Steve and Judy's Travels!

Did I mention that Stephanie left our office a couple years ago. That was bad news. She’s the ultra distance runner. She was fun and interesting. Besides, she’s really really smart and good.But the good news is that she brought in her own replacement before she left. Janay. Janay is just as smart and good as Stephanie. Now the bad news. Janay’s family wanted to return to Utah so, middle of December, she interviewed with a firm in Provo and got a great offer. She left. That sucks. She didn’t even provide a replacement, even though we told her that was a rule.But guess what? At the Company Christmas Dinner Party, where alums in good standing (I didn’t have to fire them) are invited, Stephanie told us how much she missed us and how dull all the people at her new job are. Well, we got all over that!So the good news is, Stephanie is back.

Texas cookin. Texas culture. We soaked it up. The Warehouse Barbecue. Baby backs, sausage, and shredded brisket so good I couldn’t put barbecue sauce on it. Barbecue at a picnic table with a napkin holder on top in the shape of a picnic table, with a live bluegrass/country five piece band with a combined age of 350, playing to an audience with a combined age of 3,500, for tips. Mandolin, acoustic, electric, string bass, acoustic. It was clear they had all played before. It was not clear if they had ever played together before.The walls were covered with all the stuff you would expect the walls to be covered with at a Texas Roadhouse. Elvis plays on Friday nights.

Sent: Monday, January 10, 2005 9:24 PM
Get this. Today, Rags was good and Annie was bad. Annie escaped! Annie the Wonder Dog. Annie the good kid who never does anything wrong. She was outside with me while I was cooking dinner tonight. It got dark. I watched the pork chops on the grill. I didn’t watch Annie.The pork chops were done. Judy asked where Annie was. She wasn’t where I last saw her. We called “Annie”. She didn’t come. We both called. We called her name. We called “cheese”. She likes cheese better than she likes her name. Nothing. She is not supposed to be out of our sight. She is not supposed to be out of our reach. These are park rules. There are also coyotes.Finally, she did come trotting down the street to us. We got her back. I’ll be more careful. Who knew? I was careful going in and out the door so the cat wouldn’t get out. Who knew I had to watch Annie too.

Another good birding day Sunday. An extended view of a white tailed kite hunting, pausing in mid-air, fluttering, studying the possibilities below, then floating away to the next best spot. A couple Harris hawks. More ground doves. More inca doves. Buff-bellied hummingbirds, unusual for us. Rufous hummingbird, unusual for down here. Ringed kingfisher again. Golden fronted woodpecker again. Great kiskadee. Cave swallow, number 335 on the life list. Ruby crowned kinglets, flashing red at each other. Curve billed thrasher. Long billed thrasher, that’s an unusual one for us. Lark sparrow. Cardinal.We got a map to a Bewick’s wren but that didn’t help. We still haven’t seen him. We hear there are some groove billed anis down at the sabal palm grove. Never seen them. Not the groove billed nor the smooth billed. Better check that out.

We slept to the sound of gunfire.Not a flurry of shots, like a firefight or a gun battle would be. Not a steady rhythm like you would hear from a firing range. It’s rural here. It could be a firing range, but the rhythm wasn’t right. Sporadic fire, but with soft edges. Not a hard-edged crack like a rifle makes. Softer like a shotgun. More of a whump, but definitely gunfire. Late at night. Just outside the RV Park. Couldn’t see anything. Couldn’t figure it out. Had to ask the next day.Judy asked at the office. It’s not a firing range. It’s not banditos. We’re very close to the Mexico border, but it’s not bandits. It’s air guns. Air guns in the agricultural fields around the RV Park. Automated air guns. They don’t shoot at anything. They just fire sporadically. They are there to protect crops from critters.I don’t know what the crops or critters are. I can look over the fence and see cropland. I can see a giant pivot sprinkler. There was even a crop duster flying low level passes, but I can’t see the crops. There are flocks of blackbirds around during the day, but hard to believe they’d have to shoo them away at ten o’clock at night.
Last night we slept to the sounds of hoot owls. One owl right over our motorhome. Another high in a palm tree across the way. We were up at midnight with our binoculars trying to pick them out in the dark. Surprisingly strong voices. Deep heavy resonation. By the call, we knew they were Great Horned Owls, and we’ve heard them before, but in the silence of the night, and that close at hand, it was a striking experience.