21C and calm when we woke up. We had planned to go to the organised breakfast today, but neglected to set the alarm and missed it!
I spent a bit of time sorting out seats on all the flights we had booked yesterday and managed to get what we wanted. The trip will involve our longest flight yet at 13hours 40 minutes from Seoul to Chicago.
Next came some work on the truck. I have wanted to replace the wiper blades for sometime, and finally got around to it. I hate wiper blades!! Took me about 15 minutes to get the first one off and 15 seconds for the second one. It then took another 15 minutes to put the first one on and 15 seconds for the second. Tomorrow I could replace both of them in a minute, next year will take 30 minutes again!
The truck also got a good vacuum and the rubber mats were washed, then Lyn cleaned all the trim and glass inside. Poor truck doesn’t know what’s happening, a wash last week and a clean-up today!
This afternoon we went off to a wildlife refuge at Laguna Atascosa, a large (dried-up) wetlands area about 20 miles from here. The refuge has a few claims to fame, it is the home of the majority of ocelots in the US. The ocelot is a member of the cat family and looks like a scaled down jaguar (not the 4 wheeled variety). It also at the cross-roads of a number of bird migratory routes and over 450 different species have been recorded here. Among a few we saw yesterday were cardinals, green jays, blue heron, egrets and hawks. There was also an alligator that had adopted an old concrete tank which staff now keep filled with water.
There was a 15 mile loop you could drive around, unfortunately there wasn’t too much to be seen. We did see some coyotes walking along the road and a deer down by the shore
Deer in Laguna Atascosta Refuge
At one of the lookouts we also saw some graffiti, Texas style.
Texas Style Graffiti
About 90% of the area that should have been under water had dried up due to the prolonged drought conditions down here, and this limited the number of animals we saw.