Arrival & Briefing

Sunday, February 14, 2016

This morning, after a motel breakfast, we jumped on TX-77 south and drove directly to the coast on our second day on the road. TX-77, jumps back and forth from 70 mph to 55 mph, and in quite a few commercial spots to 35 mph. Nonetheless it was more interesting and less nerve wracking than I-35. My iphone map app does not have Hopper’s Landing on it (Google does), but does have Austwell, TX, which is the town the Landing is in. So we first located Austwell, a tiny town surrounded by vast cotton and sorghum fields. Then through trial and error we located Hopper’s Landing, an eclectic group of cabins (shacks?), RV park, and a waterside bar owned by Adela & Butch Hopper. We did not stop in Hopper’s Landing, though, because it was about 2 pm and our PI, Dr. Jeff Wozniak of Sam Houston State University, had gone to the Corpus Christi Airport to pick up those Earthwatchers who were flying in. Nick, the expedition coordinator, had asked those who were driving to arrive after 4. Thus . . .we went directly to ANWR, Deb hoping to get in a few photographs before the Expedition began.

The two of us had driven to ANWR last spring after our High Island birding jaunt so we were somewhat familiar with it. We stopped at the Visitor’s Center and then walked a few of the many trails and boardwalks off the main road.

After exploring the trails for a bit—not seeing much besides alligators, coots, and herons—we headed back to Hopper’s Landing on San Antonio Bay. No one seemed to be about, but I recognized the cabin from a photo of it in the briefing, so parked. Soon, Lindsay Tiegs, a woman working on her Master’s degree under Jeff Wozniak, our Principal Investigator, came from one of the cabins and welcomed us to the Expedition. It was not long before others who had driven arrived, and then Jeff pulled in with the volunteers who had flown to Corpus Christi. We had a brief, informal hello before choosing which of the three cabins we would sleep in.

Dr. Jeff Wozniak sitting on the tailgate of the pickup explaining our sleeping and eating arrangements
 before we were driven to ANWR for briefing and dinner; note the long shadows. Photo by Terri Tipping.

We then unloaded our gear and were driven in a van and a pickup to ANWR and a viewing platform in the refuge for more briefing and a group photo. Deb, Ellie, Barb, and I wound up in cabin #2. Cabin #1 housed the men—Dick, Jeff, Ken, and Mike—and cabin #3, down he road a bit, housed Sue, Mary, Lindsay, Jean, and Terri. All of the cabins were adequate but seaside shabby.

The team at Aransas NWR standing in bird guano and blowing in the wind with San Antonio Bay behind us.

 L to R back to front: Dick Dawson, Mike Brady, Mary Erspamer, Ken Dowell, Sue Ordway, me, Deb Hirt, Jean Schaffert, Barb Dowell (blue hoodie) Terri Tipping, Ellie Dawson,  Lindsay Tiegs, SHSU MS student.

P.S. Sue and I do not really have pointed heads and that’s not smoke rising form Dick’s pate, either.

I cannot now remember whether it was before or after the photo that we traveled a little farther into the Refuge to its viewing tower. I am a height wienie (my knees turn to jelly and I cannot get up the high-above-the-canopy towers in the rainforest), but this viewing tower had no open steps and a gradual ramp, so I happily walked to the top. From the top one could view the salt marshes. Way off in the distance we could also view three white specks that were whooping cranes. When Deb and I climbed the tower last spring, I looked down and saw a bear foraging in the scrub. Well, not a bear but a large, black, feral hog. It was the first I’d ever seen, but the Refuge was full of these invasive critters. On this Earthwatch we saw a pair and their 10 (count ‘em) piglets. Ouch!

View from the ANWR tower. We passed the tower each morning on our way to the research site, and each morning it was
festooned with vultures. The board walkway to the top was splashed white with bird guano. Internet photo.

After the observation tower we were taken to the ANWR Volunteer Building behind the Visitor’s Center. This building contained a full kitchen, laundry room, and restrooms. It was at one end of an RV park where the volunteers had their RVs. We would eat all of our meals here, and gather here before dinner for an end-of-day summary of our collected data.

Those are two sandhill crane decoys painted to look like whooping cranes and tied to the street sign by their necks. It is legal to hunt sandhill cranes, thus the decoys, but illegal, of course, to hunt endangered whooping cranes. When we were there Texas was prosecuting a man who had shot two in December near Aransas NWR. I don't know the outcome of that trial but a man who confessed to shooting a whooping crane earlier was fined $85,000.

Meals were prepared communally by both the volunteers and the researchers. Everyone took a hand at food preparation and/or cleanup. Our first evening’s meal was spaghetti and meatballs. Other meals were burgers, Cajun Boil, baked chicken, and chicken or pork fajitas. All meals were especially tasty after a long day in the field and, particularly on this first day, after another long day on the road. At the ANWR Volunteer Center Jeff also gave a presentation about the goals and methods we would use in our research, and answered many questions.

Lunch sandwiches being prepared and breakfast being prepared and eaten  in the volunteer buiding; that is Deb left foreground

Back to Hopper’s Landing and bed around 9 p.m. and not a moment too soon for me. Below Terri Tippings photo of the sunset we would view over San Antonio Bay each evening,