Eighteen Friggin’ Months! — YOFO Adventures

A view across an arroyo toward mountains in the distance with barbed wire fence and an ATV loaded with fence repair supplies — Views for days at Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge in New Mexico. And barbed wire fences to repair for almost that far.

View from our home across a parking lot — Sometimes, we fancy (i.e. not the views we’ve grown accustomed to in our adventures).

Eighteen months is a long time without a blog post. You may gently chastise us over a favorite beverage the next time we get together in person. Which has also likely been delayed since the whole (waves arms) pandemic. Harrumph. And, yes, we miss you, too. This is catch-up post installment 1 of 2. So, more to follow!

Dean using a small propane grill to cook dinner in a parking lot — From a parking lot outside Hot Springs National Park

To catch up a bit, when we last left you, dear friends, we were heading for Tennessee from increasingly very hot, very south Texas. And, as you may have surmised if you read Kady’s recent WOFO (for new readers, that’s a Week Of F’ing Off) guest post, we are currently in Florida. As with all our travels, there are no straight lines and the meanders are a feature, not a bug. We shall attempt to not digress too far down any particular rabbit hole, but it would be intellectually dishonest and just morally weak if we left our opinions - who we are as humans - completely out of the equation. If that’s not your cup of tea, well, enjoy the pictures.

When we left Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge on the Rio Grande in south Texas, we made an immediate beeline for the Tennessee National Wildlife Refuge in northwestern Tennessee. The first wave of the pandemic was crushing the country and we had no desire to linger in strange places with strangers, many of who acted like it was all a hoax. Additionally, we already knew people who had passed away from COVID and had every intention of doing what we could to keep ourselves healthy while also not getting anyone else sick (now that we’re vaccinated and boosted, that order has swapped). Thus, our trip to Tennessee included long driving days and a few nights in parking lots since most campgrounds were closed in the early days of the pandemic. Our travels quickly showed how wildly different the various regions and localities were responding to Covid…we went from places with universal masking to being the outliers by wearing masks.

We did manage a short visit to Hot Springs National Park. It’s a fascinating place - truly urban (well, Arkansas urban not NYC urban) and the architecture is amazing. It was mostly shut down and we could not get into any of the buildings, but the trails were open and gave us the chance to stretch our legs in a beautiful area. We visited mostly to check it off our list (we’ve visited nearly every National Park in the lower 48), but we were pleasantly surprised by how interesting and cool it was. It’s not a hidden gem, since it’s literally inside a touristy town, but if you, like us, are slightly hesitant to visit because it doesn’t quite sound/feel like the classic National Park…well, give it a shot.

The front of Tennessee NWR's visitor center with Dean on a lift painting woodwork — Being willing to pitch in leads to some fun - that’s Dean on a 50’ boom lift re-painting some woodwork. The Visitor Center was still closed for COVID while we were there, so it was ideal timing to knock out some maintenance tasks.

Dean holding a ruby throated hummingbird prior to release — This male ruby throated hummingbird had just been banded and is about to be released.

You may be asking yourself, how did we end up in Tennessee for a summer? As “luck” would have it, the pandemic was doing weird things to public lands in addition to all the human impacts. Many refuges were closed and not accepting volunteers, especially for visitor services, while the maintenance and upkeep tasks continued to pile up all across the country. We were exceptionally fortunate to talk to our ranger at Tennessee who was willing to take a chance on a jack-of-all-trades (master of none) handy-couple. Joan had a bunch of outdoor work (mowing, painting, etc) that could be accomplished and we were perfectly comfortable being “locked in” on the single RV pad miles from neighbors.

a small diamondback rattlesnake with its mouth open near pavement markings — This danger noodle was little but feisty. He stood his ground despite our efforts to coax him to safety.

Dawn using a paint roller to apply stain to an overlook deck — Dawn finishing the final patch of a boardwalk we painted with lots of help from Ranger Joan and Ranger Intern Brittany!

Tennessee National Wildlife Refuge (TNWR) is located near Paris, Tennessee, famous for their replica of the Eiffel Tower, 12th largest in the world. We do our research. TNWR is a sprawling place with multiple units/areas, much of it is water, all of it is about the birds. You might be more familiar with their federal “neighbor” - Land Between the Lakes - where we had previously camped and played. TNWR primarily protects migratory birds and preserves their habitat, but you can’t be anywhere in the woods of Tennessee without seeing other wildlife that benefit from these wild but protected places. Our neighbors included a variety of critters such as a friendly skunk next-door, lots of deer, turkeys, and snakes (both danger noodles and harmless nope rope varieties). But the real VIPs are the birds. We were there there during summer so we didn’t see most of their migrating waterfowl. But we did see lots of ospreys, wood ducks, herons, bluebirds, and hummingbirds. And others (owls, hawks, eagles, warblers, wrens….thus exhausting most of our bird knowledge) were around and happily flippy flapping their wings (trade secret: that’s how we know it’s a bird). It was a fabulous refuge to be at and like the birds we took refuge from the world while hopefully contributing to their mission.
We helped with small construction projects, trail maintenance, painting overlooks, boat ramp grounds upkeep, and visitor center maintenance. We helped the critters through wood duck banding, hummingbird banding (so cool!), bluebird house construction and weekly bluebird nest checks among other projects. The summer passed quickly and we appreciated how professional and kind the TNWR staff was. Our Ranger supervisor Joan and her husband Skip became good friends and will see them again in another catch-up blog post.

Dean and Dawn holding wood ducks — Wood ducks ready to be banded by the licensed professional (aka not us!)

As the summer quickly approached its end, we were looking forward to returning to Santa Ana NWR for the winter of 2020-2021 as maintenance volunteers. We enjoyed our time there and the maintenance supervisor wanted us to return to complete a months-long construction project for him. But alas, with only 6 weeks before we were scheduled to return, Santa Ana called and said they would not be accepting any volunteers back for the winter. We were back to square zero with our future planning - sort of. Joan at TNWR was encouraging us to stay with them for the winter, but we were a little anxious about how cold or snowy it got in Tennessee. So where to next?

To backtrack just a little (our blog, like our travels, tends to meander), early on in our volunteer job in Texas we were searching for a place to volunteer for the following winter (before we had decided to return to Texas) and had called Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge in New Mexico. Turned out that they had about a two year waiting list for volunteers…and we don’t really do the planning thing that far out. Fast forward to our predicament in Tennessee; we decided to give Sevilleta another call just on the off-chance that they might have an opening. We were aware that COVID was causing many volunteers to hang up their volunteer t-shirts or change plans on short notice, and that some refuges were having trouble getting folks to show up. We got lucky; the day we called, Sevilleta had just heard from another volunteer couple who had to cancel and they were facing a winter without volunteers. Our ranger Joan gave us a glowing endorsement (acting against her own self-interest as it was), so just a few weeks later we were “wagons ho!” for the high desert.

Dawn carrying feed bags near a prairie dog burrow in front of mountains — Dawn is feeding prairie dogs. Yep - not a typo. We called it prepping the coyote and badger buffet.

Dean holding a large snakeskin in front of the undersides of a mobile home — We legit cannot explain how it is that Dean always finds snake evidence.

About an hour’s drive south of Albuquerque, Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge (SNWR) is huge compared to most refuges - about 230,000 acres huge and 8th largest in the continental 48 states. They’ve got a crazy diverse population of wildlife they protect - everything from an endangered fish to pronghorns, mountain lions, oryx (an African antelope), prairie dogs, burrowing owls, Mexican gray wolves, and lots in between. They straddle the Rio Grande and basically go from mountain range to mountain range. The land there got its start as a private cattle ranch which was donated through the Nature Conservancy to become a National Wildlife Refuge. This meant good things for a couple of adventurous maintenance volunteers who love the outdoors! We worked with an awesome all-female staff of 5; (while we were there they hired two men as maintenance staff). Our ranger supervisor Jeanine sported green hair when we arrived (later became pink) so needless to say, she and mohawk Dawn hit it off from the start!

Dawn laying in some scrub brush repairing barbed wire — Dawn laying down on the job again!

We helped with a variety of projects at Sevilleta - everything from barbed wire to plumbing to tree planting. SNWR has miles of barbed wire which needed to be inspected and occasionally repaired. Where did we get our training in barbed wire repair and installation you might ask? YouTube videos of course! That’s how we became “jacks of all trades” after all! You might be surprised at how may drawling’ Texans there are on YouTube willing to explain how to use a “Texas Tensioner.” Sevilleta also has a network of previously windmill-powered, now solar “drinkers” (aka stock tanks fed by wells) to provide water to wildlife; we frequently had to venture out to remote drinker sites to inspect and repair them.

The good part of not knowing what you want to be when you grow up is that you have fewer notions of what work you can or can’t (or will or won’t) do. So if you’re willing to just try something new, it often turns out that you can make some serious headway on a task that would otherwise remain undone. For us that meant helping with wolf captures or crawling through rat nests to try to re-duct an AC unit or installing a building alarm system. Next time you’re sharing an adult-beverage with Dawn, ask her about the time Wolf 1968 leapt directly into her chest and knocked her down, covering her in wolf fur and odor. Best day ever!!!

Dawn on a large forklift in the snow — Great training day for our heavy equipment certification!

One of the things that somewhat surprises us is how hard it is to find volunteer openings - some places are downright competitive! We now have volunteer resumes and the rangers WILL call your references, all to land a job that pays nada. We’ve been crazy lucky to live in some great places with absolutely wonderful people - both fellow volunteers and paid staff. And, they’ve helped us be more competitive for other volunteer gigs. Tennessee trained and certified us on ATVs which paid big dividends there and at Sevilleta (small rolls of barbed wire are surprisingly heavy to haul across the desert). Then Sevilleta got us the Fish and Wildlife Service training on heavy equipment: forklifts, skidsteers, and agricultural tractors (yee yee!). In a bit of a drug deal to give them a return on their investment, we promised to go back to Sevilleta next winter. We look forward to working with their superb maintenance guys Pete and Shawn who were patient with us and generous about teaching us about the equipment and how to be better at fixin’ stuff. Our tractor training there has already come in handy at another refuge in Tennessee where we did some brush hogging (think giant mower behind a John Deere)…that’s a story for the next catch-up blog installment.

We had a great time wintering at Sevilleta. It snowed on us a couple of times (odd thing to see in a desert) and there were a few bitter cold nights along with some awesome wind storms, but Ranger Jeanine and the refuge staff took great care of the volunteers and we loved our time there. As the winter at Sevilleta turned to spring and we were looking at another covid summer, we decided to take a short break from volunteering. After three back-to-back refuges, we headed east to central PA to relax and hang out with family for a bit. The moral of that story is never land on a farm to “relax” but we’ll save the telling of the story for our next catch-up post. In the meantime, be safe, healthy, and happy. We look forward to seeing you down the road as we become increasingly able to connect with (and even hug!) family, friends, classmates and new friends we meet on the way!