Texas, Day Two - Where the Wild Things Were

I think I've mentioned before that the bed in the RV is very, very firm - to the point that we've been very uncomfortable on it every night.  I think I also mentioned that the RV can potentially sleep seven people, though in practice, that's entirely ridiculous.  Well, being rather fed up with sleeping on the "sacrificial altar", last night Al and I opened up the air mattress that lives inside the sofa and gave it a whirl.  What a difference!!  It was so far superior to the rock of Gibraltar in the bedroom that we slept wonderfully and I awoke refreshed at about 6:30 - half an hour before daybreak.

 Not wanting to awaken Al, I went into the bedroom and looked out the window and saw the moon with Venus off to the left, with the promised "rosy-fingered dawn" just beginning beneath the mountain below.  Now, I hope you'll forgive the photo to the left - it's really hard to get a good photo in the dark on a tiny little Canon Elph but you can nearly see the amazingly beautiful sight I saw.

So I waited for about half an hour and took the next photo where you get a better idea of how lovely the morning was.  Of course, this was interrupted slightly by the sound of the owner of the RV next to ours discovering that his water line had frozen... we were prepared for this ourselves, and had no interruptions.

Just before it really became day I noticed something moving across the ground nearby.  Peering out at it, I slowly realized I was looking at a small warren of rabbits; undoubtedly having grazed all around the RV park in search of leftovers and now returning to their burrows in the moments before dawn.  By the time I figured out how to spot them I noticed six of the little creatures - and then they were gone.

Soon after this the birds woke up and started to move around, which woke Al, so we started our day, resolving to find the nearest Walmart and purchase an air mattress to put on top of our present "sleeping slab".  As usual, Al went to work and I took a stroll to throw out some trash and get some breakfast from the nice, little restaurant at the RV park.  We had greatly enjoyed our "Country Fried Steak" the previous evening so we figured breakfast would be good, too.

On my way to the little restaurant I noticed two separate flocks of quail skurrying around the grounds, so I quickly took a few photos of them to share with you.   They also were just grazing and pecking the ground and walking around but they were shy and skurried away any time I came within 20 feet of them.  Cute little things though...





So after our breakfast and the obligatory morning Half-Hour-With-Dorian-on-My-Lap-Scratching-Him-While-He-Bites-Small-Holes-In-My-Clothing, Al gave up trying to get things done online, as the connection was seriously awful (as you may recall from my Facebook comment and my posting the day's photographs there instead of here) and we packed up and once more hit the road.

Today's journey was slightly shorter than average - being only about 125 miles to Fort Stockton, Tx.   We noticed almost immediately that the surrounding landscape had changed from the craggy, nearly endless mountains covered in scrub and cacti to broad plains that, while covered with short, stubby shrubbery (try saying that phrase a few times quickly), (manzanita, we think) there was no more cactus, and we kept driving up long, slowly rising hills, then going down the other side, moving from about 3850 feet above sea level to about 4300 and back again.  We also noticed that there are suddenly a whole lot of cars towing horse trailers...go figure...Texas.  Right.

Still some pretty scenery!

Our journey today was delightfully punctuated by some of the wonderful music our beloved nephew Clifford sent along with us.  Clifford made up some CDs for us, containing the most excellent mixture of every kind of music you might imagine - from a piece that sounded like it was played on the glass harp to Disney's "Bibbity-Bobbity-Boo" from Cinderella and everything in between. Part of the fun of this delicious collection is wondering what surprise piece of music will come next!!  Will it be an old Calypso by Harry Belefonte, or perhaps Gene Wilder singing a song from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory??  What a wonderful collection of music it is - we haven't gotten even halfway through it yet but we're loving it a lot!!  Thanks many millions, Clifford!!!

If you watch educational TV you  may have seen a program describing how Texas is having an uncontrolled explosion of the population of wild boars (the pigs; not the rude people, though that might be a different discussion...).  Well, this afternoon I saw a wild boar chomping on something-or-other on the side of the road.  Big, scruffy-looking thing it was, having a bit of lunch.  I wasn't fast enough with my camera to catch it, and though I watched for more, I didn't see any other wild boars on the journey but there was this one guy at the local Walmart...

Oh, speaking of which, Fort Stockton is large enough to have a Walmart Super Store, where I bought the air mattress I mentioned earlier, plus a few other items we needed.  Afterward we found the next RV site, set up, and went to let Rover and Polgara out of the cage for a while.

Now, you may recall that Rover the Umbrella Cockatoo and Polgara the Orange-Winged Amazon parrot are emotionally bonded but right now they're living in two separate cages.  Every day I make sure I put Pol in with Rover for a little while so they can cuddle and preen each other but this afternoon when we went to let them out onto the table playpen we have for the birds we discovered how very attached to Polgara Rover really is.

What you're looking at in this picture is the roof of Pol's cage (on the left) which Rover has TIED to his own cage (on the right) with part of his rope toy.  He pulled out a long piece of the toy and wound it around and around between his cage and hers, binding them together!  Isn't that amazing and wonderful???  FYI, we've left the cages tied together this way.  He went to so much trouble, after all!


So tomorrow our plan is to drive to Junction, Texas.  The weatherman says here in Fort Stockton there'll be snow showers but we'll see if we get get past them to Junction, where it'll be a bit warmer and only partly cloudy.  Wish us luck, and a better night's sleep on our new air mattress!