One of the places we wanted to visit was the Santa Ana Wild Life Refuge located in Alamo Texas, not far from McAllen. And people have told us how 
wonderful it is, many birds, beautiful hiking and biking trails, etc. With the temperature in the 80's yesterday we got to the Refuge about 1pm. Unfortunately they don't allow bike riding right now - they were also flooded out from Hurricane Alex and the two dams being released this past summer have caused damage to trails. I told Dave that I felt that I was walking underwater - you can see where the water marks are on everything - some places the water was about 4 feet deep where others about 15 feet deep. Because of the flooding the vegetation hasn't come back yet. The waters just receeded in the area we walked about one month ago. No vegetation, no insects, therefore no birds and small animals. There is a fire watch tower that allows people to be above the treeline. And two towers with a rope bridge between them - we didn't cross that - just took some pictures of it. As we were standing on the top of the watch I am sure we were looking across to Mexico but with all the trees - oh well. While we were walking we saw a tree that 
sure looked like marks of an animal crawling up and then staying there. We can only imagine what became of all the animals. This picture shows the water marks on all the vegetation. And if you look closely you can see the trail where it is so dried out now that it's cracked open. We have not had rain since the middle of January and they say that this is normal. None in the forecast for the next 10 days either but highs in the upper 80s, lows at night in the low 60s - dream weather! We will have to come back to this park in a couple of years to see if the park has rebounded. The naturalist that we talked to said he hasn't seen many birds or animals, however yesterday during his nature walk he did see an armadillo. Wouldn't that been cool to see? Dave takes pictures all the time and while we were at the bird watching blind he captured these two red-wing black birds - the one in flight is awesome! He has started to use the tripod with all his pictures and I see a huge improvement on what he can do. As we check off the different sights we want to see, we still have the 'big kahuna' to go to - the Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge not far from South Padre Island. This is the biggest of all the bird watching/wildlife areas and we will probably go to that one early next week.
wonderful it is, many birds, beautiful hiking and biking trails, etc. With the temperature in the 80's yesterday we got to the Refuge about 1pm. Unfortunately they don't allow bike riding right now - they were also flooded out from Hurricane Alex and the two dams being released this past summer have caused damage to trails. I told Dave that I felt that I was walking underwater - you can see where the water marks are on everything - some places the water was about 4 feet deep where others about 15 feet deep. Because of the flooding the vegetation hasn't come back yet. The waters just receeded in the area we walked about one month ago. No vegetation, no insects, therefore no birds and small animals. There is a fire watch tower that allows people to be above the treeline. And two towers with a rope bridge between them - we didn't cross that - just took some pictures of it. As we were standing on the top of the watch I am sure we were looking across to Mexico but with all the trees - oh well. While we were walking we saw a tree that 
sure looked like marks of an animal crawling up and then staying there. We can only imagine what became of all the animals. This picture shows the water marks on all the vegetation. And if you look closely you can see the trail where it is so dried out now that it's cracked open. We have not had rain since the middle of January and they say that this is normal. None in the forecast for the next 10 days either but highs in the upper 80s, lows at night in the low 60s - dream weather! We will have to come back to this park in a couple of years to see if the park has rebounded. The naturalist that we talked to said he hasn't seen many birds or animals, however yesterday during his nature walk he did see an armadillo. Wouldn't that been cool to see? Dave takes pictures all the time and while we were at the bird watching blind he captured these two red-wing black birds - the one in flight is awesome! He has started to use the tripod with all his pictures and I see a huge improvement on what he can do. As we check off the different sights we want to see, we still have the 'big kahuna' to go to - the Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge not far from South Padre Island. This is the biggest of all the bird watching/wildlife areas and we will probably go to that one early next week.
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