June 22-23, 2013
Saturday
Our Limon, CO motel is nice and quiet so we stay another
day to get some work done. My book projects are piling up—got two more
inquiries about editing more books! Yikes! The current book is a 2000 page
manuscript on “seeds”—what makes every kind of seed in the world start to
germinate or go dormant, etc. Who knew? Jack works on his book too and we both feel a
sense of accomplishment after this quiet day of working. Not much to blog
about. We do venture across the road to Oscar’s Bar and Grille for supper and
it’s pretty tasty. (I must be in my editorial mode, as I notice that the sign
on the road says “Grill and Bar” instead of “Bar and Grille” as the one on the
building does.) We watch silly movies on HBO till the wee hours (like George of the Jungle—oh man…).
Sunday
We’re off to Kansas now, and things are REALLY flat here.
Also, we see a lot of the little oil well pumps, which DuWayne, our tour guide
from the last blog, called “grasshoppers.” A good name for them since they bear
a reasonable resemblance.
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Thar's black gold in them thar flat plains of Kansas. |
Kansas, as we remember from a cross-country trip
several years ago, has excellent interstate rest stops. We stop at the first
one, which advertises “Free Coffee,” and it’s great. We ask the friendly volunteers
manning it for some information on a birding spot that I read about, the
Cheyenne Bottoms wetlands/wildlife area, and they come through with brochures,
birding lists, and camping recommendations. This is supposed to be one of the
top 10 birding spots in the whole world, and we need about 30 more birds on our
list to reach 100 before we get home, so we decide to detour about 30 miles out
of the way to go there in hopes of getting a good portion of these added to our
list.
We get a little bit lost trying to find the visitor’s
center and campground, since there’s not much in the way of signage, but we
finally get our bearings by combining 3 different documents and maps. I’m
juggling papers in the front seat while Jack drives. This place is HUGE—over
40,000 acres of flat grassy wetlands—and we’re apparently the only people in
it. We never saw another human during several hours of driving slowly along the
gravel roads that crisscross it, trying to spot birds. We never did make it to
the visitor’s center, which was probably closed by now any way. It looks like
the Midwest drought, and farmers using lots of irrigation water, have
negatively affected this place, since spots labeled “Pools” on the maps we have
are nothing but mud flats and greenery. There are some little places with
actual water, but not many. The bird count is disappointing, since we were
hoping to get a bunch of water birds, but there aren’t any, since there are no
large bodies of standing water. But we did get a few new birds added to the
list (only need 24 now) and it was lots of fun trying to identify the ones we
saw. It’s a neat place anyway, a great wildlife preservation area—the largest
wetlands preservation area in the country, apparently. But we’ll have to stop at some actual lakes along the way to check off a few more water
birds, since I think that’s the only way we’re going to reach 100! (I’ve given
up on the painted bunting for now—I think we’d have to go to Florida to find
it…)
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The Cheyenne Bottoms wetlands/wildlife area. According to maps at the Dinosaur Museum in Colorado, Kansas and all the "plains" states used to be a shallow sea way, way back in time. No wonder it's so flat here. |
We drive back to the nearest town of any size, Hoisington,
and quickly find a little RV campground in a parking lot behind the community
center. It’s apparently run by the city; it has electricity and water hookups
and is only $15/night. Nice.
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Twilight view of Hoisington, KS from our RV campsite. |
It’s a beautiful night with a big orange full or
near-full moon that I’m looking at right now. Peaceful out here on the prairie…
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Full moon over Hoisington from our campsite. |
Where we are now:
Bird species count: Vermilion flycatcher, turkey vulture,
Bell’s vireo, *golden-fronted woodpecker, Say’s phoebe, northern cardinal,
greater roadrunner, house finch, common raven, *northern rough-winged swallow, *summer
tanager, *prothonotary warbler, *yellow-breasted
chat, *yellow-rumped warbler, northern mockingbird, mourning dove, cliff
swallow, Mexican jay, black-headed grosbeak, black-chinned hummingbird, Wilson’s warbler, *Scott’s
oriole, chipping sparrow, house sparrow, lesser goldfinch, black-crested
titmouse, acorn woodpecker, scrub jay, *western kingbird, white-winged dove,
*canyon towhee, *Grace’s warbler, *zone-tailed hawk, *curve-billed thrasher,
Bullock’s oriole, Gambel’s quail, great horned owl, black-throated sparrow,
*cactus wren, ladder-backed woodpecker, white-crowned sparrow, brownheaded
cowbird, Brewer’s blackbird, *pyrrhuloxia, hooded oriole, verdin, American crow,
Anna’s hummingbird, dark-eyed junco, white-throated swift, Steller’s jay,
mallard, common egret, brown pelican, western bluebird, loggerhead shrike,
Audubon’s warbler, robin, Canada goose, black-billed magpie, red-winged
blackbird, redtailed hawk, American dipper, *yellow warbler, tree swallow,
osprey, mountain bluebird, peregrine falcon, green-tailed towhee, rufous-sided
towhee, common grackle, eastern kingbird, dickcissel, rock pigeon, killdeer, barn
swallow
State count: 15 [Virginia, North Carolina, South
Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona,
California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Kansas]
Odometer count:
Surber, VA: 107,435
Hoisington, KS: 115,946
Accommodations avg cost: 77 nts, avg $13.96/night
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