Dust in the Wind

Another adventure, another blog! This summer I’ll be studying black-capped vireos and golden-cheeked warblers (endangered species of bird) for several months. Our field site is an hour outside of Austin, Texas. It might not be *quite* as interesting as South America, but I’m sure I’ll have a blast anyways.

My mom and I started the drive to Texas on Saturday (4/6). Conveniently enough, we had to pass right by Harvey Mudd College, so I got to spend the night hanging out with friends! The interesting part was getting to Mudd – many of you know that I like to drive. Fast. I’ve done the drive from the Bay to Mudd a dozen times, and I can usually get it done in about five hours. Many of you don’t know my mom, so let me just say that she drives slowly. And for those who don’t know about I-5 (the main freeway between the Bay and Los Angeles), the speed limit is 70mph, but I’d guess that most people drive at least 80, with top speeders around 115. If traffic isn’t bad, I usually average 85. My mom decided to take the first driving shift so that I could handle the Grapevine. Based on everything I’ve stated above, you can imagine my horror when I glanced over and saw that she was driving 65… and slowing. I kept having to remind her to speed up, which was funny for the first hour, but after that I was ready to jab the gas pedal with a long stick. We planned to stop at a rest stop for lunch, but the next one was 45 minutes away, so I patiently waited knowing that we’d switch drivers once we got there. However, when we finally did get to it, we saw that it was closed! This is what happened next:

Mom: “Well, what do you want to do? We could just take the next exit.”

Me: “Yes, get off at the next one.”

Mom: “We’re coming up on an exit – see if they have any good food options.”

Me: “I DON’T CARE WHAT KIND OF FOOD THEY HAVE, JUST PULL OVER!!”

After that it was smooth sailing to Mudd, except for the accidents on the 210.

Yesterday (Sunday) we left bright and early with me taking the first shift. That was the best decision of the day because I discovered that the stretch of I-10 from Claremont to Phoenix is the best stretch of road ever, where “best” means “straight, flat, and so in-the-middle-of-nowhere that cops don’t even bother venturing out to set up speed traps”. That may have also been because it was early on a Sunday morning, which also helped reduce traffic. In any case, I will always remember how wonderful that drive was. I cut an hour and a half off the estimated arrival time and got us to Phoenix in just under 4 hours. I probably averaged 90 on that stretch, which horrified my mom a little until I pointed out the cars that were flying past us. It was a good morning.

Anyways, when we finally got to Tucson, AZ, we stopped in Saguaro National Park. There were SO many cacti, and even several different species! The sun was perfectly lighting up the mountains, but the valley was nearly impossible to see. We hiked a couple of trails, took a bunch of pictures, and then got dinner and finally checked in to our hotel. I would like to point out that if I had not cut an hour and a half off our drive, it would’ve gotten dark while we were at Saguaro NP, so yay driving!

Saguaro with limbs like the one on the far left made me imagine a valley full of cacti ready to duke it out.

You can see a bunch of limb bits lying on the ground! Not sure if they fell off naturally or if some animal was responsible.

The park also had prehistoric rock art!

Today we left early again and went to the eastern half of Saguaro National Park (Tucson is between two halves of the park). We went on a scenic drive and did a short hike. Somehow we managed to get “lost”, despite the heavy presence of trails and the map we had (very reassuring considering I’ll be wandering around the Texas wilderness for the next 4 months), but we found our way after 15 minutes.

After that we headed to Chiricahua National Monument, which has a lot of really awesome rock formations. It was kind of like Saguaro NP but with rocks instead of cacti. It was also INCREDIBLY windy – one of the park rangers guessed the wind speed was over 55mph. We think it got even stronger later in the day, especially while driving to New Mexico. There were so many tumbleweeds just FLYING across the road. Fortunately most of the roads were pretty empty of traffic, so it was easy enough to try avoiding them. Just having strong wind would be one thing, but the wind was kicking up a TON of dust. We could see it filling the valley from a distance, and there were a couple of corridors where visibility was down to 50 feet. One minute we could see blue(ish) sky and the other direction of traffic, and the next we were engulfed in a sea of dust and couldn’t see anything. It was like the tule fog on the way to Fresno, but it came in patches rather than a continuous blanket… and it was trying to push our car off the road! The limited visibility, and the much higher presence of cops in New Mexico, meant that we didn’t make quite as fast a trip as yesterday, but we still powered through and ended up in Las Cruces, NM for the night. (It’s interesting how 65mph feels like crawling after a day driving 90; even my mom thought we were going slowly!)

The rest of this week should include White Sands National Monument, Carlsbad Caverns, The Alamo, and whatever else we decide to visit. A week from today I’ll finally be starting field work!