The New Year celebration is a big deal here in the Valley. A LOT of fireworks. A fair amount of gunfire as well. I guess when you run out of fireworks what else can you do but empty the pistol in the air! We enjoyed the fireworks all around us, but we’ll stay inside now, just in case any of those bullets come back down.
Happy New Year Everyone!
It has been a good year for us.
We traveled to Colorado in May and had that wonderful 50th anniversary party, thanks to the kids. As many of you know, we enjoyed that anniversary attention so much that we declared this to be an entire anniversary-year, answering “We’re Golden” to every inquiry about how we’re doing.
We dropped down to Arizona in June, at the same time Matt, Lindsay and the kids were there, so we got to visit with them some more. It was too hot in Arizona in June. We motored west to the coast and visited with some of Judy’s family in California, then went back to Arizona to do some birding on the way home. Now it was too hotter in Arizona, approaching 120 degrees! By the middle of July we were back home to the Valley where it was only 100 degrees. Hot weather in the house is more comfortable than hot weather in the motorhome though. We enjoyed the long hot summer.
Overall health is good. I got my neck fixed. Judy had a couple parts surgically repaired. I set a new personal best for kidney stones; three passed in a single year!
When we go fly fishing in Montana, we always spend a day with Rick out on the drift boat, floating the Madison. (He’s still young enough to spend all day rowing back and forth across the river as we drift downstream, so we’ll be in exactly the right spot to cast over fish.) We get a card from him every year whether we fished with him that year or not. Funny thing, our “younger” fishing guide turned 65 this year.
Nice brown from out of the Madison inside the park (Yellowstone). We don’t get to fish the Madison inside the park when we’re there. During warm weather, the water in the Madison River is too hot from the water emptying into it from the Firehole, which runs through the geyser basins. Need some really cold air to cool that water down while it’s still in the park.
We committed to keeping the bus. Instead of spending a lot of money to trade it in for something else, we decided to commit less than that to refreshing it. The exterior is done. The interior is done. (I’ll send out some photos later.) Next we’ll get a muffler back on it. Then, a couple mechanical fixes and the refurbish will be complete; good for another 10 years!
We set a new year-record with birds, finishing with 422; way over our prior record of 407. Comparing our number of species sighted to others on eBird, we came in 14th in our County, Hidalgo. 69th in Texas. 241st in the U.S. And 2,117th in the World. We have a world-ranking! We’re number 2,117!
So that’s how we finish 2016, as number 2,117. We’ll see how we measure up in 2017. J
… and seeing a snake on the side of the road is different from encountering them in the wild. The Texas Indigo Snake is a big snake, but we know it’s harmless to humans. Especially from a car window we know it’s harmless.
Out on a wilderness track however, all alone; no-one else for miles, an encounter with a six foot snake just feels different.
It’s right there on the track you’re walking.
It doesn’t seem to be startled by your approach. It stops and watches.
Then turns and disappears into the short grass next to the trail.
Now, knowing this is a harmless snake, and it has disappeared back into the grass, and *probably* has kept on going and is *probably* no longer hidden right within a foot of the trail, and it is in front of you in the direction you mean to travel, what do you do?
This is a double-track trail. You cross over to the other track to pass that spot. You do if you’re me anyway.
I could have included a website link to the gardens:
http://www.hilltopgarden.com/content/index/0123/0134
And a reference to their location:
http://www.hilltopgarden.com/content/index/0122/0132
Years ago, Judy and I were driving down a backroad here in the Valley and passed by an Aloe farm. It had a really nice entrance and looked like it might be open to the public. We thought it looked interesting. By the time we got around to checking back to see if we could visit though, it was years later and neither of us could remember where it was or what the name of it was.
I’ve tried so many times to find it on Google Earth, and have driven up and down all the backroads where I remembered it being, but I was slightly off. I was searching the wrong area. It doesn’t matter how hard you look, you’ll never find it if you’re looking in the wrong place!
Well, again working on Google Earth, I re-found it a week ago. A few days ago Henry and I drove past it while we were out birding (without Judy) so I could confirm it. It turns out they are a large organic farm now, they are open to the public, and they have marvelous gardens.
So that was my Christmas Surprise for Judy, a visit to a place we’d been trying to find for years. Of course, she figured out where we were going well before we got there. It’s like that with us; secrets don’t last very long. Suddenly one of us just announces “I know where we’re going.” Or “I know what it is.” Like that. It doesn’t matter what it is. One year I got Judy a piece of jewelry to replace one that had been lost forty years before. I couldn’t find the exact thing, so I had one constructed by a jeweler. When Judy asked me if I’d gotten her a Christmas present yet, and I answered yes, she looked at me and knew right then exactly what it was. From Forty Years Ago!
Our Christmas Surprise looked like this.
It has a grand entrance.
A five bedroom historical villa for rent.
And over 200 kinds of Aloe!
Years ago, Judy and I were driving down a backroad here in the Valley and passed by an Aloe farm. It had a really nice entrance and looked like it might be open to the public. We thought it looked interesting. By the time we got around to checking back to see if we could visit though, it was years later and neither of us could remember where it was or what the name of it was.
I’ve tried so many times to find it on Google Earth, and have driven up and down all the backroads where I remembered it being, but I was slightly off. I was searching the wrong area. It doesn’t matter how hard you look, you’ll never find it if you’re looking in the wrong place!
Well, again working on Google Earth, I re-found it a week ago. A few days ago Henry and I drove past it while we were out birding (without Judy) so I could confirm it. It turns out they are a large organic farm now, they are open to the public, and they have marvelous gardens.
So that was my Christmas Surprise for Judy, a visit to a place we’d been trying to find for years. Of course, she figured out where we were going well before we got there. It’s like that with us; secrets don’t last very long. Suddenly one of us just announces “I know where we’re going.” Or “I know what it is.” Like that. It doesn’t matter what it is. One year I got Judy a piece of jewelry to replace one that had been lost forty years before. I couldn’t find the exact thing, so I had one constructed by a jeweler. When Judy asked me if I’d gotten her a Christmas present yet, and I answered yes, she looked at me and knew right then exactly what it was. From Forty Years Ago!
Our Christmas Surprise looked like this.
It has a grand entrance.
A five bedroom historical villa for rent.
And over 200 kinds of Aloe!
It’s home from Harlingen. All the bodywork and paint; done. The upholstery work and couch; done. All the leather has been cleaned. The chrome has been returned and reattached. Everything Jacinto touched works better than it did. “Like New!”
Remember how it looked before? It was scratched, dented, and faded. The plastic rock chip barrier had to be ground off the front.
The paint was bubbling and peeling off the side trim.
Here it is now.
We couldn’t be happier.
…one more Christmas Dinner, this one with brother Tom and Kathy at their house in Mercedes, finishes off the Christmas season just fine.
We spent hours with the kids and grandkids this morning.
The kids just let us hang out. If all the activity moved to another room, someone would go back to get mom and dad on the laptop and bring them along.
My big present for the year was a new scope. To go birding all you need are binoculars, camera, and good walking shoes. If you can get *good* binoculars and a *good* camera, so much the better. A good scope is a bonus, but now I have that too! J
It’s a Vortex Optics Razor HD with an 85mm objective lens.
Judy’s present this year was a Digi scoping attachment that just happens to fit my new scope. The smart phone clips into this side.
And this side clips onto the eyepiece of the scope.
If we find something really cool, we can take photos right through the high-quality optics of the scope with a phone!
Oh. And Judy got that other present for Christmas; the new fridge.
Becky got a new Roomba vacuum cleaner but there wasn’t enough room to try it out since Christmas threw up in their living room.
Santa Henry came to play at our house.
This year we put the Christmas Tree in the outside living room.
Merry Christmas all.
