Happy Christopher Columbus Day!!

I haven’t posted for a few days, so I need to catch up a little.  Today is the day that we celebrate Christopher Columbus’ discovery of America.  Actually, I read that he stumbled across it by accident when he was seeking another route to the Far East.  So when his ship ground ashore, he jumped up and down and hollered, “Hey, guys, look what I’ve found!!”

I was going to write a post yesterday, but I got lazy.  First, it took me too darned long to work the Sunday crossword puzzle.  Then after that things went down hill.  I got the bad news that the ALCS championship game between the Texas Rangers and the Detroit Tigers was postponed until today.  That messed up my Sunday plans.  Then I was disappointed that we didn’t get more rain that was promised by the Weather Channel. (More on the rain, later in this post.)  So what is a guy to do after such disappointing things.  I decided to take a nap.

So anyway, here I am.  We did get quite a bit of rain on Saturday.  Officially, 2.83 inches.  We had received only five inches all year until this rain, so now we are at nearly eight inches.  O. C. Fisher Lake picked up a little run-off as you can see in the picture.  But don’t get too excited.  I spotted some American White Pelicans way out in the middle, and they were wading.  So that expanse that you see is only a very few inches deep.  A large puddle, so to speak.  We need a lot more on the watershed north of town to get it up where it should be.  Note the distance, a nearly quarter of a mile from this boat-ramp to the water.

Boat ramp at O. C. Fisher lake

The other picture shows the Concho River, that is the flow source for the lake.  I visited the bridge upstream on Highway 2288 and saw that there was no water flow.  Just a puddle upstream a bit from local runoff.  The land around here is so parched that most of the rain is just getting soaked in.  Some more good storms may result in the river running hard again.

North Concho River riverbed

But at least, the water, what there is, is drawing birds again.  While there, besides the pelicans, we saw, cormorants, herons, sandpipers, etc.

In other news, I did spend a little time just browsing some of my very, very old images and came across a few that you may enjoy looking at.

San Angelo Balloon Fest

Some people may remember the old balloon fests that used to be held down at Santa Fe Park.  This photo is probably around 20 years old.

"Ride 'em, Cowboy"

We also used to have PBR (Professional Bull Riding) event at the coliseum here in San Angelo.  I don’t know what happened, it seemed to draw large crowds, but for some reason we haven’t been on their schedule for a few years.  San Angelo does have the seventh largest PRCA rodeo in the country.  It happens in the month of February and has so many entrants, it takes two weeks to run it.

How about this one:

Downtown Luckenbach, Texas

How many of you have visited “downtown Luckenbach, Texas, to maybe see Willie and the boys.  As you know Willie Nelson made this place with his song of the same name.  Of course, he knows the place well, as it was one of his favorite places to hang out.  You can buy a stuffed armadillo, complete with a Budweiser bottle in it’s claws there.  A good cold beer can be bought it the back, served by a guy that will sing you a song along with it.

Red-tailed Hawk

My posts are never complete without a good bird photo.  My favorites are my hawk photos.  This one, of course, is a Red-tailed Hawk.  I don’t remember when it was photographed, but sometime in the past couple of years.

This post is for Shelly at Kamiak Creek, who likes to see Texas Tweeties in her e-mail inbox, and all of my other blogger friends.   Since this is my first post in several days, this may help with all of your withdrawal symptons.

In the great words of the famous Arnold Schwarznegger, “Ah’ll be bahhhk”.

Ya’ll have a great week.

About these ads