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We’ve had a blog all along

 

I’ve got the address on our travel card for when we meet people we might want to keep in touch with while we’re out and about.  People that aren’t on the trip report list can check in on us on the blog, and it’s a good place to archive the trip reports.  It has reports all the way back to the year 2000!  Recently though, the blog quit taking our posts.  Talking to grandson Tony, he volunteered to set up a new blog for us.  He thinks that sort of thing is fun to do!

 

We took him up on his offer and this is the result:  https://steveandjudystravels.com/

 

We’re happy how it came out.  It looks much newer and fresher than the old blog!  Thank you, grandson Tony!

 

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The osage orange

 

I first reported on this in 2009.  It’s this goofy fruit we only ever see when we’re in Missouri and I can barely remember the name of it each time.

 

Nobody likes them.  They fall off the tree and clutter the ground.

 

 

Nothing really eats it.  It’s speculated that it co-evolved with mastadons and mammoths and lives on now for no apparent reason.

 

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4,219, 500, 56, 138 update

 

0, 0, 0, 115

 

Zero miles to go to get to Fairbanks.  Done that!

 

No birds remaining to get to 500 for the year!  Just made it.

 

No continuing education hours to go.  Made that too.

 

And still 115 counties in which to report a bird to have all 254 counties in Texas and fill in the map completely.

 

It wasn’t a goal to get all the counties recorded in Texas in 2019, we just highlighted it to track our progress.  Maybe we should set that as a goal for 2020; record at least one bird in every county in Texas, or at least get all the edge pieces.  Or we could do Colorado; that would be much easier; not nearly as many counties; only 64.

 

Arizona was so easy we’ve already done it!  Only 15 counties.

 

An interesting thing happened to our bird life-list while we were working on our year-list.  Our life-list got bigger.  In normal years, we add five or ten new life-birds to our list each year.  In 2019, by going after every bird we could get to make it to 500 for the year, we added 27 life-birds!

 

Here are the December lifers:

 

 

Home from all my trips.  That was a great adventure, but I don’t see traveling by myself again any time soon.  Judy is doing well; mostly over her shingles bumps and pain.  It’s back to Advil level.

 

 

Happy New Year!  We stayed up as late as we could!