It was a beautiful ride along the Rio Grande River. We drove right through Telingua, Marfa and stopped in Alpine for two days.  Very cold 45 degrees....love our fireplace.

Drove around the park today watching birds ( posted in bird section) and viewing scenery. Climbed up Santa Elena Canyon Trail which was very cool until Trish was paranoid about the height and wanted to go back to the ground floor.  

Getting back to the Cottonwood campsite tonight there was a beautiful sunset and mating great horned owls in the trees!!!  Their nesting tree was on our campsite.  They hooted the night away...so cool.

On our way north and west from Mission, TX we stopped in Bracketteville (because there was no other place to stop) The RV park was in Fort Clark Springs....we had no idea what we were about to experience.  The fort has a wealth of history in every area. And the RV park with surrounding areas are very simple. The people are super friendly and very special...inviting you to pot lucks, sitting at their space, inviting you in their home and giving you their golf cart for the day to experience the 54+miles of trails to ride on. This was a fabulous birding area of various species that we have never seen before.  Hundreds of deer everywhere....hunting season is every other week end.  White tail and Axis deer from India were among the group we saw.  At 4-dark every night we could sit in our lawn chairs and watch them eat corn, we and the neighbors tossed out for them.  Saw quite a few large bucks.  

The following pictures are various birds we have photographed along the way during our trip.  Some a little fuzzy and barely visible but, proof they exist. Hopefully I have the species names correct.  

The above bird is of the falcon family.  It is a Caracara and I have yet to grab a decent photo of them.  I think these are my favorite because of the large size 23" long and 50" wing span and unusual looks.  Below is the Vermillion Flycatcher 6"L 10 WS...same species but different bird on the right and bottom...this one is either young or molting I am not sure which.

Look a Rinalta Rig just like Steve and Linda's

The sand was hard in most places and everyone drives right on the beach...but there definitely were a few soft spots...

Looking at the map and our next westerly direction I noticed Kingsville and the King Ranch was in our direction. Looking more into it the Ranch I realized that it was the ranch our Ford King Ranch truck was named after....so that was a no-brainer we must go there.  Little did we know that this place was huge....825,000 acres to be exact!  The ranch was quite the big deal with many tours.  We did the 2 hour history tour and the 4 hour birding tour.  I am going to place all the bird pictures of our trip in one place because I am taking numerous pictures of the many common and notable species, some of which we have never seen before....some good pictures and some not so much but a record non the least.  These pictures will all be in the next post and I will be adding to them as I capture them along the way.

Downtown Kingsville they have a very high end retail store that sells everything King Ranch.  In here they had a working saddle shop with the original saddle maker still making saddles.  He was in his 80's...side note, all the ranch's trucks are FORDs but no King Ranch trucks that we saw...,