Morning has Broken - Sat., July 13

I was out of the 5er before the sun came up to do a Volksmarch in Universal City, Texas. Taco Cabana was the start point for this Randolph Roadrunner Club's sponsored event in the U.S. Volkssport headquarters town.

Another gentleman and I started out walking together at 6:45 a.m. and followed the start directions. We were half-way down the road when a red pickup truck pulled up directly in front of us. A man jumped out and said we were going the wrong way and he would give us a ride back to the corner where we were "supposed" to have turned. This completely bamboozled us because the directions were quite clear where we they wanted us to go. When he told us to go the way HE said, we skipped instructions 2-7 and were now at #8. Nonetheless, we went the direction he told us to go, only to see the road where we SHOULD have been connecting up in instruction #7 to the road we were on. I still can't figure out why he did that. He had about ten people very confused during the first light of day. (You're probably scratching your heads by now too!)

The rest of the walk went smoothly. I walked very fast and passed a number of people who had started before me. It was a pleasant walk, although quite warm and humid. We meandered back and forth through the neighborhoods.

Here are photos from the walk.

Purple martin houses.

Mural on an elementary school.

Another mural on the same school.

In the San Antonio area there are many run-off areas for heavy rainfall.

Universal City neighborhood.

Another neighborhood we walked in.

It's fitting that the AVA club we're walking with today is Randolph Roadrunners. I had to triple check that the bird on someone's roof truly was a roadrunner. First, roadrunners are usually on the ground and, second, I didn't expect to see one in the heart of a neighborhood, falsely assuming they liked being out in the desert or scrub. The roadrunner looked like it was just waking up. Kind of like I felt. (The wires in the background look pretty cool, like a musical staff.)

Rumpled feathers upon waking up.

Eyes not quite open yet.

Big ballet stretch.

The 10K (6.2 miles) walk took one hour and 35 minutes today. My best guess for the temperature at 8:20 a.m. was 88 degrees.

A couple of days ago, I watched another bird take a bath in the water puddle on our neighbor's slide out. Can anyone help me identify this bird? I looked in my Audubon Society Field Guide but didn't find it. Thank you, Betty, this is a Texas Blue jay.

Texas Blue jay

Texas Blue jay

Texas Blue jay.

When I got home, the cats wanted to play so I turned on the new SmartKitty HotPursuit toy. Bowie had a blast with it. He had already dragged the toy from the living room to the kitchen and rumpled the kitchen rugs with his skittering across the floor. Very exhuberant cat.

Then he collapsed into a deep sleep.

That's what I'm going to do now. I need a nap.

Travel Bug out.

Nerve Wracking Alarms! -- Fri., June 22

Cotulla, Texas:

Our wells are in the flowback stage. Huge flames are shooting out of the pipe. When our site's night safety man came on duty, he told us he would watch out for us if anything happened. 

At about 1:00 a.m....alarms, more alarms. Tonight, the H2S alarm and red light keep going off on the pad by our 5er. I made Bob get dressed in street clothes in case we have to leave. It's so dark out there I can't see which way the wind socks are going. No light towers are turned on near us on the pad. A light tower way far back in one corner away from us is on and our light tower is on, but our light tower faces the gate, not the pad. I'm scared. Don't know if I'll get much sleep tonight! It's 2:15 a.m. and the alarm has been going off intermittently for over an hour.

Tonight, Bowie was disturbed by the alarms and took a ringside seat to see the action..notice flames in background.

Weird posture for a cat.

"Stop with the pictures already. And could you do something about the alarms?"

Other than that, the day was normal. Bob made a trip to the post office. We are trying to track down a package that was sent to our last RV park in early May. Bob was able to get a tracking number on the package from our mail forwarding service which may help us find it. Today is laundry day. I will check the post office again when I'm in town.

Today was cloudy and cooler with possible thunderstorms in the forecast. (We didn't get any rain or thunderstorms for that matter.)

Wildlife sightings were impressive today. Two gray cottontails were hopping around. The roadrunners have decided underneath our 5er is the big bird "bug buffet." All day, the roadrunner(s) went under our stairs, grabbed bugs then headed into the brush. Very entertaining. The mockingbirds are out again, as well as the pyrrhuloxia. Every once in a while, we see big fat lizards running around outside our 5er. They like the bugs too.

More roadrunner pics:

Roadrunner with bug in bill.

Typical roadrunner stance. Note bug in bill.

  The mockingbird wanted a photo too.

Hopefully no more alarms go off and we can get some sleep!

Travel Bug out.

Freedom and the Open Road -- Mon., June 18

Cotulla, Texas:

"To gain that which is worth having, it may be necessary to lose everything else." 
~Bernadette Devlin

This is so true. Both of us lost our jobs in Hawaii in June 2011. In order to go on the road and travel we gave up (sold) our "sticks and bricks" house and almost all our possessions.

Did we have fear? You bet!! Could we find work on the road to support ourselves? How would we pay for everything?

Fast forward one year...We've been "on the road" in our 5th wheel trailer for eight months and have worked six months. We've been from Hawaii (where we lived, owned a house and worked) to Oregon (our home state for over 30 years), bought our 5th wheel and trailer in Oregon, drove to Fallon, Nevada and worked for Amazon.com in Fernley for two months during the holiday season.

Bob got a job as a commercial roofing service manager in Sparks, Nevada for three months. We took off in April to travel to Texas with stops in Las Vegas and Phoenix to see family and friends.

We spent two days hiking in Big Bend National Park and a few days exploring the Texas Hill Country before landing in Kerrville, Texas to attend the RV-Dreams Rally.

For the past six weeks we have been working as security gate guards at an oil field in south Texas. In July, we will take two weeks to drive to Yellowstone N.P., spend two weeks camping and hiking; go to the Black Hills and Mt. Rushmore in Sept. We will then head over to the North Dakota/Minnesota border where Bob will work the sugar beet harvest for three weeks.

From there, we will drive back to Oregon, park our rig, and board our cats to take a month-long trip to Australia. It was not possible to do all these things when we were tied to high-stress, low-vacation-time jobs, our house and all our belongings.

So while we lost our house and most of our possessions, we gained freedom to go where we want, when we want. Make no mistake about it, though, we also need to work!

Gate guarding update:

We received our Security pocket ID cards and name badges today. Thank you, LOMA Gate Guard Services!

Our gate has slowed to a crawl so Bob asked our supervisor today if we'll be moved. The supervisor said as long as the oil company wants us here, we will be on this job site. So, it looks like we'll be here for a while and it's going to be slow. Gives me more time to write and do photography.

After the cats' bag trashing incident last night, we moved all the plastic bags into a nice cloth bag. No more shredding the paper bags. Bowie came to terms with the new arrangement right away.

"Oh, look, Mom and Dad gave us a new, cushy bed!"

Time for my nap. Just a little yawn.

And now for my siesta. Wake me in a few hours, will you?

Roadrunner reappeared in front of our dining room window, bug in mouth. Isn't  he gorgeous?

Did a little dance, fluffed his tail and wings.

Then did what roadrunners do best...ran away.

"If you write to impress it will always be bad, but if you write to express it will be good." ~Thornton Wilder, writer (1897-1975)

Travel Bug out.

Roadrunner PDA -- Wed., June 6

Cotulla, Texas:

Night shift. Medium-strong winds. Things that go bump in the night. I heard a bump outside and went out to see if our garbage can lid blew away. Nope, it was attached to the can with a bungee cord. I walked around the 5er, didn't see anything amiss.

Now I am back inside the 5er waiting for vehicles to come to the gate, reading "American Idol," napping, waking when the motion sensor sets off our alarm. So far, multiple false alarms as dust blows in front of the sensor.

Every once in a while at night, I make the rounds and look out all the windows of the RV, looking for illegal aliens, animals, interesting bugs. It's 11:30 p.m., the time when weird creatures come out. Last night I saw my first scorpion. We've seen lightning bugs. I saw an armadillo the first week we were here.

Last night around 10:30 when I went out to close the gate after the last semi had come in, I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up. Maybe it's a myth, but I've read that if you feel the hair on the back of your neck stand up and you get goosebumps (chicken skin, for my Hawaiian ohana), then it's probably a mountain lion. While I was outside, I heard an owl and what sounded like cubs of some kind mewing.

Tonight, I looked out our hall window and saw something four-legged. At least I thought I saw it. It froze. I kept watching and it moved, so I really did see it. I went for the binoculars but by the time I got back to the window it was gone. My best guess is coyote or bobcat; although it could have been a mountain lion, but it didn't look big enough. I saw it at the edge of the trees, right at the edge of the available light.

We know that there's a pond across the road on the ranch. I'm guessing lots of desert animals go there at night for water. 

As much as I would like to go walking at night when it's cooler, it ain't happenin' folks! I prefer not to become prey. I will watch from the safety of the 5er. When I go out to let in a vehicle, I figure the noise, headlights and rumbling will scare away any critter in the vicinity for a little while.

I had another nature moment today. Involving roadrunners, no less.

Perfect camouflage--find the roadrunner! Hint, you can see its tail.

Roadrunner hiding from me in the tree.

Won't come down until I leave.

There he is...but he's more interested in something else.

A female roadrunner!

I never, ever thought I'd see this!

All done.

Time to skedaddle.