Feeling welcome at Davis Mountains State Park

We've been driving west beside the Rio Grande River for the past month, and we finally turned the motor home north. Our next destination was the Davis Mountains State Park. Although they aren't as tall or jagged as the Rockies, we were planning to do some mountain hiking. You can see Denisa in the middle of the picture below, surrounded by the David Mountains.

As we drove north, our elevation increased, and we saw patches of snow along the road from the storm we experienced several days ago. It looks like it's still winter in these southern mountains.

We also passed through our last inspection station as we headed north. We've been through a hand-full of these border patrol stations in the last month as we traveled along the border of Mexico.

Even though we are now past spring break and in the shoulder season, we still have lots of competition for good camping spots. We could only get a three-night stay at this popular state park even in the middle of the week. We love the spacious, uncrowded camp sites, and it feels good to return to this park that we enjoyed six years ago.

As we surveyed that mountain behind the motor home, Mark spotted movement in the rocks. Do you see the aoudads scattered around the rocks?

There were five of them, settling in for their afternoon nap as we were setting up our own camp.

While some state parks don't give much attention to making it easy for visitors to see the birds, the Davis Mountains State Park goes out of their way. They proudly list this as the "Best Little Bird Blind in Texas." It has indoor and outdoor seating for the bird watchers. But more importantly, it has a running water feature and multiple types of bird feeders that are stocked daily.

They actually have two different bird blinds in the park, and Denisa felt welcomed to Davis Mountains State Park as she started watching the birds.

The ranger at Big Bend told us that the large blue birds were Mexican Jays. North in the Davis Mountains, the signs around the bird blinds said that this is a Scrub Jay.

Mark got tired  of watching the birds, and started taking pictures of the bird watcher.

We remember this guy from the ranger-led bird walk we took here six years ago. This red-headed bird with a wide-eyed stare is an acorn woodpecker.

He drills holes into the electrical poles throughout the park. That becomes the granary, or the storage place for the bird's winter food supply. 

The acorn woodpeckers will fill all those holes with acorns, to be eaten later.

A new electrical pole had been placed in the state park, and this acorn woodpecker was working to make it into a new granary.

In the bird blind, this bird was pulling out the snacks left specifically for him.

We know that bird seed is expensive, so we appreciate a state park that uses some of its budget to feed the birds. It's also good to have lots of birds to watch, because there is no telephone or television signal in this park ringed with mountains. We are used to no television, as we have only had Spanish channels for the last several weeks. But we really do need our telephones to keep in contact with relatives and publish an occasional blog. So we had to make the five-mile trip into the town of Fort Davis each day to communicate with the outside world.

After hanging out in the desert for weeks, it was fun to have a mountain view. For those that don't want to hike, the Skyline Road is available to drive to this viewpoint.

From where Mark was sitting, we could look down over most of the state park. The large white building is the CCC-built Indian Lodge that is closed right now for renovation.  Closer to us was the campground where our motor home was parked.

We could also drive a little further down the state park road, where a CCC-built viewpoint made a rustic frame for a mountain vista picture.

The Davis Mountains were created when lava from volcanic eruptions seeped into underground horizontal spaces. As the softer soil wore away, structures named "The Sleeping Lion" and "The Plug" and "The President" were made visible. We know this information because we went to the ranger program entitled, "Rock Stars of the Davis Mountains."

That CCC  viewpoint is right on the edge of a palisade formed from that hardened lava.

That gave Mark a place to scramble over the rocks for even better views.

Straight below him, and visible only to someone that was crazy enough to scramble out to this point, was a beautiful claret cup cactus that was ready to burst into bloom.

We hiked to the very edge of the Davis Mountains State Park, where we had our first view of the buildings of historic Fort Davis. We visited this National Historic site on another day of our stay.

From here, we could also see the huge greenhouses that we remember from our visit six years ago. This is part of the Village Farms Company that provide fresh produce to grocery stores.

Denisa snapped a picture of one of the greenhouses as we drove through the valley earlier in the day. We were in awe of these huge glass buildings during our last visit, and found out that they were growing hydroponic tomatoes. We found out that they sold direct from the greenhouse on Fridays, so last time we showed up on a Friday to buy a few tomatoes. We learned that they sell only to wholesalers, with a minimum 25-pound purchase. So six years ago we bought 25 pounds of tomatoes. We had home-made salsa every day, and gave fresh tomatoes away to all our campground neighbors across the next two states.

This time we decided instead to buy a package of Village Farms tomatoes at the grocery store.

Everywhere in the park, visitors can expect to find wildlife. The mule deer can be quite tame, posing for pictures with their mule-sized ears hanging to the side of their heads.

But when spooked, those proportionally large ears perked up to the top of their heads as they made a quick departure.

We saw that the javelina also hung out near the campground. Their more formal name is collared peccary, and this side view shows that lighter line across the shoulder that forms the collar.

This youngster was hanging out with the adults, and doesn't have the collar yet.

Not all the birds are eating seeds at the bird blind. This vermilion fly catcher was in the tree in the campground. He would obviously rather eat flies than seeds.

The aoudads are also called Barberry Sheep, because they were brought here from the Barberry coast of North Africa. Several sheep showed back up on the mountain in front of the motor home in the evening.

Even though they were walking through the tall golden grass, a little lamb is too cute not to take a picture . . . or two.

It's great to be back here for another visit. We feel very welcomed by the mountain views and wildlife of Davis Mountains State Park.