South Texas Refuge Complex

After meandering our way from Oklahoma, we arrived in the "Valley" on December 2. Storing our rig, we spent the first two weeks of December time-sharing in Florida at Deerfield Beach and Sarasota. We moved into our winter home at Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge on December 22 and started our volunteer jobs just before we drove our little car back to Austin to spend Christmas with family. Then after taking a cruise the first part of January, we have now settled back into a routine.

Our current job is working for the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge as Refuge Operation Specialists. Our job is to help monitor over 100 remote refuge tracts for illegal poaching, ATV use, dumping of trash and other violations. We inspect boundaries, replacing signage, locks and gates and addressing repair needs to aid in the protection of important wildlife habitat. We plan to be here until the end of April.

Favorite Memories of the Wichitas

Life on the Refuge is like living in a wild animal park. Every time we ventured out to work or play we were surprised by something new to see.





We enjoyed passing Prairie Dog Town daily.








Trapping Raccoons was one of our "Sporting Events". After capturing 30 raccoons, 3 opossums and a hungry neighborhood dog, it seems we ran out of time before we ran out of critters.










The Longhorn Auction in September, is a major Refuge event. It is the first of two annual auctions. There is plenty of work involved and there are jobs for all staff and volunteers handling 193 animals and operating corral gates.

Kurt worked on restoration of this historic entrance arch. A new cattle guard was installed as well as drainage improvements. It was built in the 1930's by the CCC and used until the 80's when bypassed.











Once again volunteers helped the staff with the bison auction held in October. There were 168 animals sold.

One morning we spotted this elk less than 100 yards from our campsite. Over 1000 of these beasts are said to live on the Refuge. During their fall mating season the bull elks serenaded us with their odd bugling sounds.

If you would like more information on the Wichita Mountains National Wildlife Refuge, click on our blog entry title above.

We're OK in Oklahoma

We arrived here in Wichita Mountains National Wildlife Refuge on August 2. This beautiful 60,000 acre refuge was opened in 1905 by the Department of the Interior and is managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. It is located in the remote southwest corner of Oklahoma approximately 20 miles west of Lawton.

We have "no service" on our cell phone and have found no reliable TV stations using our roof antenna. We are happy to have a Wilson Cellular booster system in our fifth wheel and can usually get two bars of cell service for our outgoing phone calls. I think our associates here wish they had one of these contraptions, too. We have been told no one has ever been able to use a cell phone here at the Compound (what they call this little village where the rangers and volunteers live). We are breaking new ground. It sure beats sharing the available land based party line provided by the refuge. They do provide a good WIFI connection so we are using that for Internet and e-mail service as our VZ broadband (Air Card) will not function here.

We are both working three days a week. Presently, Virginia spends one day a week at the Refuge Headquarters digitizing images and old newspaper articles for the archives and two days a week helping at the visitor center. Kurt is assisting the maintenance staff with various projects including repair of livestock fencing. Kurt has also has been dabbling in Biology (Natural Resource Management) by trapping and relocating problematic raccoons in the volunteer RV Village.

Rush hour traffic here involves stopping for groups of bison or Texas longhorn meandering across the road or waiting while a prairie dog or coyote runs across. This 92 square mile free range refuge contains over 1,000 elk, 650 bison and 1,000 Texas longhorn. So no telling when you will see a critter.


Each September the refuge staff round-up and coral the longhorn herd and then count, sort and check all the animals. Surplus animals are then sold at auction here at the refuge. A similar round-up occurs each October for the Bison. We are encouraged to help with these events. This should prove to be pretty interesting.

Upon arrival we placed our bird feeders. We have been amazed at the steady stream and variety of birds that have come to visit. Besides the usual suspects (cardinals, titmouse, chickadees) we have enjoyed seeing summer tanangers, painted and indigo buntings, humming birds, red bellied woodpeckers and white breasted nuthatch. We have a daily visit from the three wild tom turkeys who clean up the spilled seed.

We're Back!

We returned to East Fork Park on beautiful Lake Lavon, Texas, June 16. During our six week stay we helped to stimulate the economy by visiting all of our doctors and dentists. We even treated ourselves to colonoscopys. No we did not get a group discount. We enjoyed visiting Brian and Laura and our home church.
Our volunteering efforts allowed us to make a difference here by painting a restroom at the Avalon Day use park as well as tree trimming and brush removal at the Spillway Basin Park which is a favorite fishing spot just below the dam. We also had time to work on some invasive plant removal (poison ivy) and do some additional tree trimming at the East Fork Campground.

The Volunteer Coordinator, Matt, is moving to Lake Grapevine Army Corp. Park. We wished Matt well at his going away party on July 31st as we finished with our tour of duty here as well. This has become a sort of home base for us as we intend to return to North Texas periodically.

Lake Georgetown - OH BABY

We arrived at Lake Georgetown Army Corp Park on March 8. We are campground hosts at the Russell Park unit. This is a 27-site tent only campground that also has a day use picnic area, beach and boat launching area. We chose to volunteer at Lake Georgetown because of it's proximity to the Austin area, home of our new identical twin Grandsons.
On April 25, at 36 weeks, Kelly went to the hospital with high blood pressure. The doctors decided to induce labor. Jacob Christopher was born at 9:51 P.M., followed by Logan Matthew at 9:59 P.M. They weighed 6 lbs. and 6 lbs., 6 ozs. respectfully. Thankfully Kelly was able to give birth naturally with no C-Section.

Jacob was released from the hospital on Wednesday, April 29. Kelly had to stay an extra day because her blood pressure hadn't dropped enough. Logan, who was placed in Neonatal ICU right after birth because of a breathing deficiency, was released on Friday, May 1.

Ya Gotta Love "The Valley"

For the non-Texans out there, we are talking about the Rio Grande Valley in the very south tip of Texas. We arrived here in Harlingen January 6 and sure have been enjoying the sunshine, fresh picked oranges and grapefruit along with the warm days. We have also enjoyed some of the activities here at Tropic Winds RV Resort. Kurt even won $23 at Bingo last evening. We can almost live on that for 2 days!!! That's a laugh.

We had a feeling the daylight hours are longer here in South Texas, but we wondered if there was really that much difference or if it was our imagination. We decided to find out. Today, January 15, we checked the length of the daylight in three places. Detroit, Dallas, and Harlingen. Today Detroit had 9 hours, 26 minutes of daylight (sunrise to sunset), Dallas had 10 hours, 13 minutes, and Harlingen had a whopping 10 hours and 41 minutes. We knew that days were longer as we move further south but we were surprised that the difference was that great. A total of 1 hour and 15 minutes more daylight. Even an additional 28 minutes in Harlingen compared to Dallas was more than we had expected considering the distance. Gee whiz, the difference in daylight hours is almost as much as the difference in temperature!

Look What We Did On Our Summer Vacation

We enjoyed revitalizing Avalon Park and Hackberry Ridge Pavilion area, the day use park assigned to us for the summer. We created a huge burn pile trimming trees that were crying for a "haircut". Local residents bordering the park were joyful as new views of the lake appeared when the limbs came down. We were told it had been more than ten years since the last "haircut".
The Rangers threw a party for all the Summer help at Hackberry Ridge Pavilion at the end of the season. We feasted on grilled dove, barbecued wild pig freshly harvested from Lavon's 40,000 acres, fresh caught fish from the lake and Galveston shrimp. We all brought a dessert to share. It was great to see everyone a last time since many of us would soon be departing for new adventure.