We had planned in 2021 to take a series of international birding tours during the year, with short forays in between, rather than taking a single long road trip. However, the first several tours have been cancelled because of COVID-19, and the remainder are uncertain. So the new plan is to spend most of April […]
Category: Natural History
To El Paso, At Last
We departed the Everglades on Jan. 3, heading for Little Manatee River State Park, which had one site free up for the week, probably from a cancellation. This park is about halfway up the peninsula, near Tampa Bay. While there we paddled on the Manatee and Little Manatee Rivers, and also canoed out to Shell […]
Exile in the Lower Rio Grande Valley
When visiting the Lower Rio Grande Valley (LRGV), we often get a room in an extended stay facility rather than camp, for a break, and also because the cost is about the same, and air conditioning is nice given the high humidity and temperatures in the region. We stayed in Woodspring Suites in Pharr, which […]
Paddling in NE Minnesota
After leaving Wyoming, we drove about a thousand miles in three days, staying at a campground one night to do laundry, and stopping to do some badly-needed shopping. We arrived in Minnesota on September 1 and ended up leaving on the 30th, finally driven out by predictions of a full week of cold, rainy, windy […]
The Central Rockies, Part II
After leaving Crested Butte, CO, we headed east and spent a couple of days in the Gunnison Basin, hoping to run across the scarce Gunnison Sage-Grouse. The split of this species from Greater Sage Grouse was momentous because prior to 1991, this population had never been recognized as distinct even at the subspecific level. It […]
The Central Rockies, Part I
On July 1, we left Great Basin National Park, in east-central Nevada, and drove across Utah to its northeastern corner, to explore the Uinta Mountains. For the first time since mid-March, we essentially returned to our original schedule and itinerary for the year. Our 2020 plan called for spending the months of July and August […]
The Great Basin Revisited
After leaving the Huachuca Mountains in southeast Arizona, we got a cell signal for the first time in several days, and upon seeing the number of messages left by Eileen’s siblings while we were incommunicado, we knew that there was a family emergency. One evening after dinner, Eileen’s father, age 91, lost consciousness and never […]
Southeast Arizona
After vacating the Great Basin Desert a second time, due to unseasonably cold weather, we spent four nights on Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land in the Pahrump Valley in Nevada, just a hundred yards from the California border. We had visited the California part of the valley several times before retirement, looking for uncommon […]
Great Basin Retreats
This blog post is longer than would be ideal, but I don’t see an easy way to split it up, so I ask your forbearance. The last month has been pretty challenging. Since I last wrote, many areas we hoped to visit, such as most state and national parks, and some national wildlife refuges, have […]
A Tale of Two Deserts
[Written Match 20] Last night, it rained steadily at our dispersed campsite at 2700 feet elevation, with the temperature dropping into the thirties. This morning, when we woke up with the first rays of sunlight, we were treated to the splendid sight of the mountains ringing our valley, being covered with fresh snow, to within […]
Nomadic Naturalists 