The Ranger Station at Lost Maples wasn’t much for internet service. We moved on. We’re another 60 miles west. South Llano River State Park. We’re near the town of Junction, Texas, but haven’t quite reached internet civilization yet. For all those years we had our own internet dish on the roof of the motorhome, but it broke and it would be really expensive to replace it. We don’t need the internet dish at all as long as we’re around big cities. This has been a test of how well we get along without the internet dish on the roof when we travel. Love the traveling, but so far, from a connectivity perspective, it’s not going well.
Tuesday
Still at Lost Maples. I’ve worked on everything I downloaded before we left on this trip. I’ve answered every email I can. Now I need internet again. I need fresh stuff to work on. Took a morning walk and got the black-capped Vireo. Didn’t get the Golden-cheeked Warbler. We might be able to get internet at the Ranger Station. If you get this on Tuesday, we did.
Monday
Went a little farther, but not much; another 175 miles. Lost Maples State Park west of San Antonio. One of our favorite places. Winding back roads all the way. No internet service. I’ll put everything in the outbox so it can go as soon as we stumble across internet service again.
A hot afternoon and a cool stream.
Eddie and Annie swam to Survivor Island.
Sunday
On the road. We didn’t go far, Choke Canyon State Park, about a hundred miles. No internet service so I can’t update the trip map yet.
Saw some cool birds: Verdin, Bullocks Oriole, Bewick’s Wren, Olive Sparrow, Yellow-billed Cuckoo. Heard a Pauraque tonight.
Here is our campsite.
That’s Jeff and Carol’s fifth wheel trailer in the next site. We’re caravanning for the first part of the trip, then they’ll peel off and head back to the beach while we continue on to Nevada.
In Colorado
Heat builds during the day, moisture collects, and thunderstorms blow up in the afternoon. Here on the gulf, there is always plenty of heat and moisture around. Thunderstorms can happen at any time. A giant one happened this morning. Here is what the satellite image looked like just after the weather band passed over us from the west and headed offshore.
An inch and a half of rain. It happened pretty fast and we had nice weather the rest of the day.
Meanwhile, on the beach:
Red Knot.
Spotted Eagle Ray.
He was not having a good day.
We finished up with a Life Bird at the Birding Center. Black Rail. We weren’t even looking for a Black Rail, but Jon called and told us it was there. We didn’t actually see it. You don’t get to see Black Rails. You just get to hear them. If you actually got to see one, that would be like an Uber-bird.
We heard several of them.