It’s 34 F here this morning and the sun is barely shining, so I thought we needed some more pics from the Big Bend trip! These were taken in the The Davis Mountains at Fort Davis — a little over 100 miles away from Big Bend National park.
Jolyn has a friend named Bob who volunteers for The Nature Conservancy at the Davis Mountains Preserve and so we were lucky enough to get to spend a day there! Just look at that crystal clear water!
Bob put us to work collecting live fuel load samples. This is where you take leaf clippings and put them in metal containers that have been previously weighed, weigh the containers to get the wet weight, then bake the containers in an oven for 24 hours and re-weigh to get the dry weight. Bob took many samples all through the summer and the numbers help predict what a fire would do. We took samples of Gray Oak, Pinyon Pine, and Aligator Juniper from three areas of the perserve on that day. It smelled so good when we clipped the pines and the junipers!! Mmmmm!
I love this picture — you can tell how relaxed and happy everyone was! That’s Jolyn in front, David behind her, and Bob is the one on the right. Thanks again Bob for a great day!
While we were eating lunch we got to see this cool lizard! Still don’t know what kind of lizard it is, if anybody out there knows drop me a comment! It was about 18-20 inches long and had that neat stripe across the neck.
The lizard hung out on a rock while we ate lunch and then surprised us by going in this crack! Wonder if that’s its home?
When it did it again I was in position with the camera at the ready and snapped these pics — woo hoo! 
More pictures from the Davis Mountains to come later — but tomorrow I’ll have a post about the 2006 Hero Arts catalog! Can’t wait to see what everyone thinks of the catalog!
That desert mountain stream looks very relaxing!