Crash Landing, Thanksgiving Rush & Javelina Invasion!

So much has happened in the last few weeks that it is hard to know where to begin! First, I've got a mild case of shingles! Not only had I contracted the chicken pox as a child but I took medical advice and got my shingles vaccination 2 years ago. About a week before Thanksgiving I started having deep pain along my back and ribs and kept wondering what I had done that might have caused such painful bruising. (Without the black & blue.)

The night before Thanksgiving I started breaking out with the classic itchy, burning, purplish clusters of bumps and did some research on the Mayo Health site. Mayo says the vaccination only protects 49% of the population but I am extremely glad I had the vaccination as people who get shingles post-vaccination have much milder cases. Not feeling 100% quite yet - just tired and going to take a nap after I finish this! Just one of the joys of modern maturity! Okay, now I'll quit talking about the yukky stuff.

The week before Thanksgiving there was a lot of radio chatter regarding Incident Command, FAA out of Albuquerque, west side rangers responding, etc. Come to find out a former park ranger, Marcos Paredes, now retired, who flies a plane and gives sight seeing tours of the park had crash landed in the wilderness out past Terlingua Abajo. Fortunately neither he nor his 2 clients were injured and were able to walk out from the landing site. The park is now evaluating how the airplane can be extracted with minimal damage to park resources. It is cost-prohibitive for the pilot to hire a skycrane and motorized vehicles are normally not an option, so it will be interesting to see what plan is agreed upon.

Our little Cottonwood Campground filled up several days starting about a week before Thanksgiving when a group of outdoors women came into our side of the park for a couple of days before heading up to the Chisos Basin. Everyone was incredulous when I announced via radio one day at 1:30 p.m. that "Cottonwood Campground is FULL"! So much fun to do that - we are always the last place to fill up! The Saturday after Thanksgiving I was at a party for Jane Brown's 65 birthday and ran into the Chisos Basin hosts. We shared some good laughs about how most of those women drove Casitas and could not back them up without running over all kinds of things and making ruts where no ruts had ever been before, were mad at us because they could not run their vehicles to charge the house batteries, etc.

It was fun to be so full and busy over the holiday week. I was truly thankful that none of the campers tried to deep-fry a turkey and burn down the campground! Saturday morning, when all but 2 campers pulled out to return to civilization, jobs, etc. I came back to the campground and we had a herd of 19 javelina grazing!!!

19 Javelina!!

Hey, stop with that milk please!

Thank you, Mom.

An adult that appears to be saying, "Yuk, what did I just eat?"

In addition, I went on patrol of  Old Maverick Road with Steve & Tina:

Tina & Steve Ehrman

Historic trinkets aka "museum rock" made by visitors

Hiked the historic Dorgan Sublett area where families whose surnames were Dorgan and Sublett ran a farming operation here in the early 1900's:

On a day with good lighting I will go back and take photos of the beautiful fireplace hiding behind this wall. It is made with petrified wood from this area.

A view of the Santa Elena Canyon notch through the front window.

Burro Spring Exploration - Previously I had hiked the Burro Spring Overlook, but one day I went back to hike up to the spring. It is one of the places people in-the-know report seeing many signs of mountain lion. Unfortunately no sign of mountain lions for me that day! But it was still a fun hike:

I could only hear the plopping of leopard frogs which inhabit Big Bend's springs.

The large cottonwood trees which are the hallmark of desert springs.

Wasps congregating at the base of a willow tree at the spring.

One of at least 3 dozen scaled quail who kept fleeing as I hiked round the spring. On the hike out I noticed my footprints were almost obliterated by quail prints. They had circled back to peck at the sand where I had interrupted them earlier.

Creosote mistletoe.

Cane cholla

One of a jillion different prickly pear varieties here. (Of course, I exaggerate!)

Yesterday rain altered plans for a morning hike to the airplane crash site. Instead Raymond and I ventured into Terlingua for errands at the adventure shop, Desert Sports, a nice chat with owner, Mike, and a delicious brunch at the Starlight. A trip to Terlingua is always an adventure, but was so much more fun with Raymond who seems to know just about everyone in town. Terlingua is a little town of free-thinkers, artists, musicians, off-the-grid environmentalists, mountain bikers, river adventurers, & hikers with a few real characters, certified crazies and drinkers thrown in as "added spice". Kind of like many towns, but in a hard scrabble desert environment. :-) Raymond is interested in the history of this area and was worried that the former "Terlingua Mall" across from the Cottonwood store would be torn down one day without anyone having documented their wall of advertisements. So we took a bunch of photos of the wall and here are some of the notable ads. After several relaxing hours in Terlingua there was just enough daylight to hike out to the airplane crash site and back, so off we went.

Today Bob Douat and I hiked Horseshoe Canyon. It was so much fun to do a little 1-2 mile jaunt in another canyon known for retaining a lot of water and the associated creatures like mountain lion! Bob said the canyon did not have as much water as it had in all the past 10 years that he has hiked it, but still nice. Yes, we spent a lot of time watching up high on the canyon walls and behind us for any mountain lions sneaking up on us!

In the days to come are the park employees' Casa Grande Association's Christmas Auction (with all things made by and/or donated by park employees and volunteers) to benefit the association, the Dodson key exchange hike (a big hike not for the weak!), and various Christmas celebrations. Stay tuned!

Bobcats, Snakes & Birds Galore!

Nine days ago (November 1) I moved to Cottonwood Campground on the west side of Big Bend National Park. I had some excitement in my little world when I went to move my slide in. It would only move about 10" in then stop! The motorhome cannot be moved when the slide is out. Anyway, I had to enlist the help of two camper guys to come over and push while I operated the slide motor from inside. It went in reluctantly, then when I was safely parked in the RV area at Cottonwood and pressed the button the slide made a big bang, bang, bang noise and would not move out! Yikes! For some reason after it sat for a few moments and I had almost entirely resolved to live in a much smaller space, I pressed the slide button and it miraculously slid out. Whew - minor disaster averted!

There are 4 RV families that live here: Bob, Ted and Heather, me, and Tony. Bob and Ted staff the visitor center (Castolon) working opposite days from one another. Heather is a homemaker. And Tony and I work camphosting on opposite days. Everyone has pets, too. Bob has his doggie, Nudge. Tony has his doggie, Scooter. Ted and Heather have their big dog, Doug. And I have Tighe and Zuni.

We are lucky to have water way out here in the desert, but boy, is it yukky! As an example of how much iron and other minerals there are here, today I dropped a magnet from one of our bulletin boards and when I picked up the magnet I had to fight to get all the sand off it!!! The sand was sticking to the magnet!

Anyway, we all filter the non-potable water that we use in our RVs for dishwashing, showering, etc. to make it tolerable and to NOT ruin the inside piping with mineral deposits.  We get our drinking water from one of two reverse osmosis (RO) faucets - one RO at the campground and one at the paid staff housing area. And we still have to filter our drinking water to get out the bad taste. A couple of times I have accidentally swallowed some of the non-potable water and immediately regretted that mistake! I've heard that one volunteer could not work here because they got sick from bad water. So far we are all alive - ha!

So far the sewer works and the electrical service seems to be more reliable than in the Chisos Basin. Up there we sometimes had 3-4 power dips per day and here we've only had one dipsy-doodle day. I've heard tales of rodents coming into our motorhomes when the weather gets cold, so I've taken preemptive measures. Yes, don't reach into any hidden places on my RV or one of my peanut butter baited mouse traps will snap your fingers! I've also stuffed some steel wool into any tiny crevice that a mouse could squish itself through. (No, I am not relying on Tighe and Zuni to kill the mice. My last cats merely slept peacefully through the pack rat incursion in the Great Basin!)

Bob calls this side of the park his "Little Retirement Home" and I have to admit it is wondrously stress-free! Only 24 campsites, no reservations to worry about, and only one group site with reservations. I am told that we will fill up over the holidays and spring break, but this is nothing like the non-stop action in the Chisos Basin and Rio Grande campgrounds. Even though I am somewhat envious when I hear my backcountry friends on the radio calling in their adventures to dispatch, I love being "home" with the kitties most of the time. On my off days I can always ride along with my friends Terry and Dave who are the current backcountry volunteers.

Thanksgiving is just around the corner and many of the "retired" volunteers are coming to the park to visit!! This is so exciting because I will get to meet legendary former volunteers as well as visit with the folks who coached me when I first started volunteering! Yay!! Jane, our volunteer coordinator, changed the date of our VIP (Volunteer in Park) pot-luck dinner to November 17th so that all the annuitants can join us, too! Can't wait!

So Stephanie and Steve will know I still think of them, I want them to know that we now have campers nicknamed Crazy Dog, Yah-Man from Jamaica, and Dog Canyon KIAs (Know It Alls) among others. Your tradition lives on! Can you get away to join us here at Big Bend???

I am settling into the routine of slower camplife here and doing some hiking on my days off. I love to entertain so the other night all of us volunteers along with returning mountain backcountry volunteers, Tina & Steve, and our law enforcement (LE) supervisors, Blake, his wife Yvette, and new permanent LE Brian all had dinner at "our" place. Vegetarian lasagna, Italian sausages with peppers and onions, salad, ice cream and apricot bars - yum!  Best of all we just got to hang out and visit until the gnats drove us all home. :-(

Now for photos from the last few days here! Here goes:

Cottonwood Campground at Big Bend National Park - 24 sites, low stress!

Camp resident, Golden Fronted Woodpecker

One of our family of 5 or so Great Horned Owls. I was laughing today because they were honking instead of hooting!

Just showing off my camera's close-up. A flower from Tuff Canyon

Tuff is volcanic ash which forms thick, compressed layers exposed in several parts of the park. In this photo you can see where boulders used to be embedded in the tuff. The flowers and millipede are all from Tuff Canyon. That day was overcast and cool and I hiked Tuff Canyon, Mule Ears (and checked out both springs), Burro Mesa Pour Off and Burro Springs Overlook. Lucky us - both my cameras batteries died!

On Sunday, November 8th we had a group of high school seniors from San Antonio volunteering in the park. There was actually a much larger group but they split into groups to do other projects. Here is "our" group who helped us rehabilitate the Cottonwood amphitheater. Jane Brown, our volunteer coordinator is pictured fourth from the right of the back row. They scraped, sanded and repainted the wooden benches as well as the projection platform in the background. (It all looks fantastic now - this photo was before the rehab!) Next step is to begin to hold "ranger programs" with us volunteers as presenters! Whoo !hoo!

Today was the best day ever! Late in the day I decided to go hang a posting at the Santa Elena Canyon, 7 miles away from the campground. Imagine my surprise when I drove up on a mama bobcat with 3 not-so-little kittens taking a little stroll along the roadway! I call this "Herding Cats" because they were all over the place instead of just gathering up and posing for a family portrait. Ha!

Since I could not choose favorite photos, you get them all including a video near the end.

Cute little paw!

As I was driving back to the campground, elated from seeing the bobcats, but only going 25 mph the car straddled and ran over this Western Diamondback rattlesnake who was amazingly camouflaged on the roadway. So glad I didn't hit him! As I followed him into the mesquite he got a little perturbed and coiled, striking at the mesquite in his way. Way cool to see him lash out at the poor bush.

Meanwhile, back at the campground, these Inca Doves had been entertaining visitors all day and were now huddled up for a nap.

Ah, we've seen one like him before!