Trip16

Finally! We agree. We’re moving on tomorrow morning. A private RV park we’ve had our eye on. We found it on the internet and called ahead for a beachfront site.

No crested caracaras. No problem. We see a lot of those farther south. They’re only unusual up here. No sparrows. Sparrows suck. Well I did see three today, but they were all Savannah Sparrows. Been there. We saw a bunch yesterday, but they were all Chipping Sparrows. No seaside sparrows. No wrens.

Know what my kind of bird is? It’s a Great Kiskadee. There aren’t very many of them, and they don’t go very far north. Not many people ever get to see them. They are bright yellow and black, kind of like Dad’s old Auburn sedan. Their habit is to fly into an area, land on the top of the tallest tree around, and scream as loud as they can. And they are loud. They are big, about the size of a crow, and they are loud. You hear them, then you look around for the bright black and yellow beacon on the top of the tallest tree. That’s my kind of bird. Not some rotten little brown bird that just hides in the bushes and won’t come out.

We’re considering getting some press-on labels for the pet dishes. Every morning Judy pours fresh dog food into the dog bowl and fresh cat food into the cat bowl. Every day, each animal goes straight to the other pet’s food to eat. This is not a random thing. It’s not fifty-fifty. Every time. They may sneak some of their own from time to time, but the first meal for each is always the other’s food. Wait! I know! Nevermind the labels. We’ll just switch the bowls.

Today’s challenge was to calibrate the compass. Judy gave me a really cool digital compass for Christmas. In 2002. I never installed it in Shamu. Shamu already had a compass, and this one seemed to high tech for Shamu anyway. But now. Now we’re driving the perfect home for this compass. The calibration process follows the installation process. I got through the installation process, no problem. It’s kind of far away, mounted on the windshield, but it is large enough I can see it well from the driver’s chair. The calibration process consists of pushing the correct sequence of buttons, then driving the motorhome completely around in a circle, in no less that 20 seconds, then pushing the right button on the compass to complete the process. This somehow allows the compass to distinguish between the earth’s magnetic field, and the magnetic fields of everything else around it. It is a high tech compass.

So today, we took the motorhome out for a final dump before we head out tomorrow morning. On the way back into the campground, we stopped, pushed the sequence of buttons (Notice I didn’t say the correct sequence of buttons). Then drove a loop of the campground, past our campsite, and back to where we started. I pushed the concluding button. Nothing happened.

Our compass remains uncalibrated. I already pretty much had the attention of everyone in the campground already with my slow rumbling loop. I decided that was enough for one day and I would try again tomorrow. Somewhere else. Did I mention that we have the best spot in the park? Really, we do. Broadside to the beach, and separated from everyone else. Each time we fire up to move the motorhome to dump it, people in the spots around us run for their ignition keys and watch hopefully to see if we’re really leaving. I’ll save them the serial disappointments.

We have located an unused parking lot at the other end of the park. We can drive over there tomorrow morning and drive loops until we get it right. Then we’ll not only have a compass, we’ll have a calibrated compass.

The final bird count for this park: 58.

Tomorrow, off to Mustang Island two hundred miles south and five degrees warmer.

Oh. And just in case you haven’t been able to properly imagine Judy’s new pelican: