Monday, June 11, 2007
Fairbank Historic Townsite, San Pedro Riparian Natl Conservation Area - Apr 18-May 13
We finished our stay here as volunteers -- the only way to park an RV overnight, although they do allow backcountry tent camping. Our main duties were locking & unlocking the gates to the two parking lots, and emptying the trash cans before they overflowed. The San Pedro is one of the few remaining "wild" (undammed) rivers left. The NCA was established in 1988 as a result of a huge land swap that put almost 57,000 acres of some of the most critical & fragile desert riparian habitat under the stewardship of the BLM. 
It is one of the "special" places we have run across in our travels and cannot adequately be described, it must be experienced.Our last few days were the usual flurry of activity with snatches of getting ready to depart squeezed in. We attended hummingbird banding at San Pedro House farther south in the NCA. It's always a fun way to pass a few hours, and Sheri Williamson keeps up a constant banter full of facts and anecdotes, whether there are lots of hummers or none. We went birding at The Nature Conservancy's Patagonia-Sonoita Creek Preserve, a nationally recognized stop for birders, with numerous trails running beside perennial streams.
We saw two lifers there -- zone-tailed hawk & Cassin's vireo, plus a dusky-capped flycatcher at the Paton's house nearby. Unfortunately, on the way out of Patagonia-Sonoita, Willie fell & sprained her ankle fairly severely. This was a fairly significant inconvenience for several weeks but now has healed to about 90%. The Saturday before we left we attended a concert by the Sierra Vista Community Chorus of recent Broadway show tunes. Lots of Andrew Lloyd Webber plus a few others. Our plans should bring us back to the Benson area in the late fall.
# posted by Doug and Willie @ 6:16 PM 
