Steve and Judy's Travels!

No, we’re not back in New Mexico. I’m just sending campsite pictures. Our camp at Las Vegas. Open pinon juniper forest.

Dense grass. Scattered oak trees. Arid grassland. Grassy open woodlands
on semiarid mountain slopes. Canyons. Streambeds. Quail 2, Steve and Judy 0.

We only stayed in Pecos overnight. From there, seventy-five miles south, to
Davis Mountains State Park, home of the Montezuma quail. We could see the
mountains on the horizon the whole way. A seldom traveled two-lane. So
many birds enjoying the morning sun, we thought the front of the bus was
going to get meadowlarked about a hundred times, but it never happened. Hawk alley. Dry grass/brushland supports a magnificent hawk population.
Several hawks per mile standing on posts watching for the morning meal to
move. Skinny cattle in the scrub. Dried out abandoned dairies. A rusted
road sign advertising milk. “Drink milk, the udder cola.” We found the state park nestled in the foothills…, I mean mountains. Five
thousand feet high, from a flat expanse twenty-five hundred feet in
elevation. Felt like foothills. Not many people. Full hookups for the rig. Fifty amps. Plenty of birds.
We’re twenty birds into the list so far, some of them unusual for us. But
we came here for quail. The Montezuma quail. This may be the best place to be to see the quail, but it’s not exactly a
slam-dunk. The last sighting was a week ago. The score so far, Montezuma quail 1, Taylors zero. Happy Christmas Eve.

Twelve clocks to reset. In this small space? That’s ridiculous. If either
of us wore a watch, the count would be fourteen. Wait! I didn’t count the
dash radio in the motorhome. That’s fifteen. Really, we don’t look at the
clock that much. Oops. Forgot about the printer. Sixteen. It’s also a fax machine. Faxes
always have a time stamp. I never look at the time clock in the printer,
but I could set it if I wanted…

Up before dawn at the park in Pecos. Standing outside, waiting for the sun
to break the horizon, visiting with the neighbor. She was raised somewhere
else, and had never seen the sunrise before. Not like this, glowing softly,
slowly turning the sky red across the full horizon of the west-texas
prairie. Her first sunrise. She was born and raised in a city. She could watch it get light and dark,
but she could not see this. She could not see this in the city of her
birth, Tokyo, in the land of the rising sun.