Happy New Year's Eve Eve

 

It has been a good year for us.

 

We traveled to Colorado in May and had that wonderful 50^th 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 14^th in our County, Hidalgo.  69^th in Texas.  241^st in the U.S.  And 2,117^th 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