum bags to go in the ice-chest. Yeah. I’ll be roughing it. We’ll be off even earlier than planned tomorrow morning. There is a report of a Rufous-cappped Warbler in Uvalde. A slight adjustment to our route and Uvalde is on the way. Here is a map with our expected highlights marked: http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msid=205131835882428706345.0004beee640e2b7343d84&msa=0&ll=37.370157,-92.8125&spn=23.774538,56.90918 You can zoom in for more detail. I’ll keep in touch with Judy as phone connections allow, so if you want any updates you can check with her: Judy@TaylorRoth.com (303-666-6018) to see how we’re doing. She will be roughing it on the beach.
Exciting times
Since we’ve gotten so good at working from anywhere, I’m not really ever completely away from work either… …except next week. I’m going to be totally away from work. On Tuesday I’m leaving for a birding trip to West Texas. I’m going to tagalong with Jon, http://www.mcintyrebirdingtours.com so it’s guaranteed I’ll see a LOT of birds. We’ll bird Marathon, Big Bend, Fort Davis, and Balmorhea. (We’ll stop and bird on the way there and back too.) It will be a camping trip, so I won’t even have a computer with me. There will be radio silence from Tuesday through Saturday. I’ll mostly be out of cell phone range too, but I’ll check in with Judy whenever I can. She’ll stay here at Gulf Waters. I don’t know what’s up with her. For some reason she doesn’t want to go bird for eighteen hours a day and sleep on the ground. She’d rather stay on the beach. Go figure.
One more SandFest Report
These sand sculptures are three-dimensional, 360 degree displays. I did a couple walk-around videos to show them from every angle. Looking up into the sun I couldn’t see much of the viewfinder so it was hit-and-miss on keeping the camera pointed right at the sculpture, but here is a slightly different perspective from just the still pictures anyway. Horse-sitting. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=139PphADvQM …and the elephant one entitled “Where mermaids come from”. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llL76ZKTkLsThe two people in the middle of the sculpture at the end are the sculptors getting their pictures taken, haven just won 1st place.