Davis Moutains State Park

We headed back to the mountains and our next stay at Davis Mountains State Park.  We have really enjoyed the state parks of Texas, and it was good to be staying in one again.  This park has some positives and negatives.  The main negative is that we had no cell phone service or television while we were there.  We needed to work out some arrangements for our next stop, and it always took a drive or a hike around the mountain to get a signal.  But the positives certainly outweighed the negatives.

The most obvious positive was the beautiful Davis Mountains.
 

We were on a hike to the Indian Lodge at the other end of the park, and this picture shows the valley where our motorhome is tucked away.  For those that aren't interested in hiking, you can see the zig-zag road that will take your car to the top for great views.

We met two couples that were also hiking that day.  One couple was from Houston, and they were hosting their friends from England.  Their English friends were busy clicking pictures of everything Texan, and asked us to take a picture of the four of them.  Then they reciprocated by taking a picture of us.

The next positive of the park is the interpretive center and its programs.  We were surprised to see ranger-led hikes and programs scheduled during the week.  These usually show up on the weekends when the crowds are bigger.  Denisa went to the first programs on javelinas and owls. She learned the differences between wild pigs and javelinas.  The two are not related and you can tell the difference because the javelinas are the stinky ones, and the wild pigs have curly tails, as well as tusks you can see on the outside of their mouths.  So that evening when one showed up near our site, she could correctly identify it as a collared peccary--the more scientific name for a javelina.

She also learned that owls can hear so well because the bones in their faces are structured like satellite dishes that feed the sound waves into their ears.  They have an ear on each side of the "dish"--set at different heights on their head so the owl can determine height of the prey by which ear picks up the sound. Those tufts of feathers on the horned owl that look like ears are just for ornamentation.

After having to reiterate all the interesting facts she learned to Mark, it was easy to recruit him to go to the ranger-led hike the next day.  Ranger Tara does a great job of teaching in an interesting way, and some times she just gets lucky with her timing.  While on the hike, she told us that a pair of black hawks have just returned to the park, and they hang out with the vultures.  But you can tell the difference between the two birds by their flight patterns.  Vultures teeter on the wind looking for dead corpses, while hawks hover like kites in the air and can swoop down on live prey.  She just finished this description, when we found a black hawk kiting perfectly high up in the air.  It was a goose bump moment when we watched him swoop hundreds of feet straight down to snag his victim.  She was as amazed as we were to see this perfectly timed display!

We also enjoyed seeing the hummingbird nest in a nearby tree.  This tiny little nest is made of lichen and soft material like dandelion fuzz, and is woven together with spider web the female finds.  All this intricate beauty is woven together into a tiny nest just 1.5 inches wide.  It will hold two 1/2 inch hummingbird eggs, but because of the elasticity of the spider web, it can expand as the chicks hatch and grow.

 Tara hopes the hummingbirds will return to raise another family this year. As beautiful as that little nest is, don't even think this would make a nice souvenir.  She also pointed out that taking down a bird's nest can result in a $5,000 fine, so we won't be robbing any nests to decorate our motorhome.

Tara also showed us the habitat of the acorn woodpeckers in the park.  They use the electric poles as graineries to store their winter's supply of acorns.  They make holes up and down the pole, and then stuff a nut into each hole.


 In the adjacent electrical pole, they drill out larger holes for nests.  This woodpecker was doing some home remodeling as we walked by.  We would highly recommend any of the programs at the interpretive center to other visitors.  Great job Tara!

The last positive we noticed might be the most important to Mark.  They have free cookies (and coffee) at the headquarters building!  Mark is a connoisseur of cheap sandwich cookies, and he kept making excuses to stop by headquarters to ask questions just to get more snacks.  They also had a bowl of chocolate Easter candy and we thought it was necessary for a new piece before every hike in the park.  

The hike below was in the primitive side of the park, and we had to sign in and out and get a gate code since this area is not patrolled.  
  

However, there is a group of ten people building a new trail in this area, and they were camped high in the mountains.  They work for the Texas state park system, and they are putting in a new six-mile loop trail here.  The team works ten days in a row, living in tents in pretty remote areas to avoid the commute to their work site each day.  We came into their camp area and visited with them for a while.  They were fixing dinner in a huge five gallon cook pot.  Working all day probably builds up an appetite, and they certainly have an interesting lifestyle!

We started this hike at 4 p.m., which is almost too late for the 8 miles round trip.  The setting sun was highlighting the tall grass heads as we were hurrying down off mountain. 

We were signing out from our hike at headquarters just as it got dark.  Mark was more than a little disappointed to find the doors were locked so he couldn't get another cookie for the road.