Better Weather, But....

Friday , February 10, 2017

The weather overnight was much cooler than recently and there was a bright full moon; not a cloud in the sky and a bit of a breeze. It should have been a better night for sleeping and it was, but Ellen has picked up my cold. Yes, in retrospect, it was inevitable. We are sharing a 22-foot van and it is pretty close quarters.

We were up early anyway, trying to get a walk to Eco Pond. We didn't beat the photographers though. They were out in force. It was a good day on the pond. The level of the pond must be dropping a bit as there was a large flock of Snowy Egrets prancing around fishing right in front of the small bit of open shoreline, the best view of the pond. It is tough to break through the phalanx of photographers with their tripods all in a row.

All the wading birds seemed to think that performing for the crowd was the order of the morning. The stilts were there along with several Greater Yellowlegs and a pair of Willets. The pond's lone Tri-colored Heron was also there, along with a couple of Great Egrets. It was quite a show.

We took our walk around the pond but saw little. The small songbirds were pretty quiet as the wind was up. We had better luck in the bushes along the road by the entrance where the highlight was finding a male Painted Bunting, a bird that looks like a painter's palette.

When we returned to the campground, our friends, Harry and Sally (and Nina), had arrived from Long Pine. They are here at Flamingo for two weeks, just about a week behind us. They had set up in a campsite only a couple over from us and we got together for a while.

I turned the van around to keep the sun off the refrigerator. This technique of turning it around to get the privacy and breeze in the evening and then get the shade during the day seems to be working well. The fridge temperatures are back down in the 30s where they should be. With awning out and staked down, the cooler breeze can come in through the open sliding side door (which has a makeshift screen arrangement to keep out the bugs.)

Afterward, we all headed over to the visitor center for a daily technology fix. I had journal entries to upload and had those excise tax bills to pay. I was successful with the former and failed in the latter, as I'd forgotten the sheet of paper (paper!!) on which I'd written the bill numbers and amounts.

H&S also have Google Project Fi phones, so they can be used for making calls via the visitor center Internet access point. Harry was successful, but Sally's phone just wouldn't work. We tried everything I could think of without success. She even chatted online with Google support without success. Everyone left but I stayed behind to catch up on my mail and news.

We didn't do much in the afternoon, but got together again for dinner in Speedy's screen house. The sun went down and the full moon came up and a good dinner was had by all.