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Sandhills

We’re back.

Two states, one night in a motel, seven hundred fifty miles, four bald eagles, one flock of white-tailed ptarmigan, one humongous flock of snow geese, and fifty thousand sandhill cranes.

IT WAS WONDERFUL! One of the greatest remaining wildlife spectacles, four hundred thousand sandhill cranes stop over in Kearney to refuel. They spend a few weeks on the ground cleaning up the spilled corn from the fields and sleep at night standing on submerged sandbars in the Platte river. They put on about a pound of body weight each before heading north as far as Canada and Alaska for the summer.

We saw flocks and flocks of cranes feasting in fields as we drove around Saturday afternoon. We positioned ourselves out on the hike/bike bridge at Fort Kearney Recreation Area for the evening arrival. As it got closer to sunset, the sky filled with flocks congregating from all directions for their final staging at the river’s edge. Just as it started getting too dark to see clearly, they all did their final swirl in the air for the night to pack together in the water as closely as they could. Our best estimate is that we really saw fifty thousand Sandhill Cranes in the final two hours of the day.

Sandhills talk a lot. They make a sound I’d call a loud “chirrup” noise. Sometimes when they’re all doing it at once, some of them degenerate into something close to a Canada Goose “honk”. It’s a great variety of noise.

So as we’re standing on the bridge, watching them arrive from all directions, including right over our heads, we get to hear them from all directions as well; including from the forty thousand already in the river shouting encouragement to the ones remaining in the air. It was a sensory delight.
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Trips

OK. The brothers currently on trips are not the only brothers who can take trips this time of year.
This evening, Judy and I are off on our own trip. We’re going to take the weekend off and drive to Nebraska. We’re told there is a Sandhill Crane migration that passes through Kearney, Nebraska this time of year and is worth seeing.
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Man vs machine

Today I got to go do the heart dyno-tune machine. The one where the cardiologist runs you up to about sixteen thousand rpm to see if anything explodes.
I’m happy to report that the machine survived unscathed. Nothing blew up. No parts flew off.
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Part IV

For some reason, this seems to be our practice trip for long rambling retirement trips. We just move with the weather and our own inclinations. Once a week or so, we do a chores day and do laundry, shopping, and whatever other errands or projects need doing. The rest of the time we just ramble. We make plans; and they change daily.

I’ve been thinking about work again lately. I think it’s time to head back that direction soon. I’d better treat it well. That work is what will make the extended trips of the future possible.

We went back to the marsh boardwalk again before we left South Padre. We were happy to see the clapper rail, but I really want to see an American Bittern. A Least Bittern would be cool, but there is not as much chance of finding that. We talked to some people at the boardwalk that had seen an American Bittern there earlier in the day, so we’ve watched and watched. Zero. Maybe we’ll stumble into a good marsh up around Corpus Christi.

Our birding has shifted a little. Rather than just looking at all the birds we see until we see something new, we’re more likely to research what birds there are in an area, pick out which ones we want to see, then go looking for specific birds. Just a little shift in focus. We still look at all the birds we see as well.

We’re back at the beach. Got an oceanside site at Malaquite. It’s on the Gulf of Mexico: waves and sand and everything. Won’t do much birding here. We’ll mostly just hang out on the beach. Maybe we can get a kite out tomorrow. Haven’t flown a kite yet. I got Judy a couple cool kites for Christmas. One of them has a forty-five foot tail. Besides, most of the birds here are those crummy shorebirds that all look alike in the winter anyway.

Had a pretty good dinner. Judy roasted a turkey. That, along with mashed potatoes, dressing, cranberry sauce, and peach nectar came together nicely.

And still, we call it camping.

Took a walk after dinner. Got to watch a giant orange moon rise up out of the ocean. Spectacular.

On these January trips we hang out with all the old people in RV parks. Snowbirds and Winter Texans. We pick up lots of advice along the way about what to do as we get older and how to age gracefully. Yesterday’s words of wisdom from Frank, the campground host, were: “You’re only as young as the women you keep.” I think that was a reference to the young woman with me. Works for me.

Took Annie for a two mile run along the beach. This was my chance to run barefoot in the sand along, and sometimes in, the water. Annie is a riot. She runs ten times farther than I do in the same amount of time, and with considerably more enthusiasm. I think I look better when we’re through though. My ears aren’t nearly as wet.

Now Annie’s getting a bath and blow dry while I’m writing this. Ooh. Maybe I could finagle a turn next.


I’ve noticed something that will apply to longer trips in the future. I haven’t done the usual exercises for several weeks and my lower back is beginning to talk to me. I run every day, but that doesn’t do much for the back. I think I need to get back to the back machine and the ab machine. I’ll need to figure out something portable for future trips.

We were standing on the beach watching some shorebirds, sorting out Willets, Sanderlings, Ruddy Turnstones, and Red Knots; when a falcon popped over the dunes and crashed into the middle of them. He didn’t get any of them and flew away empty taloned, but it made the birds disappear in both directions as far as we could see for twenty minutes.

I think I may be dealing with a sleep disorder. We slept some twelve hour nights at the start of the trip just to catch up. Then we slept some more because it felt good. Then we slept some more because we could. I thought I would have been saturated by now. Instead, I find that if we go to bed late, or get up early, and I don’t get my twelve hours I only get ten, I feel cheated.
We have coyotes here that are way way too unafraid. It’s spooky to be driving down the beach and see a coyote in the middle of the day, and he doesn’t run and hide when you see him. Instead, he comes right up to see if you have something good to eat. We’re being pretty careful with the pets, but it wouldn’t take much of a lapse to lose one. Right now it’s nighttime, and Rags is rattling on the screen door trying to get out to play in the dark. Not a good idea.
We didn’t do much today: a chores day. Did some laundry. Bought some food. Washed some windows. Watched some football. Walked on the beach.
Now we’re planning our return to civilization. We’ll leave the beach first thing tomorrow morning and take several days to get home.

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Part C

Well, we did it. We pried ourselves loose from Goose Island State Park. We headed south.
We got fogged out of every attempt to go out on the birding boat. Maybe next trip. I should mention that fog is a real treat for us. We don’t get much fog in the dry climate of Colorado. It reminds us of our youth.

Judy found a really neat shirt with a roseate spoonbill, and a great egret on it she wanted in a shop in Rockport, but they were out of her size. So “Dovie” was kind enough to paint one up for her at home Saturday and Sunday, so we could pick it up Monday on our way out of town.

Found a racquetball court in Fulton just before we left. We played for an hour just before we picked up the shirt. There is not much racquetball going on in Fulton. The girl at the club said there are four people who use the court. It clearly has not had any maintenance in years. There are two giant screw eyes sticking out of the side walls so they can string a net to play walley-ball. A hole has been kicked in the bottom of the back wall (and then stuffed with paper towels) and there is loose plaster all around it. The ball comes off the front wall so dead, that I hit it a couple of times, then hit it to Judy and said “Oops. I broke the ball. Let me get a new one.” But then checked the ball and found it was still intact. Even with a new ball, every hit came off the front wall like a freshly broken ball. All in all, a bizarre racquetball experience, but it sure felt good to hit for awhile.

Spent a little time on the gulf. Got to watch a flock of thirty black skimmers feed for as long as we wanted to stay in the area. Their lower mandible is longer than the upper. They fly just above the water with their lower bill cutting right through the water as they fly. They fly around and around out in the waves and in as close as the water receding from shore after each wave. You can see their heads snap everytime they snag something. Looks like an advil life to me. But then, come to think of it, that’s what I have already.

Judy is having a rough day today. We crossed on the ferry boat at Port Aransas, watching the pelicans and dolphins. Then, at our favorite Port Aransas lunch place, she had to eat so much shrimp and fish and chips, that her stomach is still upset. Of course she had to eat it all to prove that she really needed it all, because she refused to just share some of mine with me.

Then we had to drive over a hundred and fifty miles today, and she got overtired and cranky. Things are a little better now that we’re stopped for the night. But she doesn’t want anything for dinner but Alka-Seltzer, and she doesn’t find the noises coming from her stomach nearly as entertaining as I do. Nothing another ten or twelve hours of sleep won’t fix.

So we’re in a County Park just outside Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge, on the twenty-sixth parallel. Can’t go much farther south in this country. We’re at the same latitude as Miami. We’ll get up and bird this park tomorrow morning, go take a look at Laguna Atascosa after that, and probably finish the day in an RV park at the southern tip of South Padre Island. There is a lighthouse state park there we need to take a look at.

Got a good look at an Aplomado Falcon. Very rare. Very beautiful.

Still at the park outside of Laguna Atascosa. Just at dusk last night, a great pack of howling coyotes within fifty feet of us. Later, Judy and Annie finished Annie’s last walk for the evening abruptly. Out in the dark walking by themselves, the bushes started rustling, growling, and snorting right next to them. Annie decided she’d rather be in Judy’s arms. She leaped there all by herself. Judy decided Annie didn’t really have to pee anymore that night. My guess is they had a close encounter with javelina in the dark.

Parked on South Padre Island. Our goal was the county RV park here. But it turns out they only have a little over a thousand RV sites, and you can’t get in without a reservation. It’s not what we’re used to. It’s a lot like making a reservation to camp in the middle of a city. Unhooked and explored with the minivan, and found a dry-camping community out on the flats on the Laguna Madre side of the island. There are twenty or thirty motorhomes parked on the sand next to the dunes. We’ll park about five hundred yards out on the flats at the waters edge. The middle part of the sand looks pretty soft, but there are some nice hard packed tracks across it. I checked the weather radio, and high tide will be at 6pm. I’m sure we’re parked above any recent high tide levels… Nice marsh birding boardwalk at the Convention Center. Saw a clapper rail and a marsh wren.

OK. I was right. We were above the high tide mark by almost ten feet of essentially level sand. Pretty smooth huh?

It tends to be another five degrees or so warmer on this end of the island, and this far south. We’ll have highs and lows in the seventies and sixties. But there is just something about this whole southern section of Texas that we don’t enjoy as much as a little bit back to the north; up around Corpus Christi. Or maybe it’s that there is something about the northern end of the island we enjoy that is lacking down here. Anyway, we’ll go back up to the beach to Malaquite campground on North Padre Island to finish up our trip.