Wednesday 19 March
Second day at Caverns of Sonora park, but we didn't go into the cave again. In the morning we took a day trip to Fort Lancaster and battlefield State Historic Site. It was about an hour west of where we were camped, and with such a strong wind out of the northwest that I had to clamp down on the steering wheel to keep the Jeep from getting blown to Mexico. Horrible windy day!
The fort was just a ruin and not a great one at that, although the exhibits in the visitor center were nicely set up. We gave Molly a walk in and around the ruins but with the 30-mph wind in our faces, we couldn't enjoy it in the slightest. Even the little sparrows, not all that shy of us, eluded me. I finally decided after much observation of he pictures that they must have been Vesper Sparrows, which was a new bird for me.
The camp (fort) seemed to be set in a huge bowl, where off in the distance in any direction all you could see was higher elevation desert ranges. And they were always too far away to present any sort of wind break at all. There weren't any significant trees for shade, either, although a river had once run through and it was very possible that a hundred years before there had been cottonwoods and other riparian plantlife.
In any event, it must have been a dry-as-dust existence for the poor soldiers. And there were never very many, just a few hundred as best I could tell. They were there to protect stagecoach traffic on the southern trail...I guess to El Paso. Other than card playing, drinking, and sitting out under the nightly star display, I can't imagine what they did for enjoyment.
From the overlook a couple of miles down the road from the fort:
The wind died down a little in the afternoon, giving Ed an easy chance to grill something. And I was able to give Molly a pretty long walk by going down the road that goes into the RV park.