Blowin' in the Wind

Time to move again.  This time we are advancing north and west to Albuquerque.

Today the wind is not so favorable.  It is coming straight out of the west and it is not a gentle breeze.  We'll have about three hours of cross wind and 1 hour of dead-on head wind.  So much for enjoying tail wind assisted fuel mileage.

Alb. is a necessary stop for us on our way to the Grand Canyon.  We have a number of repairs that need to be done and Alb. has the service companies to do it.  We have appointments for the water heater, refrigerator and the infuriating satellite dish.  We have paid for a week at the Isleta Lakes RV Park but I have my doubts that will be long enough.  If anybody has to order parts there is no telling how long it will take.

For the sat. dish we could not get a mobile repair service.  We have to pack up, hitch up and tow the trailer about eight miles to the RV repair shop that has a Winegard certified technician.  After a restless night of high wind and multiple trains passing by only a few feet away we got up and started going through the routine for moving the rig.  We got in as soon as their doors opened and left our home and everything we own in front of a garage whose door was at least two feet too short for our rig to go through.  The technician was going to have to do his thing out in the open.  Good thing the wind was relatively calm this morning.  We pulled out of the driveway trying to figure out what to do for the next six or seven hours.  Whether they got it fixed or not, we were coming back to pick up the trailer and take it to the campground for the night.

The air was laden with dirt from the previous night's howling winds.  Neither of us was particularly interested in doing something outdoors so we looked up the nearest mall and went to see how much time we could kill window shopping.  The nearest mall was almost 30 miles away but we extended that distance by driving by things that looked interesting along the way.  Still, it was a long day trying to stay occupied until we were called to come pick up the rig.

The call came but the news was not what I wanted to hear.  They were simply going to repeat replacing components that had already been replaced, TWICE.  I pushed back, using a favorite idiom; doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results is the definition of insane.  The technician agreed and gave Winegard another call.  They gave him a couple more things to try, one of which was to get under the turret and disconnect/reconnect three plugs that are there.  When he got everything buttoned back up I turned on the control box and, BINGO, the sat came to life!  While that was pretty encouraging I was not ready to declare victory.  Over the next half hour we stowed and deployed the dish three times.  It worked flawlessly each time.  By this time it was getting late and we hitched up to take the camper to the RV park.

Normally, the sat. dish is one of the last things in a pretty long list of things to hook up when parking.  But tonight this is one of the first things I did after leveling the rig.  It fired up perfectly and started seeking satellites, then suddenly the display starts flashing "no communication with antenna".  Crap, here we go again.  But, even though the control box was displaying the fault message I could hear the dish still moving and aligning with the satellites.  In just a couple minutes I had a perfect signal and a couple hundred channels on the TV.  I called the RV repair shop and caught them just before they went home for the day and gave them the news.  Winegard is on central time (we're on mountain time) it is too late to get with them today so they will get on the phone first thing in the morning.

At least we proved that the dish is not dead, it seems to be narrowed down to the connectors under the turret that communicate with the control box.  I won't have to wait on them to ship me a fourth satellite dish.  Well, maybe.  We'll see tomorrow.

Grocery Run with a Surprise

Like living in a sticks and bricks, us fulltimers still have routine chores that have to be done.  One of them is grocery shopping.  The big difference is that we usually have to find a store because the last one we used is too far away to return to.  It is an adventure even to buy groceries.

We consulted with some of our fellow Escapees members here at The Ranch and they all recommended that we go to Artesia instead of Carlsbad.  Their reason was two-fold; it was six miles closer and Henry's Barbecue.

So we drove the fourteen miles to Artesia instead of the twenty to Carlsbad.  And being conscientious shoppers we never go to the store hungry so we stopped at Henry's and enjoyed some really good brisket and sausage.

But the surprise I wrote in the title was not the good BBQ.  It was a display of sculptures scattered out over the length of Main Street.  Great big bronzes paying homage to early settlers, cattlemen and oilmen.

There were two of these cowboys trying to get a stampede under control.  The other one was across the intersection with three longhorns giving him grief.

She was more than a school teacher.  She was also a pioneer woman.

 Oil is a big deal in the southeast corner of New Mexico and their recognition of it in sculpture is prominent in Artesia.  The rig sculpture, as well as all the sculptures are based on real people from the area.  This sculpture represents the Illinois #3, drilled in 1924.  They hit a pay zone now known as the oil sands.

Scattered around the rig are sculptures of locals that played a prominent role in building this part of New Mexico.


The woman in the middle is the daughter of the man on the right.  The story goes that she pointed to a spot on the ground and said; "This is the place, drill right here."  It turned out to be a gusher.

The rig floor replete with roughnecks is showing a lot of action.  This pose is depicting the making of a connection. 

The driller is watching his floor hands closely.  When the chain is just right his left hand will yank on the lever that will pull the chain that will spin the pipe that will cause it to screw into another section of drill pipe.  If everything works just right the floor hand will not loose any fingers.

The Chain-Chunker on the left is throwing a loop around a new section of drill pipe while the Back-Ups reaches for the tongs.

Land owners, ranchers and wildcatters.
Two local celebrities discussing the day's progress in drilling.

The trip to Artesia turned out to be more of a gem than expected.  Sometimes unexpected pleasures are the best.

Next Stop, Carlsbad, NM

We are really enjoying Fort Davis but our time here has come to an end all to soon.  We are on our way to the next leg of our return engagement to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, Carlsbad, NM.  Actually, the exact place is Lakewood, NM, you would not even call it a wide spot in the road.  The only thing that identifies it as a town is the Post Office which is a single-wide trailer on a dirt lot.  The only permanent fixture is the flagpole that is cemented into the ground.  But about a mile away is "The Ranch", an RV park that is one of the private campgrounds in the Escapees organization that we belong to.

Even though we are several hundred miles north of our winter post in Big Bend, this is still the Chihuahuan Desert.  SKP's The Ranch is midway between Carlsbad and Artesia, NM.

The Ranch is what is called a Co-Op.  Escapees owns the property but they let long term leases to individual lots.  The lease holders build pads for their RVs, outbuildings such as mini-barns and sheds and landscaping.  Most folks will live at the campground year 'round and others will pop in for a few weeks to a few months a year.  But in their absence Escapees will rent their lots to campers passing through like us.  We got lucky and were coming through just when they were having a "special", $50 for a whole week.  You better believe we were all over that.

Knowing that we would be at The Ranch long before leaving Fort Davis we contacted Escapees Mail Service and had them send our mail to General Delivery at the tiny trailer Post Office of Lakewood.  We should be able to pick it up a couple days after arriving.

Wind has been a dominant influence on everything for days and on our moving day it still is.  But for the first time I can ever remember it was going to work in my favor.  We are going to be going due north for our entire trip and the wind is coming out of the due south.  Even with 22,000 pounds of trailer connected to 9,000 pounds of truck I finished out the day at 12.4 mpg.  That is a huge change from my normal 8.8 mpg when towing.

Neither of us have been one to enjoy wind.  We grew up in the Texas Panhandle and wind is your constant companion.  It is a factor that has to be worked in to your everyday life.  But mostly it was just wearisome.  Enjoying the wind's assistance in moving us down the road is a huge departure for us.  But it went right back to being wearisome as soon as we stopped and got set up at The Ranch.  And sadly the wind speed only increased with each passing day.

But never mind that, we had tourist stuff to do.  Carlsbad Caverns is calling our names.  Cyndee has never been to the caves and John was last there in 1964.  The caves have not changed much in 50 years but then, geologically speaking, that is a miniscule fraction of time.  Short of some major catastrophe there just has not been enough time for anything to change.  However, how the Park Service presents the caves to the public has changed a lot.  The lighting is all different and in the process of being changed again to LED lights as I write.  Gone are the colored lights, no more blue, red and green rock formations.  Everything is strategically lit with either cool white fluorescent or warm white halogen.

Something else that has changed is the visitor center.  It is much bigger now and the interpretive sections are really well done.  If you go, give yourself an extra hour or two just to take in the visitor center on the surface.  It would be worth your time.  The snack bar 750 feet below the surface is still in operation but is just barely a shadow of its former, 1964 self.  But that is okay, it was always a little too "institutional" for me.  The cafeteria style restaurant in the visitor center is way better and surprisingly affordable.

And of course, Cyndee's favorite, the gift shop was good to.  It ranged from kitschy little trinkets all the way up to obscenely expensive pottery and turquois jewelry.  Which, by the way, Cyndee found the perfect necklace to go with the earrings she found in Sedona, AZ.

There are self-guided tours and there are Ranger-lead guided tours.  Some of the guided tours are pretty intense requiring the use of headlamps and getting on your belly to squeeze through tiny spaces.  Spaces narrower than John's shoulders are wide.  We won't be doing one of those tours.  But the King's Palace tour can be done standing up and is well lit.  That is the tour we will take.

King's Palace

The Queen's Chamber on the King's Palace tour.

It took a couple of hours for the guided tour and it ends at an intersection in the subterranean trail system of the guided and self-guided pathways.  From here one has the option to return to the surface or take the self-guided tour.  We opted to continue on to the "Big Room".  And big it was, the trail that made a loop through the big room was over a mile long.  There were interpretive boards along the trail describing how many football fields would fit end to end or how many 747 jumbo jets could be stacked in this single chamber.

Looking across a 90' deep shaft to a structure known as The Totem Pole.

I'll let you write your own caption for this one.



 Driving in from Lakewood, taking in the Visitor Center and spending almost six hours underground we had used up almost all the hours that the caverns were open for the day.  We hiked over to the natural entrance of the cave to see about entering the cave that way and then walking through the big room again to the elevators.  But when we got to entrance there were rangers there stopping people from entering because it was too late.  However we did get to approach the entrance to see the bat flight amphitheater and walking path into the natural entrance.

Bat flight amphitheater at the natural entrance to Carlsbad Caverns.

The relatively new paved walkway into the natural entrance.

Another thing that Carlsbad Caverns is famous for is its nightly rise of the bats.  They number in the hundreds of thousands and from a distance appear as a plume of smoke pouring from the ground.  But the bat flight is seasonal.  The Mexican Free Tails are migratory and move south to Mexico and South America during the winter.  Here at the end of April we are just a few weeks early for the return of the bats.  Winter seems to keep hanging on and the bats are keeping to the warmer climes for now.  We have to be a long ways from here for the summer and by the time we head back this way in the fall the bats will have already headed south.  Maybe we can get the timing to work out in 2015.

This evening, on our way back to the camper we are going to enjoy some dining fare that the town of Carlsbad has to offer.  Carlsbad is big enough that they have many of the big chain restaurants like Chili's, Applebees and Red Lobster.  But we will be taking in a local place.  We are going to look for one that has a lot of pickups parked in front of it.  Always a good sign in these parts.

Serious Star Gazing

Another attraction of Fort Davis is its close proximity to the McDonald Observatory.  This is a full-on research facility with multiple telescopes, large and small with a great public program.  We decided to take in both their day and night programs.

The day program is a solar viewing and tour of a couple of the more impressive telescopes.  Cyndee and I headed out for the 15 mile drive from Fort Davis to the mountain top where the observatory is.  Its a really nice drive and would be worth doing even if there were no telescopes at the end.  The visitors center was a nice facility although many of the interactive displays were in need of attention or outright overhauling.

McDonald Observatory visitor center atop Mt. Locke.

A barn swallow thought the visitor center was a good nesting place.  She is literally raising her clutch at the front door to visitor center.

Pronghorns on the foothills to Mt. Locke.

 The solar viewing occurs in a small auditorium at the visitor center but then it is a ride in a van to the peak where we start the tour outside the dome to the 107" telescope.  In the panorama below the dome to a 12" telescope can be seen as we look out across the Davis Mountains.  I never did understand why they put a telescope on the side of a mountain, below the foundation of another telescope.  Its view of the sky is really limited.

View of Davis Mountains from Locke Peak and the parking lot of the Harlan J. Smith Telescope.

Inside the structure for the 107" telescope we climb up three landings of stairs and enter the dome where the telescope resides.  It is cold in the dome, they keep the climate control system operating at the predicted temperature and humidity that is expected at the time they will open the dome for the night.  Tonight, when the sun is well below the horizon, it is expected to be 55 deg.  So that is what it is in the dome right now.  When the door opens there will be no fogging of the mirror or warping of the giant metal housing holding the mirror due to thermal shock.

Glad I wore long sleeves and a vest.  Chillers were keeping the inside of the dome at 55 deg in anticipation of that being the temperature when they open the dome on this night.

Our tour guide, Rachel, did a great job keeping the tour interesting and moving along.

The star of this part of the show is the Harlan J. Smith Telescope, a single-piece mirror 107" in diameter and over 12.5" thick, made of fused silica.  The above photos have only provided a glimpse at the giant looking glass.  Below is a little more comprehensive view.

Harlan J. Smith 107" diameter telescope.

The Harlan J. Smith is built old-school, using a single mirror and enclosed tube.  It makes for a fine instrument but it also makes it incredibly heavy and expensive.  That big hunk of iron hanging off to the side of the telescope is a counterweight.  Total tons for this bad boy - 160.  The dome housing the telescope is another 435 tons.

Just for fun, our tour guide changed the position of the telescope and rotated the dome, but never opened it (couldn't until the temp outside equaled the temp inside).  The impressive part of this, outside standing under nearly 600 tons of moving mass, was that the 160 ton telescope was being moved by a motor rated at less than one horsepower.  I guess they got that counterweight balanced just right.

Our next stop on the tour is about a three quarter mile ride to Fowlkes peak and the Hobby-Eberly Telescope.  One of the largest telescopes in the world.  This one is a 433 inch diameter.  That's a whopper in the telescope world.  And this one was built new-school.  The mirror is segmented, 91 hexagonal shapes and no enclosed tube.  It was built for a fraction of the cost of an old-style, single mirror, enclosed tube telescope one fourth the size.

Hobby-Eberly Telescope.
The big nub sticking up is a laser alignment device that keeps all 91 hexagonal mirrors properly focused.

The day we were at the H-E-T it was in the middle of an upgrade.  Many of the mirror segments were out for refinishing and the collector at the top of the scope was being completely replaced.  Hence the big blue tarp hanging above the mirrors to catch a dropped tool.

As cool as the daytime tour was we were anticipating our night program.  This time of year it only happens a couple nights a week.  We watched the weather forecast for a few days and chose the Tuesday night program.  That night was predicted to be the clearest of all the nights we were going to be around.  However, it was also predicted to be windy and cold.  We would have to layer up.  Another detractor, at least for a star party, is that we are going to be under a full moon that will rise just as the program starts.

 

Looking west from the visitor center entrance.  When the sun goes down the red exterior lights come up.

Looking east, up the pathway to the amphitheater.  The glow of a full moon about to rise is beginning to show.

Hard to tell but this is the amphitheater.  Red lights are at the end of each row of benches.

I cranked up the light sensitivity of my camera's chip to the max and tried to grab some shots.  It is impossible to tell from the above amphitheater shot but there are about 150 people sitting there.  It is cold and the wind is blowing and a lot of the guests didn't head the advisories to dress warmly.  Even with all the layers we put on it is not enough to keep the wind from cutting through.  I predict some early departures.

As our guide was giving us a tour of the sky, using the most awesome laser pointer I have ever seen, you could hear shuffles and see shadows of people beating a retreat to their cars.  If there had been enough light I am sure we would have seen lots of blue skin.  We started getting snotcicles but we stuck it out so we could get access to the more than half-dozen telescopes.  Each pointed at a different object in the sky.

Even thought the moon has yet summited the horizon, its light is already cloaking all but the brightest stars.
Just barely visible is the constellation Orion.

Normally the moon is welcomed and romantic and all that stuff.  But not tonight, tonight it is the spoiler.
So bright it was, I took this shot hand-held.

It was great.  We made our way around to each telescope and looked to see what it had to offer.  For me the highlight of the evening was looking at Jupiter and four of its moons.  It was so cool, there was about a third of the planet in view and then four bright white dots in a perfect line against a backdrop of ink black space.

By the time we sat through the sky tour and made a stop at all the telescopes we were as frozen as the popsicles that left early.  We had hot chocolate we were going to get into when we got back to the rig.

Off to Fort Davis, Tx

After being in one place for five months at Big Bend, the week in Midland-Odessa went by in a flash.  We're hitching up and heading for Fort Davis, Tx.  This will take us back to the mountains just north of where we spent the winter.  It is still part of the Chihuahuan desert but you wouldn't know it if the map didn't tell you so.  The variety of desert plants is a fraction of that in the Big Bend and vast fields of creosote bush, cactus and yucca are replaced by grass, cottonwoods, oaks, cedar and juniper.

Even though this is still the Chihuahuan desert, it stands in stark contrast to its southern regions.
This is ranch country.  Grass covers the ground and wildlife and domestic animals abound.

But not all the cactus have been replaced by grass and trees.  On a hike at the top of skyline drive of Davis Mountains State Park we came across this claret cup.

Our living accommodations have returned to, shall we say, "rustic" conditions.  We are on a dirt strip behind a motel on the outskirts of the town of Fort Davis, at the Fort Davis Inn and RV Park.  But our power is good and the WiFi connection is solid.  We are getting almost full use of the bandwidth available because there is hardly anyone else here to use it.  And that works for us because there is no over the air TV signal, we are streaming news and weather.  The motel is absolutely empty during the day and we see maybe four rooms occupied at night.   We share the campground with only two other rigs.  But this is not unusual for the time of year we are here.  We are between all major holidays and school being out for the summer.  This is definitely the off-season for the area.  But everything is open and we are taking it all in.  The folks running the businesses in town are relaxed and open to conversation and attractions like the historic fort and state park are uncrowded. 

Our first order of business after arriving and getting hooked up was to find something to eat.  Indian Lodge of Davis Mountains State Park is only about five miles away so we headed in that direction with the intent of quieting our growling stomachs and meeting the volunteer coordinator for the state park.

Indian Lodge, Davis Mountains State Park

Of all things, we have both been craving a grilled cheese sandwich.  Lucky for us that is a featured item on the menu at Indian Lodge.  After wolfing down that buttery, gooey concoction straight from heaven we headed out to the park to find the volunteer coordinator.  Not finding her in the interpretive center we drove around for awhile.  The top of skyline drive offered some nice views.

Davis Mountains.

Never did find the volunteer coordinator in the whole week we looked for her.  But we did come away with a name, phone # and email.  We'll have to see about a volunteer position here via electronic means.

Within two minutes of where the rig is parked is the Fort Davis National Historic Site.  This is a fort from the days of early settlement of the west.  It was one of several built along the migration trail from San Antonio to El Paso.  The National Park Service has done a nice job of rehabilitating many of the buildings that were nearly lost to time.

Looking across the parade grounds to the officers quarters.  The foundation in the foreground is a yet unrestored enlisted men's barracks.

Another view of the officer's quarters, this time from the porch of the hospital.

With it being April and there not having been any rain since December, the vegetation is holding back on doing its spring greening.  Maybe next month.  But the park service is out and active.  We met the volunteer coordinator, nice guy.  He was enthusiastic about getting volunteers and we had to admit that the thought of wearing period costumes, giving interpretive programs and being able to literally walk across the street to buy groceries is appealing.  We may have us a place to apply to when we finish up our commitments that run us out through May of 2015.

The history of this park is from the time of the Indian Wars.  Its first life, the fort was a rag-tag facility coming to be in 1854 and then abandoned at the onset of the Civil War.  Then, at the close of the Civil War, re-commissioned.  This time far more resources were dedicated to the fort and more than a hundred buildings were constructed and troop strength peaking at 400 enlisted men plus all the officers and their families.

Quartermaster's Wagon.

Every soldier got his supply of rations.  With troop numbers being this large in such a remote area it was a major undertaking keeping supply lines working.  Many things, like bread, had to be made onsite. The Quartermaster operated a bakery that was pumping out 500 loaves a day.  The Quartermaster was crucial to the function of this remote outpost.  So much so that he had his own, separate stable with almost as many horses and many times more wagons than the troops.

Plenty of restoration work left to do.

Just down the road from the fort is the center of the community of Fort Davis.  It is a typical 19th century community with a town square occupied by the seat of government and businesses and hotels built around the turn of the century.  One of the hotels, the Old Texas Inn, is as it was when it was built, rough-hewn lumber exterior, creaky wood floors, mercantile downstairs, hotel rooms upstairs.

Fort Davis Drug Store, replete with fully functional soda fountain.

We could not pass up the opportunity to eat at the drugstore so we skipped eating earlier in the day and held off until after being tourists.  Then it was all bets off and go for whatever they claimed they were famous for.  It turns out that their double open-faced chili cheeseburger was the must have menu item.

Fort Davis Drug Store Specialty: Open faced double cheeseburger.

Ooohh-wheee, that cheeseburger was the real deal, it was gone way too soon.  But not having eaten like this for a long time, my stomach got a little blindsided and the whole thing sat there for a couple days.  I never got hungry in that time but there must have been lots of salt in everything because I sure was thirsty.

Getting Stuff Done.

While in the big city we planned on taking advantage of services that have been out of our reach for the last five months, like a dry cleaner.  Our bedspread and pillow shams are dry clean only and after five months in the desert they are more than ready for cleaning.

We drove around trying to find a dry cleaner, thinking we could get our laundry done in a couple of days.  Not so.  Every dry cleaner we went to wanted one to three weeks to do the job.  Oh well, next try, Albuquerque.

For a long time an air museum known as the Confederate Air Force has had one of the most extensive, flying WW II aircraft collection in the world and they were based out of Harlingen, Tx.  But with Harlingen being on the Gulf Coast they were having problems with corrosion.  They pulled up stakes and moved the whole operation inland to a part of the desert known as Midland.  The CAF(now known as Commemorative Air Force) has built an impressive museum at the Midland International Airport.  There is a hangar nearby that can be visited as part of the museum tour.  There is one static exhibit but you never know what other planes may be in the hangar.  Some are there between air shows, some are in for renovation.  You just have to go and see what you get.

Cyndee was not really into the air museum so John did this one on his own.  An early arrival saw me with the museum all to myself.  I roamed around for over an hour before I saw another person.  The amount of material to read was intense and their displays of era material was top notch.  They also had the worlds largest collection of nose art.  They actually cut the art-bearing section of the bombers and fighters off the planes and built displays to hold the sections along with interesting narratives about each piece of art.  Photographing any of this neat stuff was strictly forbidden.

But photos could be taken in the hangar.  I got a couple nice shots of some birds not out doing an air show.

How did that civilian airplane get in there?

The CAF has fighters and bombers and today the only bomber in the hanger is the C-47, although this one is outfitted as a troop transport.

This old bird was painted as it would have been while in service during WW II.  There was no information on the nose art, not sure if it is from the plane's past or something to do with its current station.

Midland is also home to a couple of bastions of higher learning.  One of these, Midland College has a Guest Lecturer series and lucky for me (John) they are having one of my favorite physicists, Michio Kaku.  And even better, its free, all you have to do is show up.

Michio Kaku.
If you watch PBS, Discovery Channel or National Geographic Channel you may recognize this face.

  Cyndee, thinking this was going to be a lecture on astrophysics, decided to pass on this too.  And rightly so as Dr. Kaku is one of the most preeminent physicists living today.  After all, he is one of the co-founders of string theory, home to strange behaviors and multi-verses.  But the lecture was more a promotion for his new book about the future of the mind and delivered in terms that the 1000+ people at the lecture could enjoy and appreciate.  Can't believe I had to come to the middle of the oil patch to see a guy that is more often known to be plying the halls of Ivey League institutions.

Civilization!

It is our first week of being out of the wilderness in the last 5 months.  Sure, we have had day trips for groceries but that is such a rush you don't get to take in much other than the grocery shopping you came for.  But here we are in Midland, TX in a crowded commercial RV park just off I-20. 

Texas is in the boom-phase of the boom-bust cycle of the oil field.  And Midland-Odessa is a hot bed of anything oil.  Many,,, most of our neighbors in this RV park are here for work.  They have been in the park for months and may be here for years, however long the work lasts.  Having grown up in an oil town and living through the biggest of booms and the deepest busts, I know these people and feel right at home among them.

Midland RV Park is typical for the area, flat, dusty and featureless.  There are no picnic tables.  No real space between rigs so no putting out chairs and sitting outside.  But then again you would not want to, the wind ranges from uncomfortable to vicious.  On the plus side the electricity is good and does not go out several times a day like it did in Big Bend.  The WiFi is outstanding, best broadband connection we have ever had.  The local over-the-air TV signal is good too, and since our satellite dish crapped out on us AGAIN, that is a good thing.

We had hoped that Winegard (maker of the satellite dish) would have a certified technician in the area but no such luck.  We'll have to wait until we get to Albuquerque.  However, Whirlpool does have repair service so we will see if they can figure out why our convection oven won't cook food without doubling the time.

In the meantime we are having a field day with eating out.  We've had great Mexican food and were lucky enough to be there on a day that had a 5 in it.  Margaritas for fifty cents!  They extended Cinco de Mayo to three times a month.  Outback was a nice departure from our normal eating routine too.  That big ol' grease ball they call a bloomin' onion was awesome.

Last Hoorah at Big Bend

We have completed our last day in the Chisos Basin Visitor Center and packing up in preparation for our trip to a return engagement at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon.  But before we go there are sights to see.

Now that we are at the end of March and with the plentiful rains of October, November and the first half of December, the flowering plants have stored up enough water to put on a spring bloom.  The Torrey Yuccas were first to show and for awhile, the only thing to bloom.  But soon the creosote bush began to show their tiny yellow flowers and several of the hundred different kinds of little yellow desert flowers were carpeting the desert floor.  But now, on our last couple of days before departure, the cacti are the stars of the show.

First up, the blind prickly pear:

The blind prickly pear got its name because you can not see the spines on its paddles, but they are definitely there.

 

The flowers on the blind prickly pear are all yellow with a green stamen.

These flowers are loaded with pollen, large pollen.  This pollen is large like on a pine tree and is too big to be an allergen.

 Next up is a purple prickly pear:

At first glance this looks a lot like the blind prickly pear, except that this one has huge spines, and there is a tinge of red at the base of the flowers.

 

That tinge of red on the outside of the flower is from the brilliant red on the inside of the flower.



Hard to believe such a delicate flower comes from such a wickedly spined plant.

 The Ocotillo's that have intrigued me so since arriving at Big Bend are doing,,, something too.  They still look like dead sticks sticking up out of the ground.  But in the last couple of weeks the very tip ends have started putting on what look like little red flags.  I thought maybe it was a single, little red leaf.  As long as I kept driving by them each day at 45mph that is the way they looked.

On closer inspection, what looked like a single leaf at 45mph, was actual a clump of buds.

In our last days here at the end of March the little read buds on the end of the Ocotillio's finally opened up.  But still no green on the dead-looking stalks.

It is not all thorn-laced flowers though.  Here and there are clumps of wild flowers and these next photos are Indian Paintbrush.

The tangerine color is common.  This clump of mixed color paintbrush is a little unusual.

I have posted photos of bluebonnets before but this is a little different.  The white flower in the center of the below photo is a also a bluebonnet, but with a genetic mutation that makes it white.

 



 

White bluebonnet

 A honey locust tree near the banks of the Rio Grande was loaded with these fuzzy, yellow blooms.

Next is a plant that Cyndee and I know from our childhood.  When these showed up in the yard we were given a screwdriver and told to "go get that damned old weed dug up".  But now that we are here in Big Bend it is no longer a weed, instead it is a wild flower that bears the name Prickly Poppy.

If you have been following along with this blog you may recognize the below rainbow cactus from a post in late November.  Only then it was encased in ice from a pre-Thanksgiving winter storm that turned the whole 1,200 square miles of the park into a winter wonderland.  But I have been keeping my eye on this one, expecting a bloom and wanting to capture it.  The buds had been forming for months but the blooms, when they finally made would be brief.  Each day, as we arrived home from work, I would get out of the truck and walk behind the camper to check the progress.  When we were within a few days of leaving and nothing had developed I thought that we would miss it.  But luckily, just within a couple days of leaving tiny little blooms appeared.

They are not showy but the muted colors of the blooms against the multi-colored spines is nice.

That's it.  We are done with our volunteer assignment in Big Bend National Park.  We earned our 1000 hour badges while in this park.  We're pretty proud of this but there are volunteers we have worked with in this park that, literally, have ten times that many hours.  Some of them have been volunteering for 15 or twenty years.  I don't think we are going to get there.  I can't see us doing the stuff we have been doing as volunteers when we are 80+.

We are off to Midland-Odessa.  Big Gulp needs new steering tires, the convection oven needs repair, the satellite dish has crapped out AGAIN, we have a big load for the dry cleaner and Cyndee has to get her shopping on at Target, Michaels, and any place with the word 'mall' in it.