Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?

November 5, 2023 – Day 38

In 1969, Robert Lamm and the band Chicago released their first album, Chicago Transit Authority. On it was the single, Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is? That’s been us for most of this trip. At home our lives are guided by the clock but on the road our natural rhythms take over unless it’s interrupted by the noise of trains.

Paul woke up at 1:30 AM to the sounds of a train. No big surprise. Also a no big surprise is that Susan slept thru it. He wondered, which 1:30 AM it was. First 1:30 AM or second 1:30 AM because it was changing from daylight savings time to standard time that night. He tried to get back asleep and later checked his phone. It was still 1:30 AM. He had seen both the 1:30 AM daylight savings time and the standard time 1:30 AM!

This has been a constant oddity during both cross country trips. We’ve taken to setting timers on our phone or watch to let us know how much time is left until we’ll arrive. Oddly the GPS doesn’t help much. When your sense of time is messed up, and you’ve got time changes, and time zones, time becomes fluid. “Hey, what time is it? I don’t know!” Arizona doesn’t use DST, but Navajo Nation does. That was really confusing because if you were in Navajo Nation it was DST not standard time but drive a bit and you’d be in Arizona on standard mountain time. Time changes without leaving the state. Weird. They’re both “Mountain time” (as is NM) part of the year so it gets weird. The visitor center at the Petrified Forest had several clocks up on the wall to help ease the confusion. It’s really weird to see sunset at 7pm one day and 5pm the next. It also matters where you are located in a time zone. The further out you are toward the extremes the later or earlier sunsets and sunrises are. Toss in a few time changes and your sense of time gets turned inside out. The answer to all this is we’ve taken to not caring about time. We eat when we’re hungry. We sleep when we’re tired. Our devices are trying to tell us what is “correct” but we no longer care. It just doesn’t matter when you’re doing a cross country trip.

So that’s the long-winded, round-about way of telling you that there was only 1 train overnight. Paul was so tired. He was only up for an hour, from 1:30 am to 1:30 am.

We had a big breakfast and packed sandwiches, lots of water, and all the ham radio gear and headed out to the refuge. Like the day before, it didn’t disappoint. It is hard to describe what a wonderful birdwatching place this is. We’ll certainly come back and spend some time here.

We saw thousands of Sand Hill Cranes, Snow Geese and ducks. Paul submits to ebird with an “x” for the quantity, which basically means too many to count. Neither of us can recall seeing thousands of anything in one shot beyond cars on the highway or people in a stadium. Susan, the perfectionist Virgo, counted all 62 Sandhill Cranes that morning. She entered that info into her checklist. Paul laughed like a Loon as about 200-300 more landed right in front of us. (susan here: the Sandhills were unimpressed with Paul’s Loon imitation and went about their business.)

This group is part of yet another group of several hundred that landed about 20 minutes later.

These are big birds. Really, really big birds. To say this is a big bird would be an understatement. They stand about 47″ tall and weigh 9-10 pounds. Their wingspan is almost 79″ (that’s 6.5 feet!) that’s wider than most people are tall. Listening to a thousand or so of these big birds chattering while they roam flooded fields is quite an experience. We’ve seen it and the words still fail us.

The other waterfowl didn’t disappoint either.

Paul was particularly pleased to have ID’d a Redhead (duck). He was using Susan’s spotting scope because she had seen the blue morph of a Snow Goose that she had spotted. The duck was paddling along just behind the goose. (What’s a spotting scope you ask? Think binoculars on steroids.) He only got a few second glimpse of it and ran to the car so he could use his phone out of the sun’s glare to see the pictures he’d taken. Susan got to see a Redhead a few minutes later.

The scenery was wonderful driving the “North Loop.”

And it wasn’t just about birds. (Ok, it was.) Check out this coyote. We pretty sure he was looking for his package from Acme so he could finally get that Roadrunner.

That was the 2nd time we saw a coyote while we were in the park. We’re both pretty sure there are lots more. But there are bigger predators out there. At Points of Land signs warned of Puma in the area! We’d like to show you a picture but we neglected to get any. It’s not exactly a comforting thought to know big cats are roaming around looking for lunch. We were happy to be tucked into an RV at night and not out in the back country in a tent.

It was time to play radio. Susan had brought her knitting to amuse herself with while Paul played radio. We had planned to refill our water bottles at the Visitor’s Center but it was closed. So it was back to the RV to get more water.

It’s so dry out here that you can drink, and drink, and drink more water than you’d ever think of drinking and never have to visit the restroom. That might seem like a good thing not having to find facilities for most of the day if you’re out adventuring. It isn’t. What it really means you’re not hydrating enough and that’s a bad thing — you can become dangerously dehydrated pretty fast. Paul’s daughter and her fiancé carry big bottles with them even just going off to do errands. One day it was about 11% relative humidity. The static electricity had static.

Susan decided to stay at the RV and Paul headed back out to play radio. It was a very good session! He can often operate for more than an hour but that dry air took its toll on his voice. He packed it in after about 45 minutes.

After Paul put away the radio gear he watched the Snow Geese take off for the Rio Grande. They feed in the river but will use the flooded areas to rest because the predators generally can’t reach them.

He went down to the take off area and watched them pass overhead. The sound of bird poop hitting the ground was all around him. When he got back to the RV he asked Susan to check him carefully for splatter. He was relieved that he escaped being hit. (susan here: Fortunately he remembered what I taught him many years ago: Close your mouth when you look up).

Daily: 0

Return Total: 547

Return Overall Miles/Day: 274

Return Driving Miles/Day: 109

Overall Total: 3,683

Total Driving Miles/Day: 335

Life Birds: 3

• Green-winged Teal
• Killdeer
• Redhead