Nothing to report. Lots of lookers. No buyers.
Parker
Jacumba was good. We ended up getting crissal thrashers, abert’s towhees, and black phoebes. We drove the Jeep over through Borrego Springs the week before to look for the Le Conte’s thrasher but never found it. We looped around to the Salton Sea looking for the yellow footed gull, but he was gone for the season. Out through the Imperial Valley 200 feet below sea-level, freshly cut hay, and corn just going to tassel… IN NOVEMBER. Through Brawley, El Centro, back on Interstate 8. Speed limit 70. Truck speed limit 55. I imagine the biggest problem in heavy traffic would be accidents resulting from speed differential, but here, rather than have trucks go fast the same as cars, they’d rather trucks go slow and cars zip in and out around them. Must be more to it than I’ve considered. Past the turn to the twin border towns of Calexico and Mexicali. The Jeep cruise control is active, even on downhills. Before, our cars with cruise control maintained a steady speed on the level and uphill, but pretty much just gave up and coasted on the downhills. The Jeep cruise control downshifts and maintains the speed no matter what. Back up the steep boulder-field switchbacks to twenty-five hundred feet, and home again. Saw a bobcat cross the road at camp. We’re not getting any “life birds” here, but getting plenty of birds we don’t see very often. If only we would go east of the Mississippi more often we’d get a whole bunch of new birds. We took a day-trip in the Jeep on Sunday to see sister-in-law Barbara in Vista. A 200 mile round-trip over to the coast for some cool misty weather we haven’t had lately, as well as a side-trip to Angelo’s for a hot pastrami sandwich. Good visit with Barbara and her family. Alkaseltzer helped with the pastrami. A quick look at San Diego. A quick look at the Pacific. On the return trip drove past the lit-up stadium in the rain for the San Diego Chargers Sunday night game, and back to Jacumba. Monday: travel day. Jacumba to Parker. In addition to all the other tow gear stuff (safety cables, electric connector for lights, compressed air line for brakes) we hooked up the breakaway cable. We’ve never hooked up the breakaway before. If things go horribly wrong, and the tow car separates from the coach, the breakaway cable will lock up the Jeep brakes and prevent it from traveling on indefinitely. Or, if something goes horribly wrong, and the breakaway locks up the Jeep brakes while it’s still attached to the coach, we get four screaming wheels behind us. I can see more possibilities for the second scenario than the first, but we’re supposed to hook it up so I did. Nothing went wrong. The jeep wheels rolled along quietly. Easy navigation. Go a hundred miles east on Interstate 8. Turn left on highway 95. Drive another hundred miles. We’re settled in at Buckskin Mountain State Park right on the Colorado River for two weeks. We’ll be here for Thanksgiving with sister Sue and family. Got gambles quail, black phoebes, and a vermilion flycatcher. We never adjusted to the time zone difference in California. Back to Arizona and Mountain time. Maybe we can quit waking up at five thirty or six and stay up past nine.
Jacumba
Birding dilemma. We put oranges out on the feeder and have been getting a hooded oriole. Then we got another bird, eating the other orange half, a little smaller than the 8” oriole. It’s obvious what it was, a 7” olive bird with black wings, a nonbreeding male scarlet tanager. Problem is, it’s an eastern bird. We looked in the guide. It’s not supposed to be here. We’ve got an ABA guide “Birders Guide to Southern California”. It doesn’t show as rare on the bar chart. It is not even mentioned on the bar chart. We just called a bird that doesn’t belong here. Problem is, nothing else looks like it. Olive bird with black wings and a stubby bill. That’s the only bird it could be. We hesitate to be the first person ever to call a bird in a place it has never been before. We’re just not that good (confident) at birding. Continuing to scan the birder’s guide, I found the “seldom seen, but possible” page. Yes. The scarlet tanager. I’ll go with that. We saw a seldom seen, but possible bird.
Jacumba
I’m really liking the way work is going. From the comfort of the desert wilderness we just did a job in Crested Butte Colorado. We love Crested Butte, but right now the temperature there is in the teens or single digits each night. Not a place we want to be in the coach in November. But the client has an August year-end, so this is the perfect time for them to get their work done. No phone available from here, but with email and fax it went well and finished up today, right on schedule. We’ve already been exchanging the client data digitally between the coach and the office, but we made a couple improvements in the process this week. Earlier in the week we set up the offsite backup on the internet, so our daily work is protected. Data security at a minimal charge. Today, we set up the online fax service. I have been able to scan and email anything to a client, but if they don’t have scanning capability they have had to fax their paper documents to the Denver office so Jamie could scan the faxes and email them to me. I haven’t been able to receive faxes because I’m not a stationary target. Traditional faxes want to go through a land-line. The internet fax service provides a toll-free fax number specifically for me, then forwards each fax to me as an email attachment. We just digitized one more step. I like the way this is going.
Anza borrego
We’re in the southern foothills of Anza Borrego; elevation 2,500 feet; not the central part of the park. We took a drive to the central part, Borrego Springs. It’s a city at sea level, completely surrounded by the state park. Time came for a walk. Combined the walk with a search through the sparse desert vegetation for the LeConte’s thrasher. When I finished the walk, I was in a quandary. I’m supposed to tell Judy if I have chest pains; but I always have chest pains. I’m supposed to tell her when I have unusual chest pain. Our doctor told us the first symptom of heart trouble I’ll have will be exercised induced chest pain. This was definitely connected to exercise. Didn’t hurt at all until I started walking. Of course, there are other issues to follow, but it all starts with telling Judy. I was still working on whether the pain was unusual or not when Judy remarked on how much the air pollution was hurting her chest. That’s why it was familiar! It was smog! Looked across the valley that Borrego Springs is in, and there was a haze. We are such weenies; just a dribble of smog over the California mountains and it hurts our lungs to breathe. No smog resistance left.