A Typical Day

It's been fairly quiet here............. the fracking was finished a couple of weeks ago and there's been very little traffic in and out of the well site.  A few times a day truck will pull in...  they need to monitor the well pressure...  or spray weeds...  or something.  But this morning, a pickup pulled up at 6:30am...  8 huge fracking trailers had been left on the site and behind the pickup were 4 Semi tractors coming to pick those trailers up.

Bill logging out one of the trucks...

Taken from the back window of our rig...  these are the last 2 trucks... with the pick-up following in the rear.  They all came back later in the day to get the other 4 trailers.

I had to do laundry this morning and the closest laundromat is in Carrizo Springs.  One nice thing about a laundromat is that it takes less than 2 hours to do it all... no matter how many loads of laundry need done.  So I got home before 10:30. 

I usually take an early morning walk up to the pond, but because of the laundry, I waited until after lunch.  But we have such a great view from our motorhome windows that there is always something to see.

I've been trying to get a photo of the Bullock's Oriole...  it was very windy this morning and this guy kept getting blown about as he'd hang onto the mesquite tree branches.  Still didn't get a very good shot of him, but with that black "bib", head and eye stripe,  there's no mistaking who he is.

Looking down instead of up into the trees, I saw that the Bobwhite Quail was having lunch...

I have a couple of hanging bird feeders, but also am generous with the sprinkling seeds on the ground.  Mostly white-crowned sparrows and cardinals feed, but lately we've had a bigger variety, including the quail, some mourning doves, pyrrhuloxia, unidentified sparrows as well as others.

 After lunch I headed up to the pond.  It was very windy so I didn't expect to see much.

However....

I stopped in my tracks when I saw this bobcat moseying along up the road from me.  Didn't have my 300mm lens so had to be satisfied with this shot.  We've seen tracks but in this dusty desert-like soil it can be hard to determine toe-nails or not... Having seen and heard the coyotes, I was happy to see this guy and know for sure we were seeing cat tracks.

 There is a spur off this road that leads to the pond...

We have both cottontails and jack-rabbits here....  I wonder if that bobcat had been after this cottontail...

It just amazes me when I see something like this...

I don't know what kind of plant this is, but you have to admire anything that can emerge out of that hard-pan earth and not only survive, but be beautiful.  Such determination to live!

 Most days after lunch I work on my Spanish lessons for an hour or so.  Then typically fix dinner around 5pm.  After cleaning up the kitchen, I head out for my evening walk.

I often take the same route as morning... it's a loop that's about 1.75 miles.  Since I saw the bobcat this morning I had planned to put out one of my game cameras that are motion sensitive but forgot to check the batteries....  and of course they were dead.  So after that aborted walk, I took a little different route later.

These plants are HUGE!  They must be 15'-20' tall...  I think they are agave or century plants or something like that.  At first I thought they were just past blooming...

You can see that they are tall when you compare them with the mesquite and palo verde that's behind them.  They are so hard and brittle and have so many holes drilled in them I have to think they are several years old.

Upon closer inspection, I saw these holes...

I thought they were probably Golden fronted woodpecker nests, but it was a pyrrhuloxia that flew out and stayed close by as I inspected the holes.  I have no idea who originally occupied the nest.

 Aside from that ram we saw the other day we've not seen any livestock on this land.  But it used to be a working ranch.....

The windmill is still in operation.

There is a house a few hundred yards to the right, but it seems to be more a weekend place or maybe a hunting lodge.  Maybe that tank still provides water for that....

 We are located about 30 miles from the Mexican/US border....  If you've ever lived along the border you are probably familiar with sights like this...

Discarded clothing and back packs are usually signs that illegals have passed through.  While we haven't seen any during our stay we often see Border Patrol trucks on the road.

This looked like it had been laying here a while....

The wind died down...  it starts to cool off...

Sometimes we get a pretty sunset.

A truck pulls up to the gate .... it's nearly 9:00pm.  Bill goes out to log him in.  He tells Bill that a dozen trucks will be coming in during the night.  And... guess what?  Eight of those trucks will be bringing back those trailers that they hauled out this morning.  Go figure....  Anyway, looks like our site will get busy again...  ready for the next step in getting this well into operation.

Just a note...  I often make comments on other blogs...  but apparently I'm having some problems...  either they aren't posting to a blog or they are going in to your spam.  Not sure what's going on, and don't think it's on everyone I comment...    Just letting y'all know that I'm still reading your blog when I can.

That's All For Today!