Adventures in Mission, TX

We have spent the last few days in Mission, a small town right on the Mexican border. It is basically composed of strip malls with everything in Spanish. We stayed at the Indian Ridge B and B, where we essentially had our own flat, a swimming pool, and chookies! These lovely Rhode Island reds were at first uncertain about taking our tortilla scraps, but once we offered our restaurant leftovers to them the next day, we were best friends. Every time they saw us outside they would run to the fence with high hopes. Mission roads were in poor condition, and we encountered goats, dogs and children wandering over the road. We suspect they have a serious vampire problem here too, as all the restaurants have a wall of crucifixes and garlic is applied liberally to dishes.

The only reason for coming to Mission was the "World" Birding Centre, which comprised several state parks that were excellent for wildlife and birding. I went on a morning bird walk led by park naturalist Javier (sporting an excellent Amish beard) which was completely unlike the Grand Canyon nature tours - we saw green jays, plain chachalacas, great kiskadees, javelinas and Altamira oriole. Inspired by the awesomeness of Javier's tour, I also went on the butterfly tour led by Jose. I was the only one on the butterfly tour, and it turned out that Jose was an ornithologist filling in for the lepidopterist, so we had a great afternoon of being distracted by cool birds while trying to figure out the butterfly species we were seeing. Continuing the butterfly theme, I walked the 2 km to the North American Butterfly Association garden while Shelly and Jon were on a fruitless search for a supermarket. As I entered the gardens, everyone stared at me walking up the driveway, and the staff member informed me that 'people don't really walk around here much'.

I did convince Shelly and Jon to come and watch for the elf owl (North America's smallest owl) emerge from its hollow in a telegraph pole. Despite the ticks and ferocious mosquitoes, they came and sat in the fading light and stared at the pole like idiots with me for 40 minutes. This effort was rewarded with wonderful views of the bird perched at the hollow entrance. It definitely outranks puppies on the cuteness scale. We also had our first firefly sightings of the trip which caused much excitement.





The three of us went to the Estero Llano Grande State Park for some hot wetland action. Here we got to tag along with two of the park's naturalists, Huck (he of the awesome ringlet mullet) and Kyle. We saw alligators performing the motorcycle imitation call and accompanying dance moves, and Shelly got to hold a baby gator (also high in the cuteness stakes). Roseate spoonbills, least bittern and Wilson's phalarope in breeding plumage were also here. We heard cane toads, which are native here apparently, and saw giant tarantula burrows. And what we think was convict labour. Best of all though was getting to see a common pauraque sitting on her nest perfectly camouflaged on the ground.

Shelly discovered some pretty good wildlife back at the B and B, where she was lounging by the pool instead of baking a cake due to inability to find a supermarket. There she found buff-bellied hummingbirds, green parrots, and a friendly green anole, a type of lizard. The anole showed off for Shelly, displaying his extensible peach throatfan. After these wild times poolside, we were unknowingly in for a wild night too. At about 10pm, we suddenly heard helicopters and sirens REALLY close to the house. Jon decided to investigate outside and, yes, the helicopters were over the house and the police vehicles were circling our block. This continued for about two hours. Checking the net, we discovered that there had been a home invasion by an armed gang two blocks away and that the police were now chasing the suspects. Not cool.

We are now in Corpus Christi, which has some nice coastal birds like American skimmers, but that is about it. We have, however, seen a giant faux sandcastle next to a mini golf place. We may just have to drop in there tomorrow before we head for Austin.

From Marfa we drove south to the border at Presidio and turned left to follow the Rio Grande to Lajitas - Mexico on our right and the Big Bend Ranch State Park on our left. This drive was incredibly scenic. When we arrived at the Badlands Hotel, designed to look like an old town from the Wild West, there were not many other guests, and of those there we were definitely the youngest. Seeing as we were in Texas, we figured we should learn how to shoot and ride good. That afternoon we were taken out to a shooting range that looked like an old film set of a town from a Western. We learnt how to shoot a colt .45 revolver, a Winchester .45 lever action rifle, and a sawn-off shotgun. We were all very good shots, and the rifle and revolver were the favourite weapons. Shelly definitely looked the part with her boots and her Stetson hat, and Jon's practice at first-person shooter games seems to have paid off.



The next morning Shelly and I embarked on a sunrise horse trail ride. I was very happy to be given the disabled kids' horse (Clovis) given my lack of equine familiarity, and Shelly got a pretty and feisty horse called Poncho. It was just us and the instructor (the lady who taught us how to shoot) wandering along canyons and up on mesa tops in the early morning light. It was nice to see the desert landscape and the birds (including a roadrunner! They're everywhere at Big Bend!) from a different perspective. It was also cool to ride a Western-style saddle.


The rest of the day was spent playing phone tag with a birder I was hoping could take us out the following morning, and we ventured down to check out the Rio Grande up close. That evening we went to the old ghost town of Terlingua to the Starlight Theatre (spelling is correct!) for a great dinner with live music and awesome margaritas. It was here we tried our first meat-fried-in-other-meat-fat dish - antelope fried in chicken. The Starlight was the local cinema in the olden days (1930s and 40s) when the local mercury mine was still active. After the mercury mines were no longer profitable, everyone left the area and the town became a ghost town. Recently, people have returned and started reinhabiting the buildings and it seems to be quite an arty and free-spirited community.

Very early the next morning, we returned to the Starlight to rendezvous with Betty the birder. It turns out that Betty helped work on saving peregrine falcons and Californian condors in the US, and so knew exactly what raptors were present and nesting in the Park. She took us to Cottonwood Campground in Big Bend NP and we saw many new birds, such as summer tanager, nesting grey hawks and yellow-breasted chat. We continued on to Santa Elena Canyon and had lunch with a spectacular view in the Chisos Mountains in a very nice 1970s dining room. We then went to the Rio Grande Village Campground to see nesting common black hawks.

We then drove out of the Park to Marathon, via a Border Patrol station. This time they did want to see our passports, and although they were happy with me and Jon getting out of the car to present them to the armed officers, Shelly was instructed to immediately return to the car. Clearly an untrustworthy alien. Upon arrival at Marathon, we decided we needed some road-trip ice-creams. Except Americans don't really seem to be into ice-creams. So our choice was somewhat limited (surprisingly for American consumer goods), but Shelly and Jon did find the frozen Snickers bars appealing. Jon also bought some Mexican candy, which had salt, sugar and tamarillo in it, and tasted as good as that sounds. We then continued along the border to Del Rio, where we were greeted by gorgeous scissor-tailed flycatchers. Dinner was at a suburban family-run Mexican place where Shelly unknowingly ordered two plates of food, one of which was a plate of steak. The food here was very tasty, and Shelly even managed to eat most of her food. We sampled cool Mexican soft drinks here too - pineapple and strawberry flavoured.

Guns and babes in Texas

Today we did some Cowboy Action Shooting here in Texas. This involved a Colt .45 revolver, a shotgun and a Winchester lever action .45 rifle. If the zombies ever attack, we're totally set.

Border Patrol times

Our time at the Casa de San Pedro (place of the giant breakfasts Jon mentioned last blog) was just wonderful. I lazed around in the courtyard taking photos and making good use of the free internet and free homebaked pie (five different types!). Suz went birding into Ramsey and Miller canyons and saw lots of nice birds, including spotted owl, painted redstart, red-faced warbler, magnificent hummingbird, Arizona woodpecker, Hermit's warbler and Bewick's wren. She came back a bit excited. The only downside was that the trogons, a bird she really wanted to see, were only likely to be on the Fort Huachuca land at this time of year. Since 9/11, foreigners have not been allowed in the fort. Never mind the US military bases in Australian land or Australia's allegiance to US causes in recent wars!

While Suz was fuming at American caution, Jon and I went for a drive to see Mexico. There's a little town called Naco right on the border with Mexico which has a border crossing and a post office. We decided to use the post office instead of the crossing, but we did have a peek at the country beyond the faux adobe official US border building. The Mexican side looked the same as the American side. The Americans have built a fence that runs along the border for a way (not the whole way, just part of it) in order to keep the Mexicans at bay, but it seems rather ineffectual. Apparently about 40,000 people cross the border per year in about a 30 mile section near Naco. Also the fence has all the support structure on the Mexican side, so it acts as a ladder. Smart one.

After we left Arizona yesterday, we drove through New Mexico and into Texas. We've been seeing hundreds of border patrol vehicles for the last few days, so today before we left El Paso, we decided we had to check out the Border Patrol Museum. It was a surprisingly decent little museum, especially in comparison to one we went to yesterday in Bisbee, AZ, which had 1800s clothes on wonky and handless 1970s mannequins. No zombie in a poker bar, but it was mouldy instead. Ick. I was expecting the Border Patrol Museum to be super-strength American patriotism and a bit kitschy. Instead, the lack of wall text presented the objects without too much propagandising, and left the focus on the objects, albeit within the context of the Border Security Museum. It also indicated how dangerous the job was and the lengths drug smugglers in particular have gone to in order to breach American borders. A group of Colombian drug smugglers built a submarine in order to get their goods into the US. The highlights for me were the vehicles. There was a fantastic Pontiac Firebird in a great shade of green, but the best two were the jeep and the helicopter because you could hop into them and move the controls and stuff. I like interactive displays and being able to touch stuff in museums.

It seemed it was the day for Border Patrol, as we got pulled over at a patrol stop near the border:

Border Patrol officer Lara (a dude): Hi there. Are you US citizens?
Jon: Ah no, we're Australian tourists.
BPoL: Do you have your passports?
Jon: Yeah, they're in our luggage in the trunk.
BPoL: Right, okay. Off you go.

Rather different from El Tovar's cocktail lounge!

Right now we're staying in a place called Marfa. It's a funny little town, a lot of abandoned buildings as well as some nice ones that have been fancied up. It seems like a tiny little place, way out in the (lightning stormy!) wilds of west Texas but Yeasayer played here last night. It sucks a bit that I missed them by just a day, but our hotel is one of the fancy buildings, and dates from the 1930s and is real purty-like. When Giant was being filmed out here in 1955 the Paisano was where they stayed too. It's possibly enough consolation for missing Yeasayer.

There's not a lot to say about Tucson. It seems to basically be a smaller version of Phoenix and a little bit cooler, both of which are good things.

In the morning we checked out the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum. It's really a zoo in the desert just outside town and was pretty popular on Saturday morning. There were some cool things to see like the roadrunner in the prairie dog cage, the butterfly house and the walk-through hummingbird aviary. Shellie continued her tradition of attracting invertebrates by getting a large butterfly to land on her. We were latched onto by a very friendly old man who "loved Australians" and wanted to talk about square dancing. Many photos were taken.

The afternoon was Shellie time and we headed downtown to the stoner/student district where Shellie picked up a sarong suit but unfortunately declined the silver satin hotpants. Suzi and I had coffee in the Revolutionary Grounds Maoist bookshop/tea room although I was too full to try the fine selection of vegan cakes. We passed by the hydroponics shop, herb store and hookah bar without making any purchases.

Moving on, we reached Tombstone late in the day and checked into the Tombstone Bordello (Shellie's choice) which we were sharing with several middle aged bikers. The couple from Liverpool who run the establishment had moved out to Arizona several years ago after deciding to live the western dream for real rather than continuing their western themed pub in northern England. Seems like a sensible decision.

Tombstone is a town that has done a lot without very much. Basically, it was a bunch of wooden shacks in the middle of nowhere that probably should have fallen down and blown away in the desert wind a long time ago, but a bunch of oddballs have kept it going and managed to squeeze a living out of the OK Corral gunfight myth. It's all rather charmingly ramshackle and unpolished. The OK Corral itself is like somebody's clapped out backyard with some rather creepy stiff animatronic puppets that reenact the gunfight. The Birdcage Theatre museum smells like a cross between a serial killer's basement and your grandparents' sock drawer. It's not entirely clear what the zombie cowboy is doing in the poker room but who really cares? Anyway, Suzi and Shellie enjoyed the eccentric displays of old artifacts and snapped up some very tasteful cowboy boots (Suzi's with yellow, red and aqua insets cut into black leather and Shellie's in luminous turquoise and brown).

Dinner was the usual overly large American portions - in this case a very nice USDA Prime steak and some commendable hamburgers followed by cowboy sized portions of apple cobbler and chocolate brownie. This made it kind of hard to force down the fruit salad, eggs, bacon, sausage, hash browns and toast that the brothel owners served up for breakfast, but we made a valiant effort.

Heading further south, we stopped off at the San Pedro river reserve for a bit of birding, but it was hot and the birds were being a bit shy so we moved on to Sierra Verde and stocked up on food for our two days at Casa de San Pedro. Being only a few miles from the border (we can see the fence from the highway), we inferred that the big white blimp hovering over town is some sort of observation platform. Border patrol agents are everywhere down here and we're expecting to have to through several checkpoints on our way out of the area.

This B&B is undoubtedly the best place we've stayed so far. It's a small place with a courtyard and fountain in the middle. There's a salt water pool, good internet access, a laundry, large grounds with access to the river and four kinds of pies baked daily sitting out temptingly, along with oatmeal cookies and brownies. We barbecued our dinner out the back down near the river while hummingbirds buzzed us and quail ran around under the mesquite. The only annoyance is the millions of tentworms that are dropping from the cottonwood trees now that they have stripped the leaves from them. Luckily our invertebrate magnet, Shellie, deflects their attentions from Suzi and me.

Breakfast, needless to say, was too large again. We were distracted from our massive portions by roadrunners running around in the garden outside. Today is a day for laundry and relaxing as tomorrow will be a long drive to El Paso after Suzi's birding pal takes her up into the mountains for some hot bird action in the morning.

IPad is proving to be a wonderful toy. It's an unmatched content consumption device - this is how the internet, google maps and browsing photos was meant to be. It's also going to be a great gaming device when some decent software starts coming out. Sitting around it playing Small World is a new kind of board gaming experience where you don't have to count tokens, check rules or worry about bumping the board. Makes cheating a bit hard though.

But the IPad is pretty useless as a work machine. Typing gives me a cramp and the lack of windows and multi-tasking makes serious work on it pretty much a joke. It really occupies a new niche, somewhere between a laptop and a smart phone. It's not a niche I was aware needed filling until I held one in my eager, sweaty hands.

Grand Canyon and beyond

The drive from Monument Valley to the Grand Canyon was memorable for the fog-like sandstorms and tumbleweed loping over the road. By the time we reached the Grand Canyon the sand and tumbleweed had gone, but the biting cold wind was still strong enough to knock the unwary elderly to the ground. We emerged from our car at the first viewing point along with all the other tourists for our first glimpse of the Canyon. It is incredibly vast, and you struggle to maintain any sense of scale it is so immense. The colours of the different geological strata are a visual treat, and you get glimpses of the architect of the Grand Canyon, the Colorado River. We continued on to our accomodation just outside the national park at Tusayan. We had booked this as we could not find many options left within the park, and the reasons why this hotel still had space left soon became apparent - a toxic smelling room, raw hamburgers for dinner, no wifi "due to the effect of the Grand Canyon", and tasteful 70s decor.

Excited by the prospect of a ranger-led fossil walk of the Canyon, I got up early the next morning and drove into the park while Shelly and Jon opted for the quality of the hotel breakfast instead. This was the best thing I did as the Canyon was lovely first thing in the morning. The wind had gone, there were no crowds, the sun was shining and the birds and mammals were out. I got in early to get a car park and wandered around. I found an elk, squirrels, various birds including nuthatches at their nest, woodpeckers and juniper titmouse. The light over the Canyon was beautiful. All this magic vanished as a large crowd gathered for the fossil walk - at least 100 people. Everything after this point was marred by the sheer number of people in the park. I went back and collected Shelly and Jon and we returned to the park for the nature walk in the afternoon but soon gave up and did our own walk. It was at this point the highlight of my Grand Canyon experience appeared - a Californian condor soared through the Canyon! It was huge!

We had managed to book a table at El Tovar, a fancy Arts and Crafts hotel for dinner. Although nothing spectacular as an Arts and Crafts example, it did feature a stone exterior, exposed beams and a wooden balustrade inside. When we arrived, we pushed through the throng of people in the lobby to the bar to get a drink before dinner. Upon ordering, we were asked to show some identification. Nothing unusual there. Except that by identification, they meant they wanted to inspect our passports. Which we didn't have on us. We then found out that our dinner reservation had been delayed by at least half an hour to 9pm. So back to Tusayan it was, to a delicious, prompt non-hotel dinner of pizza.

After some of the disappointments of the Grand Canyon, our drive to Sedona was much better. We stopped at the Flagstaff Arboretum and met some captive Harris hawks, and came across bluebirds and a confiding golden-mantled ground squirrel eating new green plants poking through the snow. The drive into Sedona was impressive due to brilliant red rock formations and forest. We checked out the Red Rock State Park, which turned out to be fantastic birding - with the added bonus of hardly any people! Stacks of feisty hummingbirds, a great riparian walk with petroglyphs and butterflies, and our first reptiles of the trip due to some welcome warm weather. We also visited the Page Springs Hatchery, where we saw our first chooks of the trip happily scratching away in knee-high lush grass. I think I walked about 50m in total, and managed to see heaps of great bird species here, including cedar waxwings (I suspect these were migrating, as they were in groups passing through) and secretive spotted towhees, two species I really wanted to see. The town of Sedona itself had a definite hippie/New Age feel to it, and was relaxed and friendly.

After Sedona we ventured to Phoenix, where we visited the amazing Desert Botanical Park, which had a great layout of the local Sonoran Desert cacti, including the saguaro and cholla cactus we had begun to see from the road. Many of the desert plants were in colourful flower, and it was here that we learnt that the palo verde (green trees) had chlorophyll in their green trunks. It also proved to be a great wildlife watching venue, with cactus wrens, curve-billed thrashers, phainopeplas, gila woodpeckers, several species of hummingbirds, lizards, and mammals.


While Jon went off in search of an IPad, Shelly and I retreated to the air-conditioned Phoenix Art Museum for their supposed fashion collection, but all we could find was a single room of American WWII frocks, much to Shelly's dismay. It was interesting however to see jackets by Adrian, underwear made from parachute material, and detailed military maps made of fabric. The wall text was inadequate, and even with the exhibition booklet in hand, it was hard to make sense of the items on display - what was made clear was the donor from whom the item came from. There was also an Ansel Adams exhibition which was interesting, as it contained some of his urban architectural works I was unfamiliar with. We could not help but be reminded of Frank Hurley, Olive Cotton and Max Dupain.

Our next destinations will take us even further south in Arizona - to Tucson and beyond.

Photos to come when we are able to post them!

The roadtrip begins!

So on Saturday 3rd of April we flew from San Francisco to Durango, Colorado. Perhaps stupidly, I was surprised by the presence of snow on the ground. And the accompanying cold. As the guy in the outdoor clothes shop said "You came to Colorado without bringing something warm??" Yeah. It was cold. We were only using Durango as a springboard for starting the roadtrip as near to Mesa Verde as possible, which the dude at the hire car place seemed really surprised by.




The highlight of Durango was not the people of Walmart but the hotel at which we lodged. The Strater was built in the 1880s and has been redecorated in a loosely Victorian style. Gorgeous handprinted reproduction wallpapers have been used in a typical late nineteenth century combination of frieze, fill and dado. The frieze in our room and many of the public areas of the hotel was a spectacular Aesthetic movement-esque number featuring stylised floral elements and geometric patterns (hello Owen Jones!) tumbling all over each other. The fill was a lovely William Morris style trailing willow leaves - gold leaves on a white background. The dado was sensible wooden panelling painted white. The rooms were furnished with original nineteenth century American walnut beds, dressing tables and side tables; as it turns out, the Strater has the largest collection of Victorian American walnut furniture.



The total effect was interesting. Aestheticism is all about excess - consumption of goods, display of goods, a profusion of eclectic objects and pattern EVERYWHERE. Often, there would be three different patterns upon the wall in the frieze-fill-dado combination, as well as many different textiles on furnishings and window dressings. Unsurprisingly, this style seems too cluttered for modern tastes as there is stuff everywhere, and (allegedly) the eye can't rest. The furniture in the room doesn't appear particularly Aesthetic to me (but I am better with wallpaper than with furniture!), being much simpler in design - maybe even a bit colonial revival? The textiles were similarly muted, although in a Victorian kind of vein. What I liked was how, in combination, the two quite distinct styles of the furniture and the wallpaper gave the broad appearance of historical accuracy, whilst remaining comfortable for modern sensibilities. Is the success of the interior design scheme postmodern comfortableness with the mixing of historical styles or is it just playing on popular conceptions of what Victorian style was about? Either way, it was cool.

From Durango, we drove to Mesa Verde for architecture of a completely different kind. Between around 750 AD and 1300 AD, people called Anasazi by the Navajo and Puebloans by the Spanish inhabited the top of a huge mesa in the southwest corner of Colorado. In the thirteenth century they were building the most amazing houses wedged in the cliffs that were accessed by ladders. However, around 1300, they all just left. Didn't even pack up - just left. The Hopi tribe claim to be descended from the Anasazi, and the ranger who led us around the Spruce Tree House dwelling emphasised the continuing nature of the culture that inhabited the area. He said that the Hopi and Navajo traditions argue that the people left the mesa because, spiritually, it was time to move on; western archaeology thinks maybe there was a catastrophe of some sort.

After Mesa Verde, we drove through Utah into Navajo land (best road sign: "Friendly Indians behind you!") and into the Valley of the Gods, a precursor to Monument Valley. This whole area would make the best geology excursion ever. There are layers of rock, which have eroded at different rates and now form weird shapes (including a chicken!). Valley of the Gods is an apt name. It's as though one is trespassing in an alien landscape, and the huge formations seem uncannily watchful. Going to view the Goosenecks, where the river had gouged out canyons in a looping, gooseneck shape, was a bit of a relief. There was water and there were birds, including a swift that buzzed Jon. Life makes the landscape seem friendlier.

Monument Valley was not quite like in the movies. Impossibly, it was bigger. And better in its lack of John Wayne. There was also quite a high wind whipping dust and red sand into the air, which, as we came in just before sunset, made the most amazing atmospheric effects on the mesas and buttes. It was less weird than Valley of the Gods, maybe because there were people there, and a few buildings. One of the buildings was the View Hotel, which had a room with a view that I doubt will be bettered this trip. I voluntarily got up early to watch the sun climb (not quite from the horizon, I wasn't that motivated!) behind the Mittens. This was definitely worth the sandstorms we encountered getting there and away!

Jon admires the view from our balcony at Monument Valley :)