Category Archives: Trip Planning

Florida Plans

I’ve mapped out a three month trip to Florida. It was much tougher than planning to go to the Southwest because Florida state parks fill up fast — often I grabbed the last site available — and the state wants all the money up front. So I’m sitting with over a thousand dollars on my AMEX card so I guess we’d better go.

I got some advice from my brother and sister-in-law, some birding friends, and used two birding guide books: Birding Florida by Brian Rapoza and the slightly-dated A Birder’s Guide to Florida by Bill Pranty.

Right now, we are planning to head out right after New Year’s, subject to weather forecasts.  We take the Airstream to Georgia and then down to a big birding festival in Titusville in January.

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We then hit some good birding spots in southern Florida for February.  (The Keys were out of the question since everything there is tied up 10 months ahead of time.)

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In March, we work ourselves up the western side of Florida, hoping to hook up with some old friends from Central New York who winter there. We end up in the Pensacola area as we think about heading home in mid-April.

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One of the nice things about hauling your own lodging is that you are flexible. If we find Florida to crowded, too wet, to0 Republican (just kidding!), we can head back to our old haunts along the Gulf Coast, and just eat some of the deposits. The long-range forecast (30% cooler and wetter down south and 30% warmer up here) adds another element but we’ve done the rainy slushy winter and Florida’s got to be better.  In my next post, I’m going to pick a few target birds for the trip.

South or Southwest

Autumn is here, the leaves are starting to change rapidly, and we’ve had several frosty mornings to remind us what is up ahead. While some folks plan their winter travel all summer, it takes a few wakeup calls, like the need for a wood fire, to focus my attention on where we’ll go this winter with the Airstream. Which has resulted in a “Florida vs Texas” question — we’ve always gone to Texas and last year to Arizona, New Mexico, and California — we’ve never gone to Florida. My brother and sister-in-law, who travel widely with their restored Airstream, like the Florida state parks a lot. So, I’m leaning in that direction but also finding that many others are — and have tied up good parks half-a-year ago.

The Airstream is parked on the back lawn for repairs before the next big trip. Trees are just showing color but are vivid on the mountains.

The Airstream is parked on the back lawn for repairs before the next big trip. Trees are just showing color but are vivid on the mountains.

I have started by thinking about attending part of the Space Coast Birding Fest in Titusville, Florida and have reserved a spot at a local KOA.  We try to avoid commercial parks but there are times where the “cheek by jowl” spacing has to be endured.  Other than that, I’m thinking of probably not going to southern Florida because those parks are all full. Right now, the agenda is wide open so if you have a favorite spot, let me know.

There are lots of Florida birds I’ve never seen — Wood Stork is a good example — so I’m looking to adding to my life list. We also wouldn’t mind avoiding the long drives we made last year. We are looking forward to visiting Pensacola again where back in the dark ages, I was a budding naval aviator. It will be fun to revisit the Cubi Point Officer’s Club which is part of the Naval Air Museum but reportedly, much tamer than when I was there. (Their chocolate milk shakes were to die for!) Well, not exactly.

So, with mixed feelings, we are planning to skip the places we’ve come to really like over the last four trips — Goose Island State Park, Falcon State Park, Lost Maples State Park, and Patagonia State Park to name just a few. If we don’t like Florida, we can always jump on I-10 and head west for a couple of months.  That’s the joy of flexible schedules and dragging your home behind you.

Spring Plumage

Well, in spite of my last post on taking our sweet time returning, we’ve decided to make a run for it from Mississippi, trying to stay ahead of some thunderstorms in the forecast, as we feel the tug of the Green Mountain State. We head for the Chattanooga area today (Saturday.)

I wanted to share some images that I took in Texas and Louisiana last week of some birds showing their breeding plumage. The first is an odd couple, a Cattle Egret (I had never seen the rust color) and a Tri-colored Heron.

Just a little further along, I spotted this Great Blue Heron looking quite dapper.

We didn’t see many Roseate Spoonbills this trip but this one, actively feeding, is well on the way to full breeding plumage.

When you take photos of perched or resting birds, often they are preening. Just as you shoot, the beak goes down to get to work. I dump tons of such images but this Great Heron just seemed to take the cake. I stood there, camera raised, foot on the dog’s leash, just waiting, and waiting. He won the battle because right after this shot, he flew, gronking away at us.

Still a handsome bird – and one that we won’t see again for a month or two in Vermont.

“Don’t Hurry Home”

I’ve been watching the temperatures in Vermont finally climb into the 40’s and hearing reports of signs of spring. I even emailed my friend who with his wife, keeps an eye on the house, and he replied that "Your driveway is opening up nicely" with the caveat that the Airstream could not make it.

Then later today, I got an email from my brother Barry with one sentence, "Don’t hurry home" and attached this photo of our driveway.

Meanwhile, we are cruising up Highway 59 in Mississippi looking at a dashboard that gives this picture.

So while we have a kind offer from friends Helen & Shawn for a temporary storage spot at their place in Montpelier, I think we are going to wait a bit, as originally planned, before heading too far north.

I just saw a pair of Hooded Warblers here at Clarko State Park and the Northern Cardinals are singing loudly as we enjoy a nice summer-like evening.

Texas School Break – Please End Soon

This is an interesting week, as thousands of schoolkids and their families overwhelm Texas State Parks. There are no sites available, nor have there been for months. The noise level is high, the bathrooms are oversubscribed, and even if you like kids, it is a good place to avoid.

We decided to hang out in New Mexico, which on the surface, sounded like a great plan. What we did not plan on is obvious now: Texas families and college kids who also can not find room in Texas drive here. So each RV with Texas plates usually offloads about four kids, their bikes, their energy, their noise.

When we first arrived, we drove past four sets of tents with flags flying. I thought, "oh, a contingent no scouts." A later walk with the dog unveiled that we had a contingent of Texas A&M guys, budding Tea Party members, who had a "Don"t Tread On Me" flag, an American flag, and this one:

The other item that we’ve forgotten about given the makeup of winter parks is: don’t pick a spot near the playground. As I listen to screaming and yelling kids playing, I remind myself that they will tire and slow down – and try not to be curmudgeonly. After all, kids are out with family, getting exercise and fresh air, and I’ve seen few, if any electronic devices in use.

The place we are going Sunday, Balamoreah State Park, is full this weekend but has a dozen slots open Sunday night. Tuesday we plan to head to one we’ve never visited, Lost Maples State Natural Area to try for the Golden-cheeked Warbler.

We’ll start heading back, slowly, about the first of April with an arrival time of about mid-month. We will see how snow melt and mud season goes before deciding on whether to bring the rig all the way home, or leave it on flatter/drier ground elsewhere. We’ll cross that Shady Rill bridge when we get to it.

Leg 2 – On The Way

After a wonderful Christmas visit to Jennifer, Ben, & Mac – where we went to a frenzied but fun church pagaent, participated in a memorable Christmas buffet coked by iron chef Ben, and had lunch with our dear friends, the Russell’s, we headed out from MA Saturday morning. (this was after several days of thawing out the Airstream, loading gear, and finally, hoooking up Friday night.)

My plan was to leave Saturday to avoid the heavy commuting traffic on I-495 beltway, and later, through the I -84 passage of Hartford, CT. That worked as planned – we lauched at 7:50 AM and the first few hours were easy. The truck pulled well, the weather was great, and things were rosy – until Danbury, just before the NY border.

I have decided that there are too many people and too many cars in the Northeast. I noted a warning sign saying, "traffic congestion Exits 3-1" and shortly thereafter, a long line of stopped cars and trucks. It was awful – extremely slow moving with no relief. (I later realized that it was caused by the I-184 exit down to New York city.)

Finally, I came to an exit and got out of the mess, made a wrong turn, explores some new industrial parks, and eventually, with Mary’s help on the iPad, got into another slow moving stream on a small road that followed I-84. We were moving and soon, travelling at 50 mph. We entered the Interstate just before the Beacon-Newburg bridge and off we went westward. After fueling (don’t ask) we stopped for a lunch break at spot where Penny could get a short run, and we could sort-off picnic outdoors in the 50 degree weather.

I had never driven I-84 in PA over to Scranton – it was hilly, lightly travelled, and an easy drive. The entrance on to I-81 was smooth (the interminable construction seems done) and soon we were cruising toward Wilkes-Barre, until we weren’t. Again, an abrupt stop, two long lines of stopped vehicles, and a long wait. A police cruiser raced by on the shoulder and we crawlwd, for a half hour. It was a minor accident that clogged things, and then it was the typical I-81 rat race of many trucks heading toward Harrisburg.

Ten miles north, I saw another electric sign: "watch for slow traffic due to an incident at exit 77). Great! What a trip this was turning out to be. Six miles or so out, we hit stopped traffic, that crawled ahead, but then loosened up for a few miles. Then, three miles north of Exit 77, we hit another long line and spotting an exit, headed off to try something, anything. Mary launched her iPad, which was getting low on juice, and I spotted a possible alternate route. No one else was taking it – now I know why. It was a Vermont-type narrow wingong road – a challenge hauling a trailer at times – but damn it, we were heading west and not just sitting there. There was no internet signal so the iPad essentially said, "You’re on your own, folks" as we wended our way through parts of PA we had never seen, and hope not to see again.

We made it to Harrisburg, joined the trucks and cars heading south, never really knowing whether my "shortcut" was worth it. About an hour later, we pulled off at Chambersburg, ans found the Walmart where we have overnighted before. Saturday night brings out all the country kids with their tune-up pickup trucks so we went to bed to the sound of noisy exhaust pipes, and slept quite well.

This leg was planned to be our toughest of the trip – just get out of the winter weather. I never anticipated the extra several hours due to traffic. Today (Sunday) is a shorter run down I-81 to another Walmart in Virginia. It’s raining, and will much of the trip today but it will help remove the road salt from the trailer. I hear a crow calling and of course, Penny has to growl at it. After more coffee and yogurt, we’ ll ease out of here and be traversing Maryland, West Virginia before lunch. Traffic should be light on Sunday (famous last words.)

Wandering Birder – a Geocache Travel Bug

I first wrote of my interest in geocaching, and its compatibilty with birding and dog walking, back in February of 2012.  Since then, I’ve gone in spells where I am actively seeking caches and months when I hardly think of the activity.  It’s very much a nice “do it when you want to” hobby.

Geocaching is an outdoor sporting activity in which the participants use a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver or mobile device and other navigational techniques to hide and seek containers, called “geocaches” or “caches”, anywhere in the world.

I soon learned that there is more to geocaching than just finding and logging caches — there is a whole system of “trackables” which, with the help of people like me, make their way around the country, and the world — being moved from cache to cache by participants.  So of course, I felt I had to have a few of these of my own and in 2012, launched four of them.

The Travel Bug, with its unique code, is attached to an item.

The Travel Bug, with its unique code, is attached to an item.

The most successful one so far is the Travel Bug I named Wandering Birder.

Simply put, a Travel Bug is a trackable tag that you attach to an item. This allows you to track your item on Geocaching.com. The item becomes a hitchhiker that is carried from cache to cache (or person to person) in the real world and you can follow its progress online.

It’s really up to the owner of the bug to give it whatever task they desire. Or no task at all. The fun of a Travel Bug is inventing new goals for the Travel Bug to achieve. One Bug’s goal may be to reach a specific country, or travel to 10 countries.

In the case of Wandering Birder, the goal is to log a bird seen in 50 US states and 5 countries — and note what birds you see when you have the bug in your possession.  (Results are so-so but the item is certainly wandering.)  Here’s what the most recent finders said:

While we had this travel bug we saw birds that are common in northern NJ: robins, crows, turkeys, turkey vultures, red tailed hawks, flickers, downy woodpeckers, various sparrows, jays, cardinals, ring necked ducks, mallard ducks, blue heron, wrens, finches, orioles, black birds.

I launched this in Texas in March of 2012.  Since then, it has traveled  2299.7 miles.  (One of the geeky aspects of geocaching is that you can see every move and view a map — but I seldom bother to do it.)  Here’s the trek so far for this one:

The travels so far of Wandering Birder.

The travels so far of Wandering Birder.

As we prepare for our upcoming trip, I am bringing a few new trackballs to launch along the way.  For me,  it has been a nice “give it a try” activity. When birds are resting, it is a chance to get out the iPhone and see where the closest geocache might be. And perhaps, there’s a new bird waiting there as well.

The Best Laid Plans …..

Saturday morning, I slid down our iced-up driveway in four-wheel drive, thankful that I had got the Airstream home the day before.  Well, Sunday, after a night of high winds and blowing snow, we woke up to this:

A friend wrote me Saturday, "If I had an RV, I'd move it southward by October 15th. Guess she was right.

A friend wrote me Saturday, “If I had an RV, I’d move it southward by October 15th. Guess she was right.

With winds gusting to 40 mph or more all day Sunday, the dog has been very nervous and I have started thinking about alternative plans.  I suspect, since it will not melt before Wednesday, we will leave the ‘stream here and move it during a better stretch in December.

Five weeks until warm weather and a chance to defrost.

Five weeks until warm weather and a chance to defrost.

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The long range forecast has a coastal storm arriving on the day we are planning to move the rig to Massachusetts so that makes the decision clear — head down Tuesday night and leave the Airstream here — but also watch the weather the next few days to see if the storm track changes.  Stay tuned.

California, here we come

Our son Robb and his family recently moved to Del Mar, California. While it is still a long ways from Texas, I have been hoping that we could bird in Arizona this year so .. Why not? So yesterday, I booked the last shore side camping site available for school vacation next February at South Carlsbad State Park. It overlooks the Pacific and is not too far away from our gang. I’m already reading about birding hotspots – never having birded in the west, there’s a lot of potential life birds.

Another part of the preparation was to add a cap to the truck and two days ago, the one I had ordered arrived and was installed. This one, unlike our last one, has side windows that swing up so that you can access things in the front of the truck bed. I’ll miss hauling everything out to get at a toolbox. It is a custom Leer cap and looks great, as you can see below.

Lots of planning to do as we prepare for a late December launch. I got the shower working today and fixed a few loose items. Of course, the closer you look the more you see and I’m ordering small parts weekly. Also ordered a couple of California bird books. Westward ho – we hope.

Preparing for Maryland Birding

We are leaving for a brief visit to our family in Maryland  this Thursday.  Annapolis is always a great place to bird and I’ve had some nice outings in the general area.  I’m not too interested in finding rarities this trip – I want to spend some time with my grandson, Dane who is a budding birder and lister.  We’ve already visited several local hotspots during past trips and likely will do so again.

When we are traveling outside Vermont, I usually do some “electronic scouting” to check out the birding situation at our destination.    So here’s a few ideas on how I prepare.  Please feel free to add your ideas in the comment section.

Monitor Birding Groups

Before our trips to the Southwest, I rejoin list serves in Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas to monitor their reports and get a sense of what I might be able to see.  Likewise, in the East, where we travel to MA and MD periodically, I belong to various groups and read them.  I haven’t had much luck in the past with the MD list serve, which went through some turmoil, but joined the Facebook group for Anne Arundel County and watch their stuff closely.

Use iBird

I routinely check the hotspots for the area I’m going to visit, checking to see what has been reported in the last 30 days.  iBird uses eBird data but displays it graphically as shown below.  It’s also nice to be able to search for a particularly species to see where it has been recently seen.

Here’s the iBird map for hot spots around Annapolis. I click on each one and check to see what’s been reported recently. It’s a great planning tool.

Query Local Birders

I’ve been to Maryland several times and met a few birders.  I keep their names (and sometimes a short description) on my iPhone — just so I can greet them by name if I see them again.   Sometimes, I’ll email one and ask for help.  For this trip, I posted a question on the Facebook page and got some good feedback.

 Needs Alerts -eBird

eBird lets you set up alerts on rare birds or birds that you haven’t seen in the area you are visiting.  The reports, if you have never visited an area, can be lengthy but you can scan it for birds of special interest.  You can get daily or hourly reports listing birds seen in last seven days.  I noted that Tundra Swans are being reported at several locations — this would be a life bird.  One of the Anne Arundel Facebook birders posted a great photo as shown below.

Tundra Swans recently seen in the Annapolis area. photo by Hugh Vandervoort.

So, I’m looking forward to warmer weathers and some birds that we won’t see in Vermont until next Spring.  What I need to do first is make the eleven-hour drive.

What else to you do to prepare for a birding visit?  Tell us about it with a comment below.  You should sign up by RSS feed or via email to have future articles sent to you.  Thanks