Happy Year 2010

It does not matter if you call this year two-thousand-ten or twenty-ten, it just matters that you make a good year of it. We plan to make it a little like last year, but a little different.

We have heard that whatever you do on New Years Day you will be doing a lot of during the year. We might be in trouble. We drove to a friends house and celebrated the big eve, then drove back to the motor home. Oh well, we live on the road anyway. NYE was brought in with lots of music and then Dick Clark. Being in the Central Time Zone, the crystal ball dropped at 11 pm. Being the old fogies we are we were in bed by 11:30. (Did I mention we had a long drive on New Years Day, we wanted to be home bfore the big games started, so it was a early rising for us.) Not even any pictures!

The year has started well. We have seen a few more friends, seen more of the family and spent many days meeting people at the refuge from all walks of life. And speaking of walks, we had the opportunity to help with the firefighters pack test.

To be a certified wildfire firefighter, you must walk three miles with a forty-five pound pack in forty-five minutes or less. Having hiked on trails carrying our food, clothes and shelter, we can relate with the experience, that is, except for the timing issue. Our job was very easy. We stood at a point close to the middle of the walk (three laps on a one mile loop) with water. We also had to watch for runners, as you must walk the the entire trip. We took pictures and handed out water and generally cheered the groups on. There were people from a lot of different organizations, state, federal and local, participating. Seeing how some of these folks, who are in pretty good shape, handled it, we are glad we do not have to meet the pack requirements.

Sally got the bright idea we needed a King Cake. The area is big into the Mardis Gras season. Jan 6 is the celebration of the Epiphany, the day the three wise men arrived to see Jesus. This is the tradional start of King Cake season (only during Mardis Gras season). We waited until the 7th so the whole volunteer/visitor services group would be at the office for our weekly staff meeting.

We took a quick trip to Atlanta to see friends. Our buddy Chuck was in from Costa Rica. Kurt came over the Chuck's house for a visit, Sally and Sandi went shopping and Tom and Don watched playoff games. We also had lunch with Larry and his family - real good Mexican.

Then we visited Sally's sister Suzanne and niece Bethany and great niece Layla who were down from IL. The summit took place at nephew Zach and Sam's house with another great neice Annalyn. Then a quick trip to Anniston to get mail and the trip home. (Remember the thought about traveling on New Years Day, is it already true?)

(Deep breath) Meanwhile, back at the ranch (it is an old radio/TV serial joke for those of you too young to remember), we have had a hopping visitor trade. People from Canada and the northern U.S. come down to the area for winter. We also saw two of our volunteers, Ron and Linda, move on to their next duty station. They are missed. But we had new arrivals. Rocky and Jan and Kerry and Sharon. They are all nice folks. We wish we had more time with them, but we will headed back to Eufaula at the end of the month.

We are close enough to New Orleans that we got to visit with Stephen, Katie and Grady a couple of times before we moved farther away. He's getting big now - and it can be hard to keep up with him.

Our little G-man. He's walking pretty well now, but still learning to navigate on rough terrain. Note his first little boo-boo...







We took advantage of a few last sunny days to explore the other two refuges in the Mississippi coast complex - Bon Secour and Grand Bay. The trip to Bon Secour involves a ferry ride across Mobile Bay to Dauphin Island. That definitely confused our GPS...

Beach at Bon Secour

Bon Secour trail...

Grand Bay NWR / National Estuarine Research Reserve Facility

Ferry ride has Gabby confused...

Speaking of the volunteer work, Tom got to lead a couple of crane tours - one was a spur of the moment deal with a couple of guys from New Zealand.

We got chances to see more of the cranes as well. The biology staff released five more young captive-raised cranes into a pen on the refuge to acclimate them to their new home. Though our help was limited to moving the cranes traveling boxes into the pen, we still got plenty of pictures. The cranes have 'brailes' on their wings that allow them some movement, but not enough to fly. The pen contains a pond for drinking and roosting at night, areas to feed, and a little feed shed for supplemental food.

Releasing the Crane

At home...

This is one of the few times that they let the cranes see and hear humans. Otherwise, they want the to associate only with other cranes. After the release we left quickly. When the staff goes back to feed them, they wear crane costumes. See Sally modeling the costume at left....

Once the cranes have spent some time in the pen, the staff does a study to see if they are ready to be released. We spent two hours in a blind writing down what the five cranes were doing at the start of each minute. We thought it might be boring, but the time passed very quickly. We did get to use our rubber boots - the trail to the blind is pretty wet!

On our last day, w participated in a Mardis Gras parade in Ocean Springs on Jan 30th. Tom got to drive the float (a decorated truck pulling a similarly decorated trailer). We had a couple of large speakers for the music, a crane (not a live one - an intern dressed in costume!), plus several folks dressed very warmly dancing and throwing beads to the crowd. Even though the parade was in the afternoon, it was still very cold. Lineup was on the beachfront (think 10-15 mph winds, grey skies and temps in the low 40's). It was better once the parade got rolling up into town, especially since we were all dancing and throwing.

Then off to Eufaula. So there, now you know how boring our life really is.