Home Sweet Home, For Now...

We have started a new volunteer gig, this time in deep East Texas. We were scheduled to return to Goose Island State Park to lead bird walks, but Hurricane Harvey did a number on the park and closed it temporarily. We offered to help them clean up, but they weren't sure of when they could accommodate volunteers so we made alternate plans.

We will be Park Hosts at Martin Dies Jr. State Park near Jasper, Texas. If you don't know where Jasper is, we're about 50 miles north of Beaumont, Texas and only 35 miles from the Louisiana border. The area is a wonderful mixture of pines and hardwoods, and we are right on B.A. Steinhagen Lake.

Though most of the park is heavily wooded, our camping area is surprisingly open. With the short days of winter approaching we're pleased to be out in the sunshine. So far the weather has been crisp and cool. We actually had frost our second night!

Our duties are pretty simple. We'll do site checks in the morning (making sure the folks who came in during the night have paid), occasional after-hours car counts, and cleaning up campsites when folks check out. Firewood sales are on the honor system so we won't be involved with that. You can see our John Deere Gator parked behind the firewood rack. This is our main transportation when checking and cleaning sites. 

This is a weekend destination park for folks from Houston (2 1/2 hours away), and we will fill up completely on Friday night, and then empty back out on Sunday. Weekday traffic is very light, though Thanksgiving week is booked. After Thanksgiving we're told that even weekend camping will be very slow. 

The park has extensive hiking trails, along with a network of canoe/kayak trails. We plan to try them all, so stay tuned...

Mark

One Last Round

There are two really nice 9 hole disc golf courses close to us.  Mark plays one of them almost every day we’re home.  I usually go with him.  Sometimes I pick up trash and sometimes I just enjoy getting outside in this beautiful area we live in.

We’ll be leaving for our next volunteer assignment soon and Mark wanted to get in one last round.   We loaded up some trash bags and loppers and some tools. 

There isn’t a lot of trash on this course but I can usually find something to pick up.  Today my goal was to pick up a lot of broken glass that has been there since last year.  This is an old window that someone put in the ground to use as a information board.  It was a good idea.  Unfortunately, some people can’t resist destroying things.  So, all the glass was busted out. 

A few days ago I started to pick up glass and was immediately aware of very large wasps starting to surround me.  So today I’m prepared.

They're no match for a big can of Raid.  After dispatching a dozen very large red wasps, I started picking up a bag full of glass.

For a couple of years now Mark has been cutting grape vines out of the large old oak trees here.  The grapes are great for wildlife but kill the trees.  The oak trees in this area are already stressed by oak wilt and we have noticed a few new dead trees this year.

 There was one disc golf basket that needed repair.  See the loose chain? 

 We stopped at the hardware store on the way and bought an S-hook so Mark could make the repair.

Don’t you wish people that throw trash on the ground would throw it in the open so those of us who pick it up don’t have to crawl under bushes?

We were so busy picking up trash and trimming grape vine, I don’t think Mark ever played past the first hole.

We've got a new volunteer assignment starting soon.  It will be in a new state park for us too.
So stay tuned!
Teri

Give Me a Moment, Would Ya?

We visited the Riverside Nature Center in Kerrville to see what birds and butterflies might be hanging on a cool fall day.

We immediately came across a female Gulf Fritillary that had recently emerged from her chrysalis and was drying her wings. I hadn't even raised the camera before a male joined her, obviously interested in being the first to mate.

We had learned previously that some males in this family (Fritillaries and Longwings) will attempt to mate with females even before they have fully emerged from their chrysalis. Survival of the fastest, I suppose!

In the above picture (click to enlarge) you can see that they are mated. The female is now turned upside down and the tips of their abdomens are joined. Mission accomplished!

We've noted that Monarch butterfliles are migrating south. This one made a pit stop to refuel before its journey continues.

We also saw several Queens enjoying the Blue Mistflower, which seems to be an all-time favorite of butterflies in Texas.

This was a good day for orange and black butterflies!

Mark

Still Crocheting!

As you know, my hobby is crocheting.  Mostly I crochet blankets that I donate to a group called The Linus Connection.  This year I will probably end up donating about 25 afghans.

Here are a few that I made this summer:

There's still plenty of time to make a few more this year!

Teri

Sometimes You Strike Out

Another rainy day finds us at the Frontier Times Museum in Bandera.  This turned out to be the strangest museum we’ve been to. There seemed to be little rhyme or reason to what was displayed or how it was organized.

The first room inside the front door.

Established by J. Marvin Hunter, Sr., the Frontier Times Museum opened its doors on May 20, 1933.

It's hard to see but J Marvin Hunter is spelled out in marbles.

The museum is absolutely packed to the brim.

There were some interesting things to see

Then we would come across the weirdest things:

And this:

The museum is a larger than it looks from the outside and has several different rooms.  This tramp art picture frame was nice:

 Close-up of one corner.

We both left the museum thinking it was just very odd.

After we returned home I looked at their web site and it all made a little more sense:

“As visitors walk through the museum’s doors, they are transported back to the days when museums served as cabinets of curiosities, displaying wonderful and weird treasures.

Museum founder and luminary, J. Marvin Hunter, Sr., never said no to a gift to the museum’s collection.  He felt that if the artifact was important to the donor, then it should be important to everyone.”

Oh well, sometimes it’s a hit.  Sometimes a miss.

Teri

Learning is Fun!

We have another fabulous trip to Central America planned for next year.  Most of our trips are “birding” trips.  Our main goal is to see birds but that certainly isn’t all we find.  We look at butterflies, dragonflies, monkeys, frogs, snakes, etc.

I guess we really take “nature” trips with an emphasis on birding.  For us, it’s not enough to just let our guide tell us what we are seeing.  We want to know the birds we are looking for and be able to identify what we see.

We’ve traveled to Central and South America many times and are really drawn to that area of the world.  When we took our first trip in 2004 to Trinidad and Tobago we were going to see hundreds of birds that we had never seen before.  Mark thought up a wonderful way for us to study and learn these birds so we would know what we were looking at.

We went old school - flashcards.  After 13 years and many different countries we have thousands of flash cards printed up.

Mark is still printing up flashcards for new birds we will be seeing on our upcoming trip but this is (almost) all the birds we will be studying for now. 

 Flashcards for our upcoming trip.

Green Ibis

We’ve got 4 months of intense studying.  It’s really a lot of fun and keeps us excited about the trip.  I haven’t counted this 4” stack of paper (I don’t think I want to know).

Teri  

Lava Falls Trail

There are a number of hiking trails in the huge El Malpais National Monument. Teri blogged about the El Calderon Loop Trail that we hiked during our bat watching evening. Today's hike was on the Lava Falls Trail which is on the other side of the Monument, over 20 miles away.

The Lava Falls Trail follows the top of the McCarty Lava Flow, named after a small, nearby town. The lava flow is "only" 3000 years old, which is young in the span of geologic time. Most of the exposed surface is solidified lava, with only small amounts of grasses and trees growing in cracks and crevices.

Designating the trail must have been difficult, as you can't really create any sort of pathway. So they rely on rock cairns, which are simply small piles of rock. You walk from one cairn to the next. The trail guide warns you not to leave one cairn until you've spotted the next one. The landscape is very confusing and it would be easy to get hopelessly lost out on the lava. 

In the picture above I am standing just behind a cairn. The next is about 50 feet ahead, just along the deep crack (click on the picture for a bigger view). They blended in well so trail finding was a little tricky in spots. 

The trail surface was an interesting combination of rough rock and loose cinders. The cinders were lightweight pebbles formed by gassy lava cooling while still in the air. Very crunchy to walk on!

So what about the name of the trail, Lava Falls? If you were expecting to see a 100 foot waterfall of lava you'd be disappointed, but there were several areas where molten lava had poured over a ridge and hardened, leaving a lava fall.

There were several other textures of lava. "Ropey Pahoehoe" was a common texture on the trail. Pahoehoe is a Hawaiian term for relatively smooth lava. It looks a bit like a lava fall, but is flatter. 

"Lava Toes" are lobes of lava that are formed when hot lava breaks out of semi-hardened lava.

Here is a place where a slab of lava hardened, and then got pushed in such a way that it buckled upward. This looks like a good place for a lizard to hang out!

This is a tough environment for either plants or animals to survive. In one area we found this "Pygmy Forest" of twisted, stunted Ponderosa and Pinion Pines. By putting their roots down into the cracks they can find enough water and nutrients to survive, but they will never grow to the heights of trees found off of the lava.

Other tough plants included some beautiful cactus tucked down in the lava. 

This was a fascinating hike over an unusual and barren landscape. We had on sturdy hiking boots, but our trail guide asked us to imagine what it would have been like to cross these lava flows in yucca sandals like the Native Americans. Hard to imagine...

Mark

More From El Malpais National Monument

We've been back in Texas for a while, but never got to share all that we saw in Northwestern New Mexico. So I thought I'd go back to El Malpais National Monument and show a bit more from that interesting part of the world.

We got up early one morning to take advantage of the cooler temperatures and explore a few areas that didn't have set hours. First we stopped at some amazing sandstone bluffs that overlooked black volcanic flows in the valley below.

We always find it interesting to come across a USGS Survey Monument set into rock.

And we can't resist getting a "top of the world" picture!

As we left the Sandstone Bluffs we came across the ruins of Garrett Homestead. The Garrett Family left the midwest during the Dust Bowl and Great Depression, seeking a new start in the west. This cabin was built in the 1930's.

After leaving the Sandstone Bluffs area we continued up the road toward the La Ventana Arch. This entire region is a puzzle of different federal lands. In addition to the El Malpais National Monument, there is the El Malpais National Conservation Area, a couple of different Wilderness Areas, and the Chain of Craters Wilderness Study Area! A confusing jumble of public lands with many different rules and purposes.

La Ventana ("the window") Arch is located in the 60,000 acre Cibolla Wilderness Area. Wilderness Areas allow only non-motorized, non-mechanized access. So walking and stock animals (horseback, llamas...) are the only means of exploring these areas.

I wanted to get a picture of Teri with the arch in the background. I ended up lying on the ground and shooting upward. So artistic!!

Next - Our final destination of the morning, Lava Falls.

Mark