Tram Tours R Us! Santa Ana NWR

So...it’s been a while…where to begin? We lost a little blog mojo after our epic summer of 2019 in Alaska and getting chased by assorted Canadian/Montanan snowstorms, but never fear, the YOFO chaos has continued. We probably should do some catch up posts, but to prevent an eight month whiplash, here is a speedy update. Upon leaving Alaska on 1 September 2019, we took our time passing through Canada (see our blog post “Canada Part Deux, Eh!”). We reentered the US bound for our second visit to Glacier National Park, only to get chased out of Glacier NP for the second year in a row by a snowstorm. We escaped south and east to avoid slick roads (and the cold), eventually ending up in Lincoln NE for a production of Macbeth starring JP (he was the star in our eyes). We stopped in the Kansas City area to see Chuck and Karen (Dean’s brother and sister-in-law), some USMA B-1 classmates, and some old friends, Robin and Travis. We eventually landed back at Silver Lake Farm in Pennsylvania just in time to renovate Charlie and Julias’ mudroom and get ready for the Second Annual Turrucken (our goofy family reunion festivities at Thanksgiving)! In early December we headed to Jacksonville for a visit with Dawn’s dad before eating our cajun way across the Deep South en route to our second winter volunteer gig (aka, the subject of this post) in south Texas.

Dean starting his spiel at the Old Cemetery at Santa Ana.

We arrived at Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge in mid-January ready to train for a three month stint as their tram tour guides. Located on the Rio Grande River (fourth longest in North America...it’s kinda a big deal, you might’ve heard of it), Santa Ana protects over 2,000 acres of thorn scrub forest as well as the birds and other critters that live there. Surrounded on three sides by a vast agricultural region (300 growing days per year) in the Lower Rio Grande Valley, Santa Ana NWR is an oasis for wildlife either trying to live there or migrating through. We blame our Yankee roots for not being able to recognize a single plant (okay, slight exaggeration, we know yuccas and agaves and have seen cacti before…) and the wildlife was mostly winged (either feathered or insect). To call ourselves amateur birders is a huge insult to all amateur birders. Hence, since we only had two weeks to become interpretive nature guides for a paying public, we jumped in the deep end for a crash course in birds, plants, critters and local history, and assorted other key facts. Our Tram tours ran three times a day, three days a week, and lasted about an hour and a half, educating and entertaining up to 60 passengers at a pop. No pressure at all! As you can imagine, it was not a responsibility we took lightly - well, one of us researched while one of us polished up his repertoire of “Dad” jokes, so together we kept it as light we could for our customers. We discovered from staff and customer feedback and perusing previous scripts that our style was more than a tad different from previous guides. Folks paid for these tram tours, so we did it our way and did our best to entertain and educate while keeping the line between those two as indistinct as possible.

Turns out you can teach an old dog new tricks…and you can train Dawn to teach visitors about the native plant species on the Jaguarundi Trail.

Trash panda gonna trash panda! We found three masked banditos in this dumpster. Please don’t litter - despite this one’s obvious joy, it’s really not good for them.

Well, we proved at least to ourselves we can still suck on the fire hose of education and learn! Over 1600 folks took our tour to hear our stories and lore of Santa Ana, allowing us to share our passion for the wildlife (including tracks and scat) and the habitat they rely on for survival. Despite our struggles to identify our feathered friends, we did manage to train ourselves to glance skyward to point out the winged wonders for which Santa Ana is world famous. We learned about Harris’s Hawks, Gray Hawks, Great Kiskadees, Northern Pintails, Coots and Grebes, Chachalacas (aka angry-thorn-turkeys as named by one of us), and Caracaras. Dawn has a new favorite bird, the Black-necked Stilt, with its bubble gum pink legs. We spotted bobcats, coyotes, javelina, armadillos, turtles, indigo snakes and even a few deadly coral snakes. It became normal to identify all sorts of lizards and Texas-sized bugs, dragonflies, and butterflies (schmetterlings!). And did we mention that everything has a local Spanish name or nickname? We chewed on a honey mesquite seed pod, watched guayacan bloom (among the hardest wood in the world), and learned from an elderly tram guest that as a child he used to roast Texas Ebony seed pods while his grandmother stirred the laundry cauldron over an open fire. Apparently roasted Ebony seeds taste like corn nuts!

In the surrounding area we marveled at the hardworking farmhands who hand-harvested thousands of acres of onions and kale, watched them plant corn in February, and wondered what was planted in dozens of other fields with mystery produce. Oh, and the south Texas location was a great place to spend the winter. We had warm days and cool nights, avocados were abundant and cheap, and there were lots of excellent little eateries, taquerias and panaderias. You’d be right if you think we’re on some kind of gastronomical quest, our own version of “Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives” across America! And of course we also have to sample the local brews. It’s a YOFO requirement you know.

Altamira Oriole (new to us bird!) in a Mexican Olive tree (new to us tree!). This pic was taken from the window of the YOFOhome in our volunteer village.

I think we surprised ourselves at how successful the Tram tours were. Word spread locally about the new, fun and wacky Tram guides, and we even had some repeat customers. Who’d-a-thunk it, but apparently kids (of all ages) actually liked Dean’s “Dad jokes.” Alas, just as we were hitting our stride on the tours (we gave a total of 49) the ‘rona virus pandemic brought it all to a screeching halt. Which also meant we were unable to explore as much of south Texas as we wanted to. In line with closures in most of the US, in mid-March Santa Ana suspended visitor services and after a few days the refuge had to lock its gates to help provide for public safety and to protect the refuge. It is sad, but public lands that are not routinely patrolled by Rangers and volunteers get trashed by the “landowners,” the public. Seriously folks, if you wouldn’t discard an empty potato chip bag and soda bottle on your living room floor then don’t throw it on the ground in a wildlife refuge!

On the plus side, we were able to shift over to volunteering on the maintenance side. We worked with a team of volunteers to upgrade a trail to ADA standards and fenced in a picnic area before even that came to a halt in keeping with the spirit of “teleworking.” Unfortunately, closing the refuge to the public also meant that our trail running and bike riding in the refuge also came to a halt. Boo. We had already explored all the trails by foot, but there’s something relaxing about trail running beneath trees and shrubs while keeping an eye out for wildlife and tripping hazards, including 8 to 10 foot long snakes. Alas.

When life hands you covid, folks pitch in and build a fire pit and then sit over 6’ apart.

The brains and the brawn are on the left. We like to think we provided some comic relief. — The fire pit construction crew. The brains and the brawn (Judy and Hermy are on the left. We like to think we provided the comic relief.

We were exceptionally lucky though - our supervisor, Ranger Johnson (“Jefe” to us) and the leadership team of Sonny and Gisela at Santa Ana were open and honest and cared about the volunteers, allowing us all to shelter-in-place as long as we needed to. There was a small campground with about 21 volunteers when we got the “order” to hunker down. We all heard horror stories of friends at other volunteer locations being told they had to leave immediately and of other full-time RVers not being able to find places to camp while trying to get back home. None of us had that additional stress in our lives, which in a time of uncertainty was a kindness. After a few weeks to couple of months of semi-quarantine the volunteers eventually drifted out slowly, some homebound, others hoping their next volunteer gig would have a place for them. But in the meantime, everyone tried to “repay” our good fortune but pitching into improvement projects around the campground. We built a community fire pit, trimmed lots of trees and shrubs, collected and removed brush, reinforced camping pads, organized the laundry room and tool shed, and updated and produced training documents and web content for future volunteers and visitors. Folks pitched in and combined grocery and shopping lists and trips to minimize exposure, and everyone checked on each other. We kept up the sense of community and camaraderie and had some enjoyable socially-distanced happy hours and farewell potlucks.

The ‘rona hair had to go. This, dear readers, is trust.

Since the ‘rona robbed us of the whole enchilada of our time in Texas, we feel like we have some unfinished business there. Hence, we will be returning to Santa Ana NWR to volunteer again this October. Who wouldn’t want to go back to a volunteer village that likely hasn’t been that well-maintained and landscaped since it was built?! More importantly, we met some great folks whom we now call friends, who will also be returning. We didn’t get to complete our tram season and would like to see that program continue to be successful. But we’re also ready for a change, and given the uncertainty of the future impact of Covid-19 and social distancing norms, we will return to Santa Ana in a maintenance capacity, though we promised to help train the next set of tram drivers. From what we hear, they’ve already got at least two major projects lined up for us!

We need a lot of supervision. Luckily for us, Hermie and Judy took us under their wings on a few projects.

So what will we do between now and October? Well, we had planned to spend the summer bicycle touring through New England, but that ain’t happenin’ now. So we’ve decided to move away from the stifling heat of south Texas to the cooler air of northwest Tennessee. We will volunteer doing maintenance work at the Tennessee National Wildlife Refuge, located near Paris, Tennessee, on the Big Sandy River. Their volunteer “village” consists of one couple, us, so social distancing at happy hour should be no problem. We will happily spend the summer mowing and trimming grass, painting signs, clearing trails after storms, and hopefully helping to band ducks and hummingbirds (yes, hummingbirds!). We’ll do that three days a week, which leaves plenty of time to explore the area with kayaks, bikes, and hikes, and otherwise pursue the adventures we love. We’ll keep you posted, in the meantime, be safe and stay healthy!

The bestest snake - an indigo. They eat everything, including rattlesnakes. They also routinely grow to about 8 feet long.

Chachalacas, or thorn scrub turkeys as Dawn likes to call them.