Road Trip - Texas to Tucson

Our trip to explore southwest Texas has come to an end.  We spent the last two days in the Alamo and McAllen areas exploring and seeking out a couple of target birds for Tom.  

His goal was to find 30 birds on this trip, and he found 34, so he’s a happy birder!

One of the 'twitches' we went on was to locate some snow geese and a Ross's Goose that were seen near a feed lot.  

We found the feed lot, got permission from the folks there to drive into the feed lot area, and there were the geese.  He also spotted the Ross's goose among the several hundred snows.

We were parked in-between a 'yearling' lot and the full grown cattle.  The youngsters were quite curious of us.

I've always thought of cows as being independent and not very demonstrative in affections.  For instance, horses will nuzzle each other.  Other that a cow nuzzling her calf, I can't say I've ever seen any thing that looked like affection.  These two cows were obviously sharing a tender moment, either that or a cow mind meld of some kind!  Maybe they know what's in their future!

I was able to spend some quality time off shooting the bugs and critters that I love.  I found some very fun butterflies and nice light to work with.

The Mexican Blue wing is ‘the butterfly’ to see in South Texas.  I was very lucky to capture this one as it was very late in the day.  I’m not sure if a butterfly roosts or nests for the night, but whatever they do, they’ve usually done it by the time I found this one!

We are both pretty tired from the long days, some long hikes and being on the road.  Unfortunately for this trip, we have to drive back.  We can’t just ‘sleep on the airplane’!   

So, we left Alamo at 6am and put the petal to the metal so to speak.  With most of the highways at 75 or 80 we were able to make good time. I had brought the iPod along which provided us with good music.  We just put it on shuffle and went through 567 out of 4482 songs on the drive home! It kept us both going.   

Our rental car was a Kia Soul.  What a sweet little car!  Fun to drive, roomy inside and definitely comfy for a long drive.  We ended up driving to the north side of El Paso in one day – 834 miles in 13 hours.  A meal and a motel room got us rested for the second day into Tucson.

We were into New Mexico and almost to Deming when the sun finally peaked out.  

While the timing was a bit more rushed on the trip back, we were able to retrace our outbound route to make a couple of quick photo stops.

Someone has painted and applied the Target store logo to this structure just South of Alpine.   

And then, near the town of Valentine as you’re driving along a very straight, very boring stretch of Texas country, 

in the middle of nowhere is a Prada building!   

It’s complete with shoes and handbags!  It’s a permanent art structure, sealed with items from the 2005 Prada collection.  

It’s one of those things that make you go hmmmmm.  Why?    

The Prada building is surrounded by a fence that has been decorated with mostly locks of one type or another, plus a few other bits and pieces.  Perhaps a time capsule in its own way.

I enjoyed someone’s sense of humor - they installed a door knob on the fence!

We arrived early enough to Tucson that we were able to pick up the truck from the mechanic and the repaired hydraulic arm for our slide out.

But that project will have to wait until after Christmas… as we’ve got one MORE adventure that came together at the last minute.  Stay tuned!