Around the Refuge

My fellow volunteer, Kent, putting the finishing touches on our second replacement kiosk that we built.

We had to move this sign to here from a location abut a quarter of a mile from the road.

The office building here has a light that stays on at night and attracts quite a collection of moths.

Spyder lilies growing near the pond here.

One of the refuge trails near Lake Jackson had a small parking lot that was not large enough, so Kent and I were given the task of expanding it. We built a board fence arount the addition and leveled four truck loads of gravel to fill in low spots in the old and new areas.

 

The finished parking lot.

One day, instead of the usual alligator resting on this dock, a large diamond back water snake was sunning itself. 

After finishing the other parking lot, they gave us the task of fencing another one at a different trail.

One of the little lizards here.

Not sure what the name of this flower is, but there are several of them bloomiing around here.

This is a sign from the cemetery for the church that we attend in Brazoria. The parish of this church was the first parish established in Texas. 

We are finishing our last week of work here and plan on leaving for Des Moines on Monday.

Cold Spell Gone

 We had a few nights of 18 degree weather a couple of weeks ago. This was an unusual event for this part of Texas. It was accompanied by a few days of power outages. This wouldn't have been a problem up home, but here the water pipes are not buried very deep or insulated. We did some last minute preparation on the refuge plumbing but still ended up with some broken pipes in a couple of the buildings. We had our fresh water tank full in the motorhome and ran the generator for a few days until power came back on to stay, so we were luckier than many people in their houses.

The refuge had a couple of kiosks like this for posting informative signs. They were getting old a rotten and Kent and I were given the task of removing and replacing them. A few days work for each 

A few days work for each of them and this is what the new ones looked like.

Last Saturday we went out to some garage sales and ended up in Angleton, TX at lunch time. We tried out a Mexican restaurant there that we hadn't been to before. Food and service was great and I would highly recommend La Cosona. 

We have a couple of small alligators who live in the pond by the entrance gate here. Sometimes one or the other of them hang out on the dock.

There is another pond behind the shop here. We sometimes see a large alligator in here, but on this day we saw turtles!

A closer look. They looked to be about 3 foot across. The bright green on their backs is algae from the surface of the water. 

Driving around the refuge, we can usually find a few of these big fellows.

This area usually has a bunch of small ones like these.

Can you see the little ones here?

We watched the little ones for awhile and then the mom stuck her head out of the culvert.

Tearing Out More Boardwalks

 Several of the refuge trails have sections of elevated boardwalks because of the wet and high water conditions here at times. These have been in place for many years and have reached the end of their safe use. Kent and I started taking out some at another unit of the refuge last week. There were five sections totaling close to a half of a mile. This is what it looks like before we start.

The first thing we do is pry all of the boards loose. We had another volunteer here make us a couple of specialized pry bars to make this task a little easier. Then we drive along with a tractor with forks on the front to haul out the deck boards.

After the deck boards are removed, we have to cut the stringers loose from the posts with a saw and haul them out. Then we come through with the tractor again and pull the posts and haul them out.

We have to be on the lookout for snakes while we are working here, this one was under a pile of posts that I was picking up to load. Yes, it is a cottonmouth. Luckily we both remained calm and left each other alone.

We finished tearing everything out this week and and while we are waiting for a dumpster to load it into, we are going to start repairing this section of boardwalk that is not going to be torn out yet.

This is a typical sunrise that greets me when I step out the door to go to work in the morning.

January at San Bernard

Time has been passing quickly here. I normally work Monday through Thursday doing various work here. Work here varies from day to day. Most days are spent with Kent, another volunteer, and we work well together. Trail maintenance, building repairs and cleaning, tree trimming, and other jobs. Usually something different every day. One of our tasks was to tear out about a quarter mile of boardwalk trail that had deteriorated beyond repair. We cut it up into sections that we hauled out with a tractor and a group of young outdoor workers from an Americore related organization tore them apart and loaded the wood into dumpsters. 

Two of the other workers here tearing out boardwalk sections.

A section of refuge road that the trees had encroached on. I spent a morning trimming them back this far.

A observation deck on one of the lakes by the boardwalk that we tore out. Kent and I spent several days rebuilding the deck and the approach to it.

The finished product.

We had the weeks of Christmas and New Year's Day off, so one of the days, we drove up to Galveston.

We drove up the highway along the coast and drove on the beach part of the way.

We drove around the city and had a nice lunch there. We stopped here at the end of the island and watched some ship go by and then headed home on a different road.

There is a large field behind our motorhome and we have lot of animals passing through there, birds, deer, armadillos, and wild hogs like these. 

They soon spotted me and my camera and headed for the brush.

One of the close towns to us is Lake Jackson. The town was laid out by an engineer with the Dow Chemical Company to be a place for their workers to live as they have a large plant there. He seems to have had quite a sense of humor from the looks of the names of some of the streets.

Our old Norcold refrigerator in the motorhome died a couple of weeks ago. We decided it was time to replace it with a home unit. It took a little modification of the cabinet to fit it in, but we are happy with the result. More space and much colder freezer!

We are liking the temperature here, but we are having a lot of rain and damp weather, quite a change from the desert last winter.

Driving Around the Refuge

 We took a drive around part of the refuge today to see what we could find.

Our first find was this 10-12 ft alligator near the road.

I'm sure that the locals aren't nearly as impressed with these as us Iowans are.

Next we spotted a large group of small alligators 2-3 ft.

We watched them for quite awhile, there were as many as 12 in the group at one time.

Most of them headed off into the water, bet they were still watching us.

We stopped at the local library yesterday and they gave us a library card, so now we have some books to read. I am reading some about the local history of the area. Very interesting!

San Bernard National Wildlife Refuge

We spent 4 nights at an RV park on the beach in Waveland, MS. One day was spent hitting some stores and the rest of the time we just relaxed. Of course we had to go to Tony’s for a plate of Knock Knock oysters.

The weather was beautiful, so we took a couple of walks on the beach.

A couple of mornings we were able to watch this pair of eagles in a tree near the motorhome.

On Sunday we drove over to Lake Charles, LA and overnighted in a Walmart parking lot. Today we drove on to our winter destination, San Bernard National Wildlife Refuge. So far, it looks like a great place. This guy crossed our path when we were walking.