It seems that Falcon State Park is one of the primary birding areas we go to many years. See Carol’s post Message in a Minute for her tale of a day of birding. We are not avid birders, I am a bit more interested than Carol, but I have never gone 50 miles out of my way because there was a special bird I just had to see. Well, not quite, before we found out where to see them easily, we chased the migratory Sandhill Cranes from a playa in Arizona to the middle of New Mexico, but we were going that way anyhow. We have also seen them in Alaska, but we were there anyhow. I have never counted up how many birds are on my Life List, but I can tell you when I see one to add. I don’t keep day lists or year lists and I cannot imagine going for a “Big year.” But I do love to see a broad variety of birds and be able to identify them. I think I will have to take our grandson Alex along birding, where there are no chickens to distract him. While in Israel with us, he picked up a local bird list and proceeded to memorize it and begin to identify every bird he saw. It made me jealous. Maybe I will invite him to share a “Big Year” with me, but no there are too many places Carol and I still want to go that are not birding places, not that there are places with no birds,  but there is so much else to see.

We stopped for the night in San Pedro Flats in Amistad NPS. We have driven by here many times usually after a night in the Wal Mart parking lot in Del Rio, a couple of miles east. After looking in Days End Directory I saw this NPS campground that charges $4/night, 50% discount for holders of the Senior Pass. Services are none, but the place is beautiful and quiet (or will be once I shut down my generator). And who can pass up a campsite for $2? We are trying to see different parts of south Texas as we make our crossing even though the highway is the same. We plan to stop in Terlingua outside the west entrance to Big Bend, I may have mentioned this in a prior post and then decided we wouldn’t because of the weather and now, I guess it just seems right. We have driven through but never stopped. We will see what we can find.

Even when we are in Rochester, where we lived most of our lives, we will put on our “this is a new place” hats and find things to see and do that we had not known about or had forgotten about. On the road we pick up brochures and we pick the brains of locals. We will go into the Chamber of Commerce or the Visitor’s Bureau and make friends with the person whose job it is to be friendly to find the good stuff. Sometimes it is just a matter of asking the campers in the next site what they have done/seen that was interesting. A glass of wine does wonders for opening the conversation.

We are in wander mode. We know where we will be in a week and in three weeks. Timing is forcing us to actually make plans so we can stay where we want to be. that means “schedule” which is an 8 letter word that is is almost as bad as 4 letter words in our life, like “work”.