It is amazing what a roadrunner looks like in the cold! He is a big speckled ball with a long tail. Somewhat more like a mini turkey until he pulls it all back in to run. Weird. Most other birds are a lot fluffier too. The Javelina seem to be hiding out in the brush out of the wind. The coyote was out though. He wandered through camp several times.

Our water lines in the basement (storage compartment) froze last night. Guess we discovered how cold we can stand unless we do some more winterizing. Seems there was no real damage once things thawed.

We were in shorts and T-shirts when we got here and had a nice day to hike the next day. We walked out to “The Window”. It is up in the Chisos Mountains and is a cut through a high mesa with a view out across the Mexico mountains. Great view. Since then, the chill has been on. We have had severe winds and down to 19F in camp at night. It didn’t make it out of the 20s all day today with light snow falling on the Sierra Del Carmen Mountains across the Rio Grande. Tonight’s forecast is single digits! We have plenty of propane and can run the generator in the daytime to recharge the batteries for the furnace but no power at night so no electric blanket…..long johns to bed it is! We don’t get TV or radio here so not exactly sure of the minute by minute weather further north; but, what we do hear doesn’t sound so great anywhere right now. We are going to ride it out here. It is supposed to get back in the 50s by weekend.

I chose a Stokes Field Guide. They had National Geographic, Sibley’s and Kauffman and even some others but this one looks like a good fit for me. Thanks Logan folks for the Borders gift certificate. It was perfect.

We had a leak in our fresh water tank. We have been carrying our water by the gallon for three days. We patched the tank and dried out the carpet then put it all back together tonight. So far, no more leak. Hooray, no more carrying water.

Oak smoked, dry rub BBQ. Lunch was fantastic. They had this cream corn too. It’s an odd side to specialize on I guess but really tasted like fresh corn. We had a little trouble figuring out how to order. It is actually a buy-by-the-pound kind of set up. More like a meat market. They weigh out what you want (brisket and some ribs for us) and serve it to you on butcher paper. No frills. No fuss. Finger licking good. Look it up if you are ever in Texas.

The city has a free public breakfast feast accompanied by loud country music. They fed 55,000 people last year between 4:30AM and 9AM. We were planning to brave the crowd and have the experience today, blaring live country music and all. But, the campground host threw a smaller scale version of the breakfast here, so we did that instead. It was fun and probably a little more our speed. We met about 10 couples who are camping here and had some great breakfast burritos and biscuits and gravy. Fun and yummy.

We saw a bunch of wild turkeys, more deer, many armadillos, lots of raptors and more little shore birds that all look alike in the winter. We fished for a few hours but not even a single tap. Maybe it was the really weird hooking green night crawlers they sell here? They stained my fingers……

I’m sitting out at the picnic table blogging. A Javelina just walked by (oh yeah, it looks like a pig) and four deer. Now I took a quick break to see the two great horned owls Kent was taking pictures of. We have only been here a few hours so far….it seems this is going to be a good place to stay for a while.