Enough of the Rio Grande Valley. It’s as far south as we can go, and it’s
the warmest part of Texas, but it’s not our favorite place to be. The
birding is unparalleled and that’s why we go there. Otherwise, it’s a
little on the crummy side. We went north, back to Port Aransas for a few days to take care of some
business and one last visit to the beach. Port Aransas. Mustang Island.
It’s still mostly undeveloped and undiscovered. It’s not crummy at all. From there we drove all day to Ft Stockton, five hundred miles. Still in
Texas, but now it’s West Texas. We’re not here for anything. Just passing
through. Someday we’ll take the side-trip south from here to visit Big Bend
National Park. We still haven’t been there. We hear they have scaled
quail. After an overnight stop, we drove through the rest of West Texas and
into New Mexico. New Mexico. We mean to work here someday…., if we can
get Arkansas out of the picture. We drove through most of New Mexico and
stopped in Lordsburg for the night. Haven’t done anything but drive the
last couple days. Found some killdeer in the field last night. White
winged doves. Meadowlarks. Cactus wrens. Yellow rumped warblers. Tonight. Nothing. No birds. Nice quiet campground. Met a few people.
Met a lady walking her cat. When we saw a lady with a martini glass in her
hand, walking a cat on a leash, in the campground tonight, we thought it
might be the same lady we saw in last night’s campground with a martini
glass in her hand, walking a cat. Know what? We were right! It’s the same
lady. Imagine that. She’s headed the same direction we are. West. Tomorrow? West again. Arizona.
Texas
Here’s a cool bird, black and white warbler. Got him in Weslaco.
Trip12
The cat is such a help. We’re so glad to have him along. He helps us make the bed every morning. He saves a place for us on the seat every time we get up. He greets us at the door when we get home. Every morning when I stretch on the floor, he is right there to help, or show off. It gives me something to aspire to. I think I might have a problem. I get haircuts regularly at home. I didn’t time them very well, before I left though. I was supposed to get another just before I left, but didn’t manage to fit it in. Now, not only am I way past due, but we’re on a trip. You know what that means. Trip hair! Just wanted to warn you. If the email goes suddenly silent, it means I’ve been spotted by the hair police and they’ve got me. Drove around. Looked around. Signed up for several more days. Spotted the first Lazy Daze of the trip. I’ve been thinking about birds. And the bird list. It’s hard to find new birds now. And I know why it’s hard to find new birds. We go to the same bird habitats every year and look at the same ones over and over. We bird the Texas coast. We bird the Florida coast. We bird the Texas coast again. Maybe we’re destined to peak at 285. Better that than quit going to the places we love to go. We have a propane crisis. It’s not about the gauge. The gauge is correct. We still have half a tank. It’s about getting propane to the appliances and the furnaces. It quit last night. We were sitting around and noticed that the furnace fans were cycling on and off, but they were never blowing warm. We pushed the indicator on the dash and it wouldn’t light up. The propane leak detector was still lit. It said everything was just fine. It didn’t matter for hot water that we didn’t have propane. We’re plugged in and have an electric hot water heater. The refrigerator runs on electricity when we’re plugged in to shore power. We have a gas grill to cook on. It only mattered for the furnaces, and that didn’t really matter much. It’s not so cold at night that we can’t sleep without the furnace. It was a little chilly in the morning, but we have an electric space heater, so we got to take the chill off with that. Something quit working somewhere and disabled the propane system. Fuse we figured. Know what? There are a lot of fuses in this motorhome. We spent an hour finding fuses and checking them. There is a nice fuse panel in the back where you can find the fuse you need. Except for all the other fuses scattered around the rig. There is a master propane shutoff on the outside, back where you fill the tank. There are fuses in the battery control box in the outside cabinet on the other side. There are fuses up in front by where the engine would be if the engine were in front like in most vehicles. There are fuses in a box under the dash behind the accelerator pedal. No luck. It got better this morning. Judy found Jim, the mobile RV guy. He came out this afternoon and spent two hours crawling around under and through our Bounder. He had a cell phone. He called for help. Nothing helped. There are no bad fuses. Everything works. Except the propane. Finally, he bypassed all the power and fuses from the battery, and hooked up his own power to the back of the switch panel. That worked. The systems all work. They just won’t all work at the same time. Jim went home to think about it. He’s going to call the factory tomorrow and have a chat with them. When he gets it figured out, he’ll come back and fix it. In the meantime, he jury-rigged power to the propane from a live outlet on the dash board. All systems are good to go until the real solution arrives.
Texas
We’ve moved a couple times in the last few days. We moved from a park we liked to a different park so we could get WiFi. It turned out to be something off someone’s home computer. It was wireless, but it was SlowFi. Verrrrrrry SlowFi. And the park was full of stickers. Judy couldn’t take Annie for a walk without putting her snow boots on, then pulling all the stickers out of the muttluks afterward.We moved again today. A real WiFi park, right outside the entrance to Bentsen Rio-Grande State Park. Not so many burrs. This is better. Since we’re right outside the prime bird viewing ground of Bentsen Rio-Grande, logically, we drove fifty miles upriver to Salaneno. We wanted to visit the Bird Lady. She and her husband have spent the winters on their property there for over twenty years, feeding birds and chasing away the grackles. Their property is open every day to anyone who wants to stop and visit and watch the birds. They like to shut it down about four pm each day and we didn’t get there till late so we only had twenty minutes.In twenty minutes, we did get to see lincoln’s sparrow; chipping sparrow; goldfinch; yellow rumped, and orange crowned warbler; ground, inca, white-winged, and white-tipped dove; cardinal, black crested titmouse, green jay, brown jay, altimira oriole, and audubon’s oriole. No new birds, but we’ve never seen the white-tipped dove, the brown jay, or the two orioles anywhere else. Reports are that there are only twelve brown jays in the entire united states.The birding frenzy is almost over. We’ll head back towards reality and winter soon. In the meantime, we hear there are scaled quail and bewick’s wrens at Falcon State Park.
Texas
My claim to fame as a swimmer was that I sank. I couldn’t float on my back. I couldn’t float. Not in fresh water, anyway. That was unusual, even for the swim team. I was lean. I could take as deep a breath as I could hold, let go of the side, and sink to the bottom of the nine-foot section of the pool. I could stand on the bottom. It didn’t make me a better swimmer. It just made me different.Of course, now, I’ve filled out a bit. My body density has changed. I don’t sink. Hey! That means I’m less dense now! Anyway, since I was in the pool cooling off tonight, I decided to check my flotation. My feet don’t float. My torso does. Until I let some air out. Then I drop a bit. I let more air out. I float lower. If I let all the air out….. I sink! I don’t sink for very long, because I have to come right back up for air. I just let it all out. I’d be just like I was in high school if I didn’t need air in my lungs.
Bentsen Rio-Grande State Park. Swarms of goldfinches. Plain chachalacas chuckling it up. Green Jays squawking. A yellow warbler. A Great Kiskadee. A report of a blue bunting. We chased it. It turned out to be an indigo bunting. Two indigo buntings, a female and an immature male. That’s a good one. 336 on the life list. A report of a social flycatcher. I never heard of a social flycatcher. We chased it too, but didn’t see it.Frontera Audubon thicket in Weslaco. Went for the groove-billed anis. Not there today. We did find the olive sparrow. That’s a good one for us. Found Wilson’s warbler, and black and white warbler. Found the clay colored robin, and get this, a crimson collared grosbeak #337, and a white-throated robin #338. A white throated robin! It’s not even in the book!