I write here after a long pause.  I came to think nobody was looking at these blogs.  But, the suggestion was made that I resume posting.  So, here goes.

We finished our holiday duties and I completed manufacture of a dining room table for the Eisenburgs of Brooklyn.  Anne and I made another trek to visit the kids and see our grandson.  Then we returned home and prepared and provisioned the motorhome while the winter weather held off for a bit longer.  Thanks, I guess,  to this year’s El Nino.

Then, with a cold front and snow squalls pursuing us, we raced down I-81 towards Texas.  The snow caught up to us in western Virginia, and we snuggled up under the covers in our little bedroom in a Cracker Barrel parking lot near Knoxville that night. 

The following morning, it seemed the entire police department was having breakfast in that restaurant, but we quietly pulled out and reached the lovely Poverty Point State Park in Louisiana not far off of I-10.  I knew that Anne would be very happy to have 120 V AC and television on that Sunday night.  Downton Abbey was observed.  The park includes the site of a remarkable Archaic Indian community that established a semicircular series of housing terraces along the Bayou Macon.  The diameter of the circle was almost a mile.  The community was evidently one of trade and exhibited great wealth.  But after some one thousand years, all that remains are the earthworks and buried relics. 

We reached a lovely USCOE campground in the piney woods of eastern Texas near the City of Lufkin the next afternoon.  For most of our week there, we were the only paying campers there.  The weather was chilly at times, but the sun shined and the temperature fell to freezing only one morning.  The solitude was delightful even if we missed such things as the Internet and cell phone service.

We had a childhood friend of mine and his lovely wife over for supper on our first night and then joined them for most of another day and evening in town and at their home.  One other days we explored the region, birded, and hiked about the Sam Rayburn Reservoir.  The weather seemed grand.

The week over we moved due south to the low hill and town called High Island on the low strand of the barrier island east of Galveston called the Bolivar Peninsula.  A several mile wide dome of rock salt extruded to the surface to form a platform on which soil collected and an oak grove sprouted surrounded by salt marsh prairie just north of the line of low dunes behind the Gulf beach. 

We met a friend there who we had first met last autumn (spring) in Peru.  It turns out she ran the Audubon preserves along the Bolivar Peninsula for more than a decade.  She took us birding and convinced us to join an international piping plover survey the next day.  So, we had a busy time birding in one of the birdiest spots in North America.  We also visited the town of Galveston that was to be the industrial center of eastern Texas.  A little thing called a hurricane visited the town in the Year 1900 and put an end to that and a few thousand of its residents.  The port and industry moved inland a bit to a town called Houston. 

We went there too chasing a Groove-billed Ani and found a wealth of oil refineries, manufacturing plants, and a major port.  One looks at the infrastructure and imagines its cost and the risk of investment.  This region is hurting a bit now and struggling.  Today we paid $1.42 per gallon for gasoline and almost $0.60 of that is federal and state tax.  We are blessed at the resources that the development of fracking has given us.  I wondered what discovery would enrich our nation after the development of the micro-computer and the Internet.  Who would have thought oil?  Thirty years ago we worried how we were going to heat our houses in the future.

Today we crossed the Houston Ship channel by free ferry.  For those three miles our motorhome towing auto achieved a rate of an infinity of miles per gallon.  I looked both ways but was very glad not to be captaining the vessel across that busy waterway.

We did burn gasoline continuing down the Texas coast.  The land was low.  Most is in ranch and farm land.  The soil is rich but moist.  Pasture and lawns were adorned with crayfish tubes and fire ant mounds.  Both critters need air above the water. 

The weather forecast for this week is mild until mid-week and then chilly again for a day or two.  No freeze here though.  Not even a frost.  The mosquito I see flying in front of the television should be happy about that.  There were plenty of insects on High Island and a few came in despite our efforts. 

Tomorrow we will search for a bird we have never before seen.  Here we tour and bird and enjoy the mild weather.  We’re very glad that Texas is now part of the United States and that so many Mexicans want to come here instead of leave it.  Odd what a difference is culture and institutions can mean.  So easy to forget it when one is born on this side of the border. 

Our next stop will be in Kingsville in big ranch country.  Then we reach the current border region.  More adventures ahead.