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Thursday

 Some of the coolest places to camp don’t have any cell or internet access.  That’s where we were Thursday; back on schedule at Davis Mountains State Park, but with no cell or internet.   Some slightly creative routing got us into one more new county.  We’ve now recorded birds in every county along the southern border of Texas, from Louisiana to New Mexico!  Now all we have to do is fill in the other parts!  (Some other trip.) 
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We’ve almost rejoined our plan

 Another morning at Lake Casablanca We headed back to the truck repair shop.  By the time the repair was completed, we were a little late getting out of there; we didn’t get out until afternoon.  We couldn’t make it to our planned stop in Seminole Canyon before dark, so we stopped at Broke Mill RV Park in Del Rio instead.  2018 Arizona Trip Map The weather is still very warm; it was 90 today. Working our way along the southern border, the county map is looking better every day.  
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Life on the road

 We had a plan.  But plans change.  That’s the deal with traveling all these miles; not every one of them is trouble-free.  Instead of driving to our next stop today, we spent the day at French Ellison truck repair.  On the way to Lake Casa Blanca yesterday, the bus started running rough, but then it cleared up.  Instead of just driving on, we decided to stop at a repair shop, let them connect a computer to our coach, and read any error messages.  They did that and found one.  They got a hit on the boost sensor; it’s starting to fail and needs to be replaced.  No problem.  Except the part isn’t here in Laredo.  It won’t get here until tomorrow.  So back to Lake Casa Blanca State Park for another night. Now this was the day we were supposed to travel though all those counties we need for our map, spot some birds, and end up in Crystal Springs for the night.  Well, there was still some daylight left when we found out we couldn’t get fixed until tomorrow, so we piled in the car and drove through those counties we need and recorded our sightings. Now our Texas county map looks like this:  Less empty spots. And back at the state park, listening to the night birds calling, our camp looks like this. 
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On the road again

 Headed for Arizona. We made our usual stop at the Falfurrias Rest Area for lunch.  This is a center median rest stop; it serves traffic going both directions.  It’s a good example of leaving the vegetation in the median intact; it’s got an oak forest to walk through. Continuing west for Laredo and Lake Casa Blanca State Park.   Arizona Trip Map No progress on the Texas County Map yet though.  
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The Challenge

 Ebird, the birding software we use, put up a digital map with stick-on states.  We get credit for a state by entering the birds we’ve seen there. The darker the color, the more birds we have sighted in each state.  We’ve done well, getting birds in every state, including Hawaii, except Alaska.  The problem with this map is that you can click on each state to see how you’re doing with counties in that state. We’re doing well with counties in Arizona We’ve recorded birds in every one of them.  (It helps that there aren’t very many counties in Arizona.) We’ve got a good start on New Mexico. And Colorado.Those are both do-able. But Texas. Texas is a challenge.  There are 254 counties in Texas.