November 29, 2008

Woke up to a cold and windy day. Coffee and tea and a peanut butter and banana sandwich to start the day. Made another list for shopping at Walmart and Lowes. We really needed to repair the Casita before leaving on the next leg of the trip.

On the way into town we decided to take another drive through the area. We found a road that we were not familiar with and turned. What luck. It was a totally new area to us and we even found someone who told us about more hiking trails and things to see. Amazing, there is so much to do and no one told us! Thanks to the kindness of strangers we now have a hike to do once we fix the Casita.

We ate at the Sunset Grill. Both of us ordered the gyros. We were talking about making a bad decision for food when our gyros arrived. They were not like Nicks House of Pizza in Camden, SC. It was good and fresh tasting. We were happy. After getting the things we needed we headed back to the Casita to get her fixed up for the trip. The repairs went quickly and we were on our way for another trail.

As we arrived at the trail head some bikers were finishing up their ride. We talked for a few minutes and were on our way. About 20 minutes into our hike we came across another biker who did volunteer work for the park. He gave us some great advice and told us of other places to go. He also explained the dam to us. The dams only purpose in life is to prevent flooding. Houses are built on the flood plain and so lets build a dam so they won’t get flooded. He talked about how they had long horned cattle on the property a couple of years ago and that they were making a big mess of things just like the bikes were making. How Audubon wanted to restore the area to the original prairie land. We discussed how little wildlife we were seeing and what he had seen. He said that he saw Jaguarmundi, black panther and that there was a bear in the area.

Jerry told him that we had not seen any jack rabbits or deer, and the last time we were here we saw a porcupine. After half an hour of sharing stories, we continued our hike.

It was really pleasant and most enjoyable most of the time. The loose rocks were difficult to walk through, but they were for short periods of time. We finished our hike and decided to find the pictographs. Spotting smoke close by we changed our route and investigated. A house, just on the edge of the park was on fire. I really felt for the home owners. While hiking we heard the sirens of the fire trucks and I thought that it was taking a long time to get to where they were going. We could see flames and the smoke was thick. I also thought about the fire spreading to the park. It is so dry.

We did walk to see the petroglyphs. There must be more and we are going back in the morning. We are staying an extra day. We want to see the dinosaur foot prints! Yes another person told us about this great thing. Park service? It must be some secret. Only on tours! Why is it that something that would attract visitors would be kept from the public?

I drove the truck around the park and we saw deer, porcupine and the jack rabbit. A great ending to a great day.