2016 - A New Year!

This last month has been eventful and bittersweet with our Volunteer Coordinator, Jane Brown, turning 65 and retiring to take care of family business in North Carolina. We had a lovely birthday party for Jane, enjoyed a holiday auction to benefit the Casa Grande Association (park employee group), Casa Grande Holiday Social, a volunteer holiday pot-luck, a Castolon VIP holiday social and New Year's Eve blowout at Tina and Steve's house, and other frivolity. Just yesterday Joan Spalding and I went to a Black-Eyed Pea-Cook Off (Commonly called the Pea-Off. Hey, any excuse for a party!) to benefit the local theater group.

My coworker, Anthony (Tony) Branch left the day after Christmas to go see his family before continuing his travels. Susan and Lewis McCool have come to fill-in as camphosts. How much fun to have them join our merry band! I had never met them but they live a short distance from Alyssa just north of Cortez and have spent much of their retirement years doing various volunteer jobs and working at Mesa Verde. Talking to them I have an idea of what I am going to do next year - hopefully volunteer as camphost in the Washington, D. C. area. From that location I can immerse myself in all the monuments, museums and culture of the capitol.

Heather & Ted, Steve and Tina, Tony, Amy & Bob Merry Christmas! Also present, but not pictured were Jason from Maintenance and Brad from Forever Resorts Castolon store.

A campground roadrunner catching a few of the sun's warming rays.

December 17, 2015 - VIP Mesa De Anguila Hike with John & Elaine Yonker, Joan Spalding, me, Mark Schuler, Terry Brackeen and ??? 

Glen Accardo & Jose Palacios, backpackers who found and turned in my camera!

Things were slow at the Chisos Basin visitor center and I was shooed out to take a hike. This was one of  my little hiking buddies, a black crested titmouse.

A deer, of course. Other hikers came to the visitor center after the hike to tell me I had just missed a black bear and her two cubs! I had heard something rustling around in the brush but didn't stay quite long enough to meet the family!

Prickly Pear

Sunday, December 27, 2015 - we woke to nearly 3" of snow in the Cottonwood Campground!

A red-tailed hawk baffled by this weird event!

Cerro Castolon with Mule Ears in the background shrouded in snow.

A peak of sun for a few moments in the late afternoon

Tony had been plagued with a rodent making a nest in the engine compartment of his Jeep. The danged thing even chewed through a wire on the wiring harness - NOT GOOD! This little guy was out at Tony's campsite looking for the Jeep the day after Tony left. LOL

December 30, 2015 - Joan and Bob puzzling over a plant none of us had seen before. We enjoyed a hike down the old River Road and some archeological sites. We even met the family of people who had lived and worked in this area for the park service in the early 1900's. Joan will be researching the archives to see if she can find a photograph of their old home.

Graveyard. The ground is so rocky & cannot be dug, so bodies are buried on the surface with rock piles protecting the body "so critters don't scatter gramma's bones" (one of Bob's favorite phrases!)

Always lots of interesting rocks (in this case we believe it is Jasper), many of which were quarried and made into tools, arrowheads, beads, etc. by native peoples.

No, not rocks! I had not seen this shape of scat before so I had to take a photo. I spared everyone the close-ups!

Part of a snake skeleton scattered about.

Last, but not least, the LOST is FOUND! This valuable piece of scientific equipment was in Joan's backpack, but as we were hiking was snatched by this mesquite tree as she passed under it. What horror when she discovered it was missing! Fortunately Bob had laid a track on his GPS and was able to retrace her steps and find it hanging in the tree. Yippee!