One of the advantages of spending a second day at a site without a set agenda for the second day is sleeping in. Today we slept in until 6:30!! Now you may not think that is late, but when you have been getting up at 5:15 to 5:30, that is a luxury. Another advantage is having something special for breakfast. Today it was Eggs Benedict!
We had showers in some of the best restroom facilities we've ever used. While this campground is packed very tightly with both year-round huge RVs as well as over-nighters, it does have some other good amenities.
After lunch of tomato soup and toasted cheese and ham sandwiches (comfort food), we drove in the rain to the World Center for Birds of Prey. This Center is operated by the Peregrine Fund, an organization dedicated to the conservation of birds of prey. They have wonderful displays, some of live raptors (meaning birds with sharp beaks, strong claws and big eyes), and lots of information about falconry, the ancient art of training falcons and other raptors to hunt and return to their masters. Falconry existed in the early centuries in the Far East. When the Sheik of the United Arab Emerites visited the center, he remarked about nothing dedicated to the Arabs. So he donated the money to open a whole wing about falconry in the Arabs countries. It includes a huge woven tent set up with three life-size Arabs talking over a coffee service and many other typical desert memorabilia. We saw a live American kestrel show, too. The kestrel is about ten inches "tall."
The Peregrine Fund came into being when that falcon began being scarce, and claims credit for alerting the world to the dangers of DDT which was hurting raptor reproduction by thinning their eggshells. One of their concerns today is the decreasing numbers of American Kestrels, as yet unexplained. To learn more, go to www.peregrinefund.org
Later in the afternoon, the rain moved east and temps are already falling. There is snow predicted in the Sawtooth Mountains above 6,000 feet tonight! That's only about 50 miles northeast of here. Too close!
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