Damn! It was cold!
Okay--seriously chilly. In preparing for this trip, I'd reviewed the forecast. Saturday and Sunday would be hot but not extreme (highs around 85); then a cold front would come through and highs would be around 80 and lows around 65. Huh.
I'll have to double-check the actual low, but we knew it would be low enough to open all the windows and sleep with the air flowing through. But of course I had to leave my window shade down--stupid lights!
In packing, I'd brought home the lightweight hoodie from work and left the heavy one behind. I put in only one pair of long pants--lightweight cotton ones. Luckily I'd packed two pairs of socks.
So my morning attire was tee-shirt, hoodie, pants, socks and sports sandals. Walking the dogs up to the "comfort station" soon warmed me up. I suspect Americans are the most uptight people in the world about calling a loo by its name. In airports, they're simply labeled "Toilets" and I haven't seen a single person refusing to go--oh, the shame! The stigma! Going into the toilets! Our friend Greg refers to his travel trailer as his sh**ter.
Of course we have our own comfort station in the RV, but whenever it's convenient I prefer to use the park toilets. Plus it gives me a destination for my morning dog walk.
When we first arrived I was thrilled at the song of the orchard orioles, but by the third day it was getting to be the norm. Not an annoying norm like the cardinals or the Carolina chickadees back home, but a pleasant, ever-changing, ever noticing norm. A couple more days and I'd probably be ready for a change.
After a quick breakfast of poached egg with leftover beans--there are few better breakfasts than egg with beans, rice and soy sauce--we headed to the fishing hole. I decided not to fish at all but to aggressively watch birds instead. The day before, the wind appeared to have blown all the birds into their nests. But on Wednesday morning, I walked away from the pier with two dogs and a pair of binoculars, and I found the scrubby woods alive with little birds.
So alive that I had to run back to the pier to get my bird book. There was this odd little bird with a beak like a nuthatch's, but he was much more active, foraging up, down, sideways all along the pine branches. And he wasn't colored like a nuthatch at all--he had a dullish brown head, a fairly white but not pristinely white breast, and an odd white spot at the back of the head. From the book it was clear--brown-headed nuthatch in "tired" (post-breeding) plumage. I wish I'd taken a picture, even if it was just with the phone. Next time, picture!
I also saw three red-headed woodpeckers practically all at the same time. Their plumage is never tired!
What ate the bark off this dead tree?
Eventually Zack went back on the pier for a nap and Izzy and I walked in big circles through the unimproved campsites. We didn't see any more birds; when we returned, the nuthatch, plus the chickadees and titmice, were gone. I never got a good look at a peewee so I didn't record it. Or the chipping sparrows.
I believe that was the morning when we saw a doe with fawn at the side of the road. We'd been seeing the doe when we drove back and forth between the campsite and the fishing dock (it was three miles), but this time she had a tiny, baby fawn with spots on it--according to Ed; I was driving and didn't get a good look. On the trip back, suddenly he said, "Frog." A split-second later, "Snake." The frog was on the right side of the road; the snake was crossing left to right. He heard or felt the car and reversed course.
Was the snake after the frog? Probably--and probably we interrupted the course of nature by denying poor snakey a meal. He was a long, thin black one, fast-moving and quite lovely.
Departure time soon arrived. We left our campsite at 12:35-ish and circled the loop to get to the boat trailer parking lot, where there was plenty of room to hook up the car. This procedure took exactly 30 minutes. We then stopped at the park store for a bit and left at 1:42. Arrived home at 3:54. No stops other than traffic lights. Traffic was normal; lighter than it had been on Saturday, but always with us.
NOTES:
1. Get a camera with at least 40x optical zoom. When I went to ebird.com to report the brown-headed nuthatch, the web page said it was "rare" and suggested that I should document the finding with a picture. They were wrong, by the way. Yes, it's true my bird book which called them "common" is about 20 years out of date. But I looked at other sightings in the area and they've been reported often in the last few years. Still, I felt bad.
2. Fruit that is messy (mangoes; peaches) needs to be pre-cut at home. For the later days, take fruit that's easy to eat without special preparations (cherries, apples).
3. Make homemade frozen burritos for travel days. Try refried beans with potatoes, bell pepper and onion; pesto with spinach, dried tomato, bell pepper and mushroom. Make cilantro-jalapeno pesto from https://ohmyveggies.com/garden-veggie-freezer-burritos/
4. Always check the campsite length before reserving it.
5. No more 30-amp power when hot weather is forecast. I've already broken that rule by making a reservation in Arkansas for August, but never again.
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