4 Days of Falcon

vegetation at Falcon State Park

Falcon State Park --- a few miles west of Roma, Texas --- a nice place to spend a few days. We stayed 4 nights. The campground is built on a vegetation covered bluff above the Rio Grande. The river is wide there, as in reservoir, due to a dam built across the river in the '50s. A local road to Mexico runs across the dam with an inconspicuous, little-used border crossing.  Roads within the campground lead down to the water, to a boat ramp and to a day-use picnic area.  Birding/hiking/biking trails run around the park's perimeter and a small herd (5, I think) of javelinas roam the campground looking for snacks.

Falcon is one of the few state parks in Texas that doesn't enforce the 14-day camping limit, so 2-month stays are common. That makes for a little different friendliness amongst RVs. Some of them have been spending winters together for years. The coffee pot is always full at the little community building, a couple of jigsaw puzzles are usually going, and everyone is encouraged to attend the Thursday night potlucks. The night we went, a 50th wedding anniversary was being celebrated with cake and ice cream for dessert.

The nearby town of Roma was founded by Spaniards in about 1767. Some interesting old buildings stand around the town square. I especially liked views of the gorgeous Rio Grande winding its way through town.

And also worth mentioning is the ever present blimp-like surveillance-system aerostat. It's tethered just east of Roma and floats 2500 feet above as the wind prevails. It was always in sight during our 4 days at Falcon Park.

javelinas outside the Pickle

Old doorway in Roma

Rio Grande in Roma

More Refuge

The day we left North Padre Island, we drove south on 77 to McAllen and then east to the little town of Rio Hondo. Its houses line the Arroyo Colorado, a manmade canal, that's quite picturesque. It sees a lot of local fishing activity as well as barge traffic. The county operates a park on the canal's bank and that's where we spent one night. Only one other camp site was occupied, but there was lots of fishing activity down at the boat ramp till  dark, and until midnight, fishing was allowed from the fishing docks.

Arroyo Colorado, Rio Hondo

The Pickle on the Arroyo

 The next day we drove to Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge. It sits on the mainland side of Laguna Madre. That's the water between South Padre Island and Texas. It sounds like a quick trip since we were just on North Padre and our campsite at Rio Hondo was really just over the Refuge's western boundary. But you know those refuge centers ..... miles of driving. This time on really bad roads. And a long detour. When we finally arrived at the Visitor's Center, it was closed. However, a friendly volunteer was waiting outside to help us with anything we needed to know. Which was: what are the chances of seeing an Aplomado Falcon, an endangered bird I had never heard of until our daughter Annie, texted us the list of birds seen at the Refuge a couple days before. The falcon was on it, and it caught my interest.
So we took the driving tour and scanned the sky for the sought-after bird. We didn't spot it, but we did see two Crested Cara Caras, green jays, and two javelinas (not birds.)

Green Jays

Yes, ocelots have a den in the refuge.

Javelinas

Taking Refuge

 Talk about a wild goose chase! Or what we do on a wildly windy day when camped on the North Padre Island beach.  We chase cranes – whooping cranes that is.

Sunday, January 22, our 3^rd day camped on the island.  It was sunny and clear, but oh, that onshore wind gusted upwards of 40 mph.  It was definitely not a good day for beach bike riding, which we tried, or any beach activity, really.

Aransas National Wildlife Refuge became our destination, in the Mini. The hundreds of designated Aransas Refuge acres provide foraging for the Whooping Cranes wintering in the area. We drove north on Mustang Island and caught the car ferry at Port Aransas – one of several ferries operating simultaneously across the channel to the mainland.  Continuing north we drove through Rockport and Fulton and then out to the Refuge. You know those crazy Wildlife Refuges --- They’re always out in the middle of nowhere.

We drove miles past flat tilled fields waiting to be planted with cotton on a carless country road to get to the road leading to the Aransas NWR Visitor’s Center. We checked in.

At one stop on the car tour through the Refuge, we saw 2 lazy alligators resting on the bank of a pond.

At another stop, from the top of a 40 ft. observation tower, looking out toward the Gulf, way off in the distance, standing in long grass (this is the build-up, folks!) we spotted what we came for. And when we could hold our binoculars steady in that blow-me-down kind of wind, we gazed upon 3 whooping cranes. Too far away to take an iPhone photograph, you'll have to use your imaginations.   

Mission accomplished!

                                                        Ferry crossing

Zoom in to see the alligator!

Sunrise on North Padre

Giddy-up

We have arrived ---- at Galveston Island State Park, that is. At the close of our third day here, I think I can say we finally feel like our vacation has begun.

The start of our trip was a bit rocky, a few hiccups in the giddy-up as Michael would say.

Roseate Spoonbills

We left Michigan 10 days ago, on Monday, January 9^th.

Great blue heron

Our first stop at an auto parts store was on the south side of Cincinnati, just across the river into Kentucky. O’Reilly’s. That’s where Michael bought and installed a new alternator belt after untwisting and removing the old one. The old one snapped off on our way there from the I-75 exit. The belt had whined loudly earlier in the day, but had settled down as we putzed along, so we kept going. Until Cinci. The repair slowed us down about an hour, so I called ahead to reserve a camp site at an RV Park near Georgetown, KY.

Great Egret

The next two nights we spent in Knoxville with my sister and brother-in-law. The Pickle rested after chugging up and down those steep grades between Lexington, KY, and Knoxville.

A long day of driving Thursday brought us to Village Creek State Park near Forrest City, AK, about 40 miles west of Memphis. That’s the night the temperature dropped from a balmy 69 degrees when we arrived in the early evening to 39 degrees the next morning. We studied weather.com to make sure we were going to miss Storm Jupiter which was predicted to shut down MO with a sheet of ice. It looked like the storm would track north of us so we continued on our southwesterly route toward Ft. Worth.

Campground birding habitat

Friday – hopefully the low point, the nadir of this trip. Engine noises all day. Power steering pump? More belts giving out? Fan clutch? Ah, perhaps! The fan clutch as the culprit was an afternoon decision, just after entering Texas, on the west side of Texarkana, after stopping for gas and upon starting back up, hearing the whirring/squealing noise louder than ever. Thinking we were in no shape to drive 65-70 mph on the interstate, we stuck to back roads, way back at times, circling around Culpepper’s Café at first, looking for the right back road that would take us to Cooper Lake State Park. Circuitous, you might say, was the route we took to arrive at our destination. (The helpfulness of the Google Maps app is, by the way, directly proportional to the map skills of the navigator.)

Michael just happened to be carrying an extra fan clutch for the Pickle so that became Saturday’s project at Cooper Lake about 70 miles northeast of Dallas/Ft. Worth. What started optimistically as a 2-hour activity turned into an “all-dayer,” lying on a mat in the red mud, 45 degree coldness, problems with getting bolts out of the old fan clutch and problems with getting them back into the new, with a trip into a Commerce, TX auto parts store in the afternoon to get more parts. About that time, amid bolts and missing washers and wrenches and the open engine compartment, it became clear there was no getting out of Cooper Lake Campground that night. I called the park office for an extension.

Sunday – The Pickle sounded good that foggy misty morning. No whining, no squealing and no loud  roaring from the engine as if it were stuck in 2^nd. (Hurrahs from the cheering section!) We drove in and out of rain showers to Huntsville State Park, a little south of Huntsville, TX, on Highway 19, a well-maintained quiet 4-lane road, just our style. Tires on wet roads were the concern that day as we slid into red lights on two different occasions, thanking the universe for our luck in missing that pick-up truck

And Monday – After a quick stop at an auto parts store in New Waverly just a few miles south of the campground to get brake cleaner, we drove south through Houston and out to Galveston Island. Now two and a half days of semi-sunshine, 70 degree temperatures, beach walking, bird watching, shrimp eating and general bumming, we’re feeling       smooth again.

Giddy-up.

Galveston beach