Magnus Goes Caving, Finally! Day 10

Friday 21 March

 

 

Second day at Hord's Lake. Nothing much to report. 

 

I did a good bit of lonesome duck watching, seeing the Greater Yellowlegs and a bunch of Northern Shovelers.

 

 

And while I was sitting on a rock looking at the water, what did I see on a rock on the ground in front of me but a Scissor-tailed flycatcher!  First of the year.

 

 

 

 

But nothing else interesting comes to mind...Ed and I took a long walk along the roads but it was kind of boring and birdless. Oh, well...it's still camping which is better than working.

I amused myself by seeking out flowers in the grass. Not many of them, but lovely.

Good-night!

Magnus Goes Caving, Finally! Day 9

Thursday 20 March

Again a short drive, this one to Hords Creek Lake Campground.  It's a COE park I discovered when trying to find a route home that took us in from the west instead of on I-35. I-35 is an okay route these days, but the western route hits less traffic. Usually.

Anyway the day's drive was very ordinary and the park was very nice.  It was about an hour south of Abilene, I think.  The lake was very low--all the boat docks were dry--but it had enough water to support a lovely, small contingent of ducks, coots, cormorants and a few pelicans.

White Pelican

Ruddy Duck with his head turned back, grooming

Greater Yellowlegs

On the first day I identified Ruddy Duck and I think that was about it.

COE parks are often very nice, especially out of the summer season. This one was huge even though the lake it surrounded was very. very small--in about two hours I could have walked all the way around it.  But the park had at least six camping loops.  There were two entrances, too, but one was closed down. It's clear that a lot of money had been spent on this place some time back, but it seemed awfully wasted at the present.

Molly and I went for a long walk along the roads. One thing COE parks lack are trails, real trails--that's one point in favor of state parks. I only remember having ever hiked three trails in COE parks--the park at Canyon Lake we went to at the start of this trip; Cedar Ridge Turkey Roost Area; and Dana Peak park.  But most of them, like this one, the best we can do is take long walks along the road or along the lake edges.

Magnus Goes Caving, Finally! Day 8

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.

 

Magnus Goes Caving, Finally! Day 7

 Tuesday 18 March

And we were off for our 1-1/2 hour drive to Caverns of Sonora RV Park.  It was hard to make ourselves delay so as not to get there too early, but it turned out to be a very low-key, easygoing place. The check-in process involved filling out information on a tiny form and running a credit card through for $25/night. Then they told us to go pick any site.

That proved to be slightly difficult, because the little gravel area they had cleared with water and electric hookups was mostly empty. I think there were only two or three other campers there while we were there, and there were about 25 or 30 sites available. But the best one--the one we chose--was just a little two short and "tight" for us to get into without a great deal of backing and fronting and just not worth the effort. Plus there was a tree branch over it.

So we chose one of the easier access, sunny spots and were soon done. There was any sewer hookup, probably because the whole thing was located right over the cave system. There were probably sewer hookups for the permanent residents and the little store, but I can't imagine them wanting to overload the groundwater and risk polluting the cave.

 Bought these at the store while waiting for the cave tour.

Quartz crystals

Bumpy things in the cave

Lots of hangy things in the cave

We were there for two nights, but we arrived in plenty of time to go ahead a do an afternoon cave tour. It took about 1-1/2 hours. Great cave. Just absolutely great. All full of quartz crystals and just tons of growing formations of soda straws and fins (forget the term) and columns and just about everything except the huge chunks of "flowstone" I've seen in other caves.  So cool.

The tour guide was great, too. He was a young guy and I don't think he'd been working there more than a year or two, but he'd taken ownership of "our cave" in a way that made him as happy to show it off as a father with a new-born baby.

That about it. Walking Molly was a little challenging because there was nowhere especial to go except round and round the camping area. But not bad.  Lot's of purple martins and swallows that were having to share their ceramic "gourd" housing unit with house sparrows and starlings. A shame.  A vermilion flycatcher lived in the campground and the eternal mockingbirds and Bewick's wrens.

 

Magnus Goes Caving, Finally! Day 6

Monday 17 March

Last day at S Llano River State Park

We took another walk through the turkey roost area in the morning, where we fulfilled a long-held desire of Ed's to see a porcupine alive in the wild. We saw the first one down on the river trail, high up in a tree crooked in an intersection of big branches. He was curled up in a ball and snoozing away, and all of our looking and walking about and wondering didn't budge him. But we got a good enough look at the ball of fur and the tail to know what it had to be. It seemed huge!

 

And then we went away from the river walking through a rather boring trail that started behind Lara's Blind, and back in there we saw another one. Wow.

After that I headed by myself to a couple of the blinds and spent a good bit of happy time there.  And that's about it for South Llano River State Park. Great place.

American Robin

Bewick's Wren

Black-throated Sparrow

Our resident camp Desert Towhee pair

Fox Sparrow

Hermit Thrush

Hummingbird but as usual, I can't tell if it's Ruby-throated or Black-throated

Inca dove

Ladder-backed Woodpecker

(another) Lesser Goldfinch

Vermilion Flycatcher picture taken with my phone

Western Scrub Jay