There's No Place Like Home!

We are home again. We got back at 1:00 Sunday morning after driving 13 hours, half of it in snow. We took about 150 pictures, and I will put together a slide show this week. We had a javelina visit our campsite. I had a conversation with a mule deer fawn. We saw several gray foxes and a bobcat. The last mountain lion sighting was in July and the last sign of bear was early October, so we didn't see any of those, but we did look for them. And the birds! Oh my stars, you have never seen so many different types and colors in one place! I cannot wait to show my mom (the birder) all those pictures.

We left home at 7:00 Wednesday night, with a stop at the grocery store, which we left at 8:00. We took a scenic route through Del Rio to 90 simply because I did not want to be on IH10 with all the 18-wheelers trying to get home to their families. We drove into the park at 5:00 Thursday morning. T-man and A slept in the car, while I just wiggled around trying to get comfy and warm. We had staked out our campsite, hoping it wasn't reserved. When the rangers showed up, we found out that the person who had originally reserved the site had deserted it, so it was ours! It was a great site, too.

We hiked. I didn't make all of the first hike, as it was pretty steep, but I did make it halfway up the mountain. T-man and A did several hikes on their own, which A absolutely loved! That child had a wonderful weekend. She missed her big sister, but she had a lot of fun.

We had two days of crystal clear weather with Friday being very warm, then it started snowing in the wee hours of Saturday morning. We decided to come home early simply because we could not have a camp fire due to a county-wide burn ban! There was literally no way to keep warm between sunset and bed time except by wearing every stitch of clothing we had brought with us! So we leisurely packed up. And it was still snowing. By the time we drove from Ft. Davis to Alpine, there was one to two inches of snow sticking to the ground. The drive from Alpine to Marathon was done slowly (and I do mean slowly). We had to stop periodically to clear the snow from the windshield wipers. By the time we made it to Del Rio, the snow had turned to rain. Yuck! And it rained all the way home. I am glad we made the decision to leave early, otherwise we might not have gotten out of Alpine! Not that I would mind staying in Alpine, but it's not time for that yet.

We had lots of fun. We met several people and, with the exception of one nice gentleman, they were all from Austin! Go figure. But it's nice to be home, sleeping in my bed. Like I said, I'll get the pictures transferred from the cameras this week and make a nice slide show somewhere. I hope you all had a great weekend. I know I did, but now it's back to work. TTFN!