Off I go into the wild blue yonder…

I couldn’t believe it when I woke up yesterday morning and the sun was shining with temps in the 60’s!!  What a welcome surprise that was.  I hopped in the refuge truck and went to pick up fellow volunteer Lynn.  We would spend the morning on the East Unit.  Our task was to check out the piles of soil that we will use to get prairie seeds started once the weather warms up a bit. 

I also wanted to check out an area along Galveston Bay and the Intracoastal Waterway to see if perhaps any shorebirds had started migrating into the refuge yet.  I know it’s a little early, but one can always hope.The East Unit is where the duck and goose hunting occurs in season.   The duck hunting season is over now, but snow geese can still be taken on Saturday, Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday until Feb. 26.  Since it was a Monday, I knew we would be okay to be on the unit.

There wasn’t much bird life around, so the only picture I took was of oysters along the banks of the Intracoastal during low tide.  It was a gorgeous morning that we enjoyed until we headed out of the unit.  You could see the gray cloud cover of an approaching front coming in quickly.  I dropped Lynn off at her rig and then headed over to the VIS to have my lunch and meet a busload of seniors to give them a tour.  While I was munching away, the front arrived, it began to spit rain, and the temperature dropped like a rock! 

The bus arrived, I hopped on, and began the tour.  By this time it was close to 1:00 in the afternoon and this group of seniors was sitting in a warm bus after just having consumed a filling BBQ meal at Gator Junction.  Can you guess what that means?  Yep, most of them began to doze off before my very eyes.    I danced as fast as I could and tried to make my presentation as interesting as possible, but you might have thought that they had just consumed Thanksgiving dinner.  That coupled with the lead foot of the bus driver resulted in the quickest tour I’ve ever given.  There was thundering applause as we returned to the VIS area, but I’m not sure they really enjoyed the brief tour or were just happy to be done with it and on their way home.   

Today, I put up some bird feeders at the Visitors Center, and then went to the farewell luncheon for my volunteer neighbors, Bob and Terry.  They will be heading out later this week for other adventures.  So for a while anyway, it will just be Emma and me at the Winnie facility once again.

It was miserably cold and rainy again today, but I decided it was good practice at being cold for my trip tomorrow to Chicago.

                                                    

With any luck, there will be no flight delays, and I’ll be with Robyn and her family by tomorrow afternoon.  I dug out my winter coat, and will be wearing it on the plane.  I’m off into the wild blue yonder…

Thanks for stopping by… talk to you later,  Judy

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