Tuesday March 20, 2012-Caddo Lake NWR

It began raining about 7 this morning and it has rained all day long. The day began with temps in the mid 70's but has dropped throughout the day. It's a chilly 55 right now and expected to drop a few more degrees before morning. More rain is forecast for tonight and tomorrow but they've been wrong many times before, so we'll see.

Todd and I built a sign for Texas Parks and Wildlife today. They brought in some massive lumber and we got everything ready to put up. It was a lot of heavy work, but we got it done in about four hours. Since it was such a nasty day, we came on back home for the rest of the afternoon.

We went to the visitor center for happy hour with Ron and Linda for the last time. They will be leaving first thing in the morning but we had a nice time with them today. I doubt that I'll be up when they leave and I hope they have safe travels.

We got a large roll-off dumpster in this morning to clean out the Starr ranch house. We will get started on that chore within the next few days.

I was finally able to find out some information on the Starr family, owners of the ranch property here at the refuge. The Starr family invested heavily in real estate in Texas after the Civil War and at one time advertised "over one million acres in 90 counties. The ranch as well as other properties were donated to the State of Texas. I just knew that you were dying to learn more about them.

So long.