Remembering 2015: Part I Recuperating and Playing

I started off the year still recuperating from three surgeries: two carpal tunnel and one rotator cuff. I stayed with my friend Natalie, who ferried me everywhere and put up with me.  What a Friend!   But I was able to start physical therapy in January, and was also able to go birding and camping, starting with our annual trip to Goose Island State Park for birding and paddling. This also included the trip on the Skimmer to see the whooping cranes.

(I linked each picture to the blog it came from.)

I couldn't paddle but I could enjoy hiking, taking pictures and hanging out with friends. Also kept up on my exercises, her still just working on regaining movement

By February I was again traveling to visit friends and had a great bike trip on the Tammany Trace, a Rails to Trails hike/bike trail in southeast Louisiana.

I also decided to repair my canoe, which desperately needed new gunnels and thwarts as well as a paint job. I stopped at a place that sold sinker cypress and hauled home a huge board.  I got it longer than needed, on the advice of my repair person, who wanted to be able to avoid any bad places in the wood.

I forgot my racks so had an interesting time hauling this 18' x 2" X 12" board
a few hundred miles back to Galveston, TX

I also enjoyed Mardi Gras, Galveston, Texas style, in late February, especially the parade of Barkus and Meoux.

 I didn't do much in the way of volunteering, but did have a really fun day helping out the Corpus Christi Master Naturalists in March.  I thought I would be hanging out with my hostess and friend, Winnie, while she talked about birds that had migrated to the Central Texas Coast, but I got my own station and a new friend, Randy, the rat snake, to help  me teach kids about snakes and turtles and their importance to the environment as well as the dangers they face in developed areas.

Randy was super cuddly - mostly because it was a WAY cold and rainy day 

In looking back, I see that I spent much of the down time looking for birds.  I even attended a the Galveston Featherfest and helped Natalie host a few of our friends who came up from Corpus Christi for it.

But I also did some hiking and camping, and visiting attractions across Texas, especially  in the Central and Lower Coasts, and the Hill Country.  Some of the time I stayed with my daughter and just did day trips.  I enjoyed revisiting the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, where I loved to work at growing the plants for the two big native plant sale days, and a first time visit to Lyndon Bains Johnson's Texas White House.

Part of the new Family Garden at the Wildflower Center

Lyndon B. Johnson's Texas White House

View of the Pedernales River in Reimer Ranch, a wonderful hiking
and birding spot in the Texas Hill Country

The Pedernales Falls at Pedernales Falls State Park, another wonderful hiking and birding spot with two magnificent bird blinds

Vernal pools at Enchanted Rock where I spent and enchanting day
with butterflies and a ring-tailed cat

I also got to start paddling again and had several paddles with friends,  and birds, which made them three times special.

Paddle with friends on Sheldon Lake - contains ten islands of wading bird rookery

Happy Paddler with a new left arm and repaired canoe

Pat, a longtime friend, fellow camper and paddler, who organized this early morning trip

Then it was time to move on to my summer job with lots of adventures on the way.

I hope your are getting some time to slow down and enjoy this season with your friends and family.  I'm working at Pea Island Visitor Center and getting to share nature from the windows of the Visitor Center. I will also be doing three Christmas Bird Counts for my days off this week.

Search for the Lost Road at Big Bend Ranch State Park

We spent Wednesday, February 20 trying to find and hike on a road which shows on an old topography map of the area. Louis hadn't taken a waypoint off the map so we just guesstimated on where to start out.  We looked for features in the landscape and figured out where it must go.  Finally, after about a mile of walking, we began to see signs of it. But some of the most fun on the hike was just cutting across the country, which was easy to walk through, then climbing up a couple of hills to see the view from higher ground.

Looking for chert - we found some that was worked in this area

I love seeing how nature arranges garden elements.  The arrangement comes from the weathering of mountains into boulders and rocks, wind blowing in sands and dust, and seeds arriving, some of which find a niche in which they can grow.  Wildlife eats and processes seeds, then plants them beside boulders or under shrubs. Cows and other animals carry seeds from one place to another and some of those places give the seeds a chance to make new plants and new plant combinations.  Each year the area looks a little different as some plants die, and others begin life. And some places are so naturally beautiful, I want to try to recreate the scene, or some of its elements, in a garden. .

An view early in our cross-country hike

A rock garden on top of the first rocky hill I climbed

From this first hill, I was finally able to see a piece of the lost road and we started up it.  Lewis knew our destination was a dammed up pond. We also found places where the gulleys had been blocked to cattle and goats with stone fences. The tops of the hills were rocky enough that goats and cows couldn't cross, so they were used to make huge pastures.

View from hillside

There was one beautiful view after another

Rainbow cactus

Sotol with bloom stalk

 At the end of the road, we climbed the dam,  to find a dry bed.  Some  flowers  and grasses were growing at the edge of the dry pond.  Some some spots were wetter, and held the prints of the longhorn cows, who, by the dryness of the cow patties, had been there several months before.(The park has a small, historic herd of longhorns.) Other places were so dry that the soil had cracked 

Cracked earth

Flowers growing on the edge of the pond

We ate lunch on the far side of dry pond, where there were rock chairs. After lunch, the beautiful, rocky hill behind us beckoned and several of us climbed up it to see the different plants growing on it and to get long views across the landscape.

Our lunch spot

A surprising fern growing on among the boulders on the hill

Louis almost to the to of the hill behind our lunch spot

A look down on the pond

The second agraita - this growing on the rocky hill

Susan taking a rest

On the way back, Lewis again tried to follow the old road to the intersection of the road we  on which we had driven in.  But that end of it had completely disappeared into the landscape.This outing taught me that it is possible to study topographic maps and then travel using landmarks. (As a child, I used to to this all the time, but without maps - I just generally knew where electric lines, roads and streams ran and reoriented myself when I got to them. )  It makes a more fun way to travel, provided you can work your way through the brush.
And John and I decided to again cut across the land to the site of the car.  He had set a waypoint, so, even though we couldn't see the car, we knew where it was  And when we were on higher ground, we saw Natalie leaving. She had hiked on the road until she got tired and then driven back to camp. She had a lingering cough and fatigue from a light case of the flue and spent a lot of time sleeping.

The most amazing thing I found on this hike was this flower - perhaps the smallest I've seen in bloom, other than duckweed.  It was about 100 yards back from the car and was the only plant of its kind I could find in the area. It most looked like a Primula but that is SO not the habitat for them. It was growing in dry, gravely/sandy soil.

A single tiny flower growing in dry gravelly ground

I took the following picture to give an indication of its size. The entire plant was less than a quarter. Sorry for the poor focus.  I got a little closer than my lens would focus.

My next post SHOULD be about the exciting and wonderful tour we took down into Fresno Canyon in  a 4-wheel drive van. But I managed to leave two charged batteries at camp so got no pictures. But, if you visit the park, be sure to take one or more of the tours back into history - both the history of the people who have lived in this canyon, and the history of the earth. At least I did get to go - I wasn't supposed to because the tour only holds six people, but Natalie had had a relapse the day before and was afraid she might be infectious and was really too tired go anyway. So I got her spot. But on Friday, we  took what was my favorite hike to overlook the Fresco Canyon and the Flatirons in the Solitario. My header picture is from our view into the canyon.