Looking Back at 2014: Adventures with Old and New Friends

This has been the best year for meeting new friends. I met six precious new friends this year. I also had some great visits from old friends.

The new year found me working at Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge.   Cindy, the manager of the Visitor Center and keeper of the web page and Facebook entries, started inviting me to go on photographic excursions.  She even invited me to join her at Crystal River to swim with the manatees. When her back gave her serious trouble,  I mowed her yard. By the time I left we were friends.  She worked at Dinosaur National Monument this summer and I visited her on my way south. I keep up  with her via her blog and Facebook.

Cindy setting up in the boneyard at Jekyll Island

Cindy and me as I was leaving Dinosaur Park

I was working the desk one day when a lady called with questions about paddling and camping in the refuge.  She had a bubbly personality and really intrigued me when she told me she and her Dad were planning to do the last section of the Suwannee  river.  I immediately asked her to be a guest blogger and write about her experience since I knew I would not get to go this time.

Later we met after she invited me to join her on a camping trip on the Altamaha River.  Then she invited me to stay with her as I was leaving Oke and do another paddle. I rushed to pack so I could leave a day early and spend two nights and a day with her. Now Julie and I are keeping up via Facebook until we met again - which I expect will be next winter.

Starting out on a camping trip with Julie

Landing our the sand bar we camped on

Me on South Fork. a stream near Julie's house

Julie on same trip

I met another lady, Laurel, while running the Visitor Center. That evening I went out on the tour boat and met up with her again.  We are both birders and photographers and bonded over the consistently wrong bird identification by our tour guide.  Then she invited me to visit her in Edisto Island, SC and took me paddling, birding, and beach walking.  Of course we each took several hundred pictures and enjoyed seeing a slide show of our best ones before I left. She was definitely a lady with the energy to almost wear me out!  I THINK I'm going to get her to come visit me this spring so I can show her migration in Texas  - and send her on a paddle or two with my friends, since my shoulder won't be ready to paddle yet.

Laurel in one of her pair of kayaks on one of two paddles we did

A new local volunteer came to work at Okefenokee.  We only got to work together a couple of days but found we loved each other and had hilarious times working as wandering docents together. I'm hoping to see Barbara over and over since she and her husband are looking forward to becoming resident volunteers as soon as they sell their house.

Barbara saving a turtle nest  - I stole this from her Facebook timeline. 

I talked to a couple several times while working in the Visitor Center.  They were from Wisconsin and Mary was an avid birder and photographer.  One morning I went birding before going to work and ran into her.  We spent several hours together, both before and during my "work" as a wandering docent,  and now keep up via Facebook. I'm trying to convince her to make a small detour and come visit me on her way back to Georgia for the winter.

Mary and me - I had to pick up a truck and "work" and she followed me around to each photo stop

And I had a few visitors.  Pat, an old friend and paddling buddy came over to paddle in the swamp and also on St. Mary's river. We had a great week of paddling together.

Pat and I leaving our first shelter in Okefenokee - I proved it's
possible to leap into the canoe and look like I was paddling in
the 10 seconds before the camera snapped the picture - see we are still
tied up - only took about 5 tries.

Kyle worked with me at National Bison Range. Of the three of us who shared the bunkhouse, I was the only one with a car, so I took the guys with me to shop and sometimes to play. I also taught them both to drive a standard. Kyle and his girlfriend, Sylvie, were going to school in Jackson, Florida, so came up and spent a day with me.

Kyle and Sylvie on a tour boat at Okefenokee

Another pair of friends came, with friends of their own, to paddle in the swamp and ate supper with me.

Anita on the left and Bill on the right with the friends they are about to paddle
off into the swamp with 

I left Okefenokee to head to Galveston to visit several doctors before going up to Montana.  I had to stop to visit one of my oldest friends - both in age and in years of friendship - Hulin. He is a fantastic cook and made me crawfish etouffee, one of my favorite dishes.   I earlier had come back from Okefenokee NWR during the New Year Holidays to help celebrate his 90th birthday.

Hulin and his crawfish etouffee 

The last big trip I did before starting ny northward migration was my annual pilgrimage to South Llano River State Park to celebrate birds and paddling in the midst of friends from across Texas.  We had a  small group this year, compared to some years but I thought it was just the right size.

Most of the group supper bunch

Winnie always brings me my old white water kayak I gave her

This is the paddle on the lower part of the river

Several weeks after I got to Red Rock Lakes, new volunteers showed up with THREE boats on top of their truck.  As soon as I ascertained that there were  only two of them, I invited myself on all their future paddles. (That was about three sentences past saying hello.)  Both Chari and Steve are fantastic photographers, and. love hiking, paddling, and birding. They are WAY more into living completely in the moment than I've been able to achieve.  We had lots of fun adventures together and I keep up with them via Chari's blog.

Chari trying to photograph an eagle on Elk Lake

Chari on our Summer Soltice Walk

Steve photographing an unoccupied golden eagle nest

My friend, Teri, who I met when we both were volunteers  at Malheur NWR, came to visit me and also took me on the Centennial Valley Raptor Count. We drove over 100 miles and found some great birds. We also visited the Bear and Wolf Center in West Yellowstone.

Teri on the bear sofa in the gift shop of the Bear and Wolf Center

My friend, Natalie,  also visited me and had some good times with Chari and Steve. She had her own boat because she was on the way to a week of rivers in the Grand Tetons. So we took her paddling on the one day they and I shared off. We also visited Quake Lake and learned all about the horrible earthquake near Yellowstone.

Natalie and Cheri on Henry's Fork of the Snake River

And when I saw that Guy and Trisha were coming to Yellowstone, I talked them into driving about another 30 miles and visiting me an afternoon and night.  We had a great time birding and then we shared supper at their campsite.  They tried fishing before they left, but were unsuccessful.

Trish, me and Gay at Lower Red Rock Lake

I also went to the Rocky Mountain National Park for a long weekend, since it was only 600 miles away, to have a quick visit with my friend Carole. She lives in Houston and we have a mutual friend who invited her to join us for a week of camping and hiking in Yellowstone a few years ago.  She is a volunteer at Rocky Mountain NP.

Carol on a hike on the Ute Trail

About ten days after this trip, it was time to pack up and move to the National Bison Range.  I dropped off my stuff and then Justin, an intern working there. took me to Missoula to catch a plane to Ottawa to visit my daughter Karen and son-in-law, Francesco for several days.  The kids took me a few places and gave me a bus ticket to travel around Ottawa and Gatineau.  On one weekend, we visited a huge park and demonstration garden.  The other weekend, we visited Montreal Botanical Garden, the Insectarium, and the Olympic Tower.

The kids in  the funicular going up the Olympic Tower to the Observatory

Karen in the demonstration garden in Ottawa

And after I got to National Bison Range in September, another Texas/Montana friend, Kathy, came to spend a few days.  Both of us are birders and we had a lovely visit to Lee Metcalf NWR, one of the best birding areas in the Missoula area.  We were supposed to meet up at Caddo Lake but she got detained in Montana by a misbehaving central heater.  Hopefully I'll get down to visit my Corpus Christi friends in late January or February and see her then.

Kathy looking at ducks

So I was blessed all year with friends old and new. It really is true that, if you adopt a travelling life, you get to keep your old friends, but will also find lots more of the kind of people you enjoy the most.

Goodbye to a Refuge

Our Law Enforcement Officer let me close Thursday night so I could say goodby to all my favorite places.  I got Justin to lock the gate and left and hour early, since the sun is setting so early that it is dark before time for the gate to close.

I hiked up to High Point and waited for the sunset.  I was rewarded with a spectacular one.

Then Friday, I had to stop working on one last project to photograph a coyote.  And while I was loading my car, that evening, I had to grab my camera again to take a most amazing sun, that was almost a rose color amidst a swirling colored cloud.

And early Saturday morning, while I was finishing loading the car, I saw a vanquished bull elk walking tiredly down our road.  I quietly opened the door and ran for my camera.

So here are a few of my recent memories of the National Bison Range.

It was a great summer but now my thoughts are of meeting old friends and arranging my surgeries. Hope to get in some kinds of play while recuperating.

I am traveling to go see my old boss and friend, Cindy, with whom I worked and played while at Okefenokee.  I'll spend several days Dinosaur  NP before going to north Texas for a paddling party that will also last a long weekend.  Stay tuned. 

Roundup at National Bison Range

I'm still excited about getting to help with the Annual Bison Roundup.  It took me two years to experience it, because the government shutdown postponed it last year past my time to work at the National Bison Range. Two days of working 11 hours and 12 hours went by in a flash.

Now I'm ready to share it with you.  (But first get comfortable and get a cup of your favorite drink - this will take a while.)

The Roundup started up with a prayer offered by one of the leaders of the Salish tribe, followed by a song honoring the bison. 

Singers singing a song to honor the bison

When you watch our old movie of how the Bison Range is managed, you see cowboys on horses racing down a hill in a cloud of dust behind a thundering herd of bison.  Today we have found that using a vehicle to bring the bison from a holding pasture to the corrals puts a lot less stress on the bison and also protects the people from the kind of injuries they often got when on horses.

A small group of bison being herded with a jeep to the corral pen

After a small group of bison are brought into the corral, they are moved down through gates so they (usually) enter singly into a round enclosure where they are given a visual health check.

The round pen where the bison are checked visually for health before
being sent to the scale and having their microchip read

Then they are moved onto a scale built into the floor of the chute. Someone writes down the health check results and the weight, then a worker uses a wand to read the microchip in the animal's ear. This chip information is in a database so, the workers know whether this is a animal that is going to be sold, needs to be checked for disease, or will just go back on the range. (Which is true of most of the bison -  they are allowed to run down a chute to the holding pasture for animals that have been processed, with no further work done on them.)

Karen is recording all the data on the animal while Laura is writing down the health report -
they can read the weight off the scale from where they sit

The calves don't  yet have chips and have to get a complete workup which consists of giving a hair sample, a blood sample, getting a microchip and an ear tag.  Four drops of blood are put on special blotting paper after filling two tubes.  This is used to determine the calves' genetic markers. They are shunted into their own small squeeze chute. My afternoon job was to open a gate that shunted them into the chute, then close it again so the bison not needing any processing could run out to the field. 

Here is what is looks like when a calf gets into the squeeze chute. (Sorry - could not get my video to load to Blogger.)

Putting in a microchip behind a calf's ear. Guy on far side is pulling ear while Shay is injecting the chip at the base of the ear. 

Putting an ear tag on a calf 

A section of the chute can be opened to reach the tail - Shay has forceps ready to pull some hair

She grabs several hairs, rolls them around the forceps, pulls and then
puts them in a labeled plastic bag - we have a tiny printer that prints out the barcode for each animal

Kelsey is loading the microchips into the disk the machine uses 

Calves' blood samples with barcode labels that will be used for genetic profile

The same workup is done on the bison that are sold in closed bids, as well as to any bison who have lost their chips.  (The genetics workup will be matched with workups from years past to match the unique genetic pattern that represents the now unknown bison.  Thus the data associated with the old chip now will be associated with the new chip.)

Amy drawing a blood sample

 When the chip is read at the bison squeeze chute, it tells us which of several numbered pens we are to send the bison to. It also tells us what to do to the bison.  This included adding an ear tag for bison that were being sold, and taking blood. We also took about 30 nose swabs, to make sure our herd didn't have mycoplasma (Mycoplasma bovis) which recently has become a major concern on bison ranches with losses of 25% or more of the infected animals. And we also get labels printed with the chip number to put on hair bags, blood and swab samples.

I numbered these tags - they are glued to the animal and left on the ones that are being sold but are taken off after the animal has had further processing but will go back on the range

My morning job was to get blood from the syringe into two vacuum tubes, the swab into a preservation fluid in a test tube, and get the labels on everything.

This is NOT a Q-tip I'd like up my nose - testing for mycoplasma

While all this is going on, we are also giving an educational program to a series of busloads of kids from the surrounding schools.  Monday I helped with that and was the person who greeted the busses and explained what the kids would be doing, then escorted them to a movie about the roundup.  The other half of the day, I worked in the kids activity section where they could play a matching game by picking up the name of an animal, then finding a picture, a physical object, such as a pelt, or antler, the picture of the track made by the animal, and a factoid about it.  When they found all their matches, they brought them to me for review.  Then I would send them to scatter the cards and objects back around on the tarp.

We also had the bones from a bison so the kids could lay them out to see how the skeleton fit together.  Our bison had had the side of its face broken and then had healed up from this injury.  The bones were mostly numbered and there was a key provided, so the kids could figure out how the bones fit together and compare the bison's bones with their own.

Rebuilding a bison skeleton

One last interesting thing I learned today is that our herd of bison have some unique genes - ones that ONLY occur in our herd.  Those are part of the rare genes, that if we find them in individual, we keep it on the refuge to preserve genetic diversity.  We have no idea of what physical properties these genes are responsible for, but they may help our bison survive in a changing world.