Ugh . . . more 55 mph winds

Today was a great day to clean house, wash rugs & all the clothes. Especially since the wind had blown in dust since last night! Once again the wind gusts were 55 mph and steadily blew since about midnight last night. My counterparts, Mike and Nancy, were on an overnight hike and they were on my mind when the wind woke me up at 1:30 a.m. They did fine and I picked them up down at Tornillo Creek this afternoon. They said the winds were not as bad where they were hiking and they bedded down in a gravel area so they would not get too pelted with sand.

We still have a lot of people in the park but mostly in the front country campgrounds. One day recently Walt and I patrolled the RGV Nature Trail and were lucky enough to see Matt and Jorge lead the horses out on the same trail. There was a family with kids on the floating rafts used to cross the pond so it was a sight not normally seen by most visitors. The kids were thrilled that I had called them back to witness the officers lead their horses out the trail.

Another day I hiked to a family cemetery and removed 176 cairn that visitors built to mark the trail. I was careful removing rocks since critters often live under the rocks and I did find some interesting ones.

I almost forgot! A tank along Terlingua Ranch Road with about a foot of water, ducks and hawks hunting!

The common black hawks are back at their Daniel's Ranch nesting place.

Lizard on the nature trail walkway.

Jorge leading Apache along the floating walkway.

Matt leading Ringo.

This looks like fun, but it really was not - waiting for a tow truck along East River Road. These folks' truck had broken down and the guy (Jake) was cooking dinner for his mom. This was a 19 hour day for us - 10 of which were this visitor assist from which we got home at about 2:30 a.m.! The tow truck broke down and when they finally gave up it had taken us 4 hours to go 13.5 miles. We were 2 miles from pavement when the tow truck finally just quit. The driver had his wife pick him up and drive him back to Marathon to get a (hopefully) working tow truck. A long day!

Sunset the night of the visitor assist.

A spring in the middle of the desert. Ah!