4th Post- Lost Malpes

After a very nice 4 days at Choke Canyon, on Monday 4/15 we proceeded on. I know that some of you are following on the Atlas, so -- we took I-37 north from Three Rivers to Pleasanton, then took to the backroads. In Pleasanton we took Hwy 16 west to Hwy 173, then north through Devine to Hondo. At Hondo we took Hwy 90 west to Sabinal, then Hwy 187 north through Utopia and Vanderpool to arrive at Lost Maples State Natural Area. We have stayed here before and it is one of our favorite places – the only drawback is that there is NO cell or internet service at the campsite (they do have pitiful wi-fi at the office). Guess we’ll be toughing it out for a couple of days.

After getting set up, we were going to put out a couple of hummingbird feeders in addition to the regular seed feeder. Oops – for some reason we had taken the hummingbird feeders out of the motorhome and also realized we didn’t have any sugar to make the hummingbird food with. So, we took a ride about 15 miles back to the small community of Utopia and found a farm supply store that had hummingbird feeders in stock. We also picked up a bag of sugar at a general store. Back at camp, LaVerne made up a batch of nectar, we got the feeder out, and within 10 minutes we had a couple of customers.

Tuesday, we did some backroad riding looking for birds and anything else we could see. Didn’t see many birds, but did see some interesting animals. I think I mentioned in a previous blog that this hill-country of Texas is well known for its exotic game ranches. Today we saw a couple of different kinds of ‘antelope’ type critters.

Also, we passed a big ranch that had a couple of Texas Longhorns, plus a breed of cattle we had never seen before. There were a couple of ranch hands working on a gate so we stopped and I asked them what they were. They said they were a breed called African Watusi. The cows weren’t really that big, but they had huge horns – not necessarily long, but really BIG around at the base. Amazing! Later, I found out that the actual name of the breed is African Ankole-Watusi.

Wednesday (yesterday) was a day of camping and R&R. It was cloudy and breezy most of the day with a little bit of a sprinkle early. Later in the afternoon the sun came out and we were able to sit outside a little while and watch our birds – not really any new ones. Still having hummingbirds, cardinals, titmouse, chickadees, and sparrows. Had a gorgeous almost full moon, then a gigantic T-storm during the night.

Today (Thursday) was moving day – didn’t have service enough yesterday to make this blog post, so I waited until we got to the next destination (more on that next time).