In my last update, I posted photos from the ceremony and lunch the community put on for the MVPA Bankhead Highway Convoy that stopped in Rodeo New Mexico on October 12th.  To commemorate the end of WWII, The Military Vehicle Preservation Association, in restored military vehicles from across the country traveled from Washington DC on their way to San Diego California along the Bankhead Highway route.  The Rodeo Portal community and the Rodeo Tavern put on a great lunch for the Convoy participants and local community members.  The locals lined the street waving flags and cheering as the convoy came through town on NM Hwy 80 with over 50 vehicles from Jeeps to ambulances to large cargo carriers.  All privately owned and restored.  We met folks from Maine to Washington state.  It was a great event and showed the small town hospitality that we love here.  Here's a bit of history of the convoy:
"The Military Vehicle Preservation Association traveled at a maximum speed of 40MPH and the 3,400-mile convoy took 29 days to cover as many of the Bankhead Highway’s original roads as they could.  When possible they traveled on the actual roads the U.S. Army took in 1920, mostly state and county roads.  In the west they had to trailer some of the vehicles and get on the interstates as a last resort because in a few places reservoirs flooded the original route or bypasses erased the original route altogether.    
Colonel John F. Franklin’s original 50-vehicle 1920 Motor Transport Corps convoy traveled the route in 116 days.  Along the way, Franklin’s convoy encountered impassable sands, axle-swallowing gumbo, and flooding. They had to build or replace bridges and reroute where the highway merely ran over rutted old wagon tracks and unimproved dirt roads.   Their practice was to go out of the towns they came across, build about a mile of good road, and then invite the townspeople to drive the new road, Franklin’s group would then encourage the townspeople to put up money to connect the sections of road to their towns" It was and inspiring event.
- See more at: 
http://blog.hemmings.com/index.php/2015/07/17/mvpa-convoy-to-trace-bankhead-highway-from-d-c-to-san-diego/#sthash.4XDbi0Vj.dpuf

This weekend in Portal the community came together once more to celebrate Octoberfest as a fund raiser for the Sew What Women's organization that gives Scholarships to local high school graduates and supports a nursing home in Douglas Arizona.  It was a beautiful day and money was raised with a Silent Auction, a rummage sale, bake sale and a delicious lunch of Brats and Sides.  There was a great turnout and we had a few outside vendors who enjoyed the day too.  This is a great little community and this is HOME.

We had our first gathering of area musicians to our house for music making and it was hopefully the beginning of an ongoing thing!  Burt & Susan Mittelstadt, Peter Waser & Elaine Moison joined us for a fun time playing music we all love.  Our next gathering will be on Sunday, November 1st at 3pm at our house.  If we get enough people interested we may have to find another meeting place, but for now our house serves well.  Anyone who plays is invited.  You don't have to be an expert, we aren't trying to compete with each other, just share in the joy of making music.  We welcome anyone who loves music, even if you just want to sing along!

We visited Tucson to play a gig with the Banjo Blasters at the Cascades and visited with Melody, Matt and the grandsons while there.  The boys are excited about Halloween and we played at mixing up a witches brew and feet painting.  Wes is going to be the Wolverine for Halloween and Greg is going to be the Cookie Monster!  Such adorable boys, if I say so myself......no bias here!

The Portal Irish Festival was held and the community got to be entertained twice by the talented instructors.  First at the Sew What Forum and then at the Free public concert.  Next years Festival is already scheduled, so it should be another fun event.

Last week we went up the mountain to scout for firewood and saw several large groups of wild turkeys and lots of deer.  We got our firewood gathering permits Monday and went up to cut wood yesterday.  It was an interesting weather day of clouds, sun, rain, sun, hail, sun, snow flurries, sun & thunder.......just about everything you might expect at different times of the year not necessarily in that order. :) Each event lasting just a few minutes at the most.  Very unusual.  Then last night a thunderstorm came through with lightning and more rain.

Bud's knee continues to improve and we're walking again, but no strenuous hikes in the near future.  We're learning to accept that there are limitations to our stamina and capabilities now that we aren't youngsters any more.  

We've been visiting the San Simon Cienega about once a week and the Sandhill Cranes are returning along with Ruddy Ducks, Coots, Sandpipers, Mallards and Grebes.  Not a lot of water at Willow Pond, but we always manage to see a few birds there, so we're encouraged about it's revitalization.  We watched a Black Phoebe catching bugs and quite a few mixed species of sparrows as well as a young Swanson's Hawk.  This morning we were awakened at 6am by dueting Great Horned Owls here in our yard.  Seems a little early for courtship, but these owls are residents and know the routine, so I guess they know what they are doing.

So life is good here in Portal.  This weekend is Octoberfest and we're looking forward to participating with bake sale contributions, as well as helping with the rummage sale and silent auction.  Whoever told us we'd get bored living here has never spent much time here or they'd know that it's impossible to get bored in Portal.

The end of summer brings out the butterflies and nectar feeding bats as well as the migrating hummingbirds and raptors.  The cactus wrens pictured below were wrestling under our kitchen window one day.  They were squawking and rolling around holding onto each others beak with their feet.  I'm not sure if that was a territorial dispute or a parent trying to run off an offspring that refused to leave.  After several minutes of non-lethal confrontation, both birds flew off, so I'm not sure what the outcome was.

We finished up hummingbird banding the end of September and have had a few stragglers migrating through, but for the most part, our yard is down to the resident Blue Throat and Magnificent that winter here.  A couple of Broad Billed and Broad Tailed hummers are still feeding now and then and a female Lucifer was here for a couple of days!  The last day of Hummer Banding a couple of the birds decided to linger on my finger rather than fly away immediately.  It was quite a change from having a large hawk perch on my gloved hand, but the interaction with any bird is exhilarating for me.

Bud's knee is feeling good again, so we're going to resume hiking very soon.  It's a good time of year for hiking and we'll be getting a permit to cut some firewood in the mountains too.  We scouted the area around Rustler Park last week for firewood and there is a lot of downed stuff that can be harvested.  Among the wildlife in the mountains we saw 4 large groups of wild turkeys, many Coues Whitetail deer, but no bears.  Luckily this wet monsoon has provided a lot of acorns and juniper berries for the bears, so they have not been a problem in the valley like they were last year.

This year we harvested peaches, apples, pears, pomegranites, plums & persimmons from trees in our yard without competition from the bears.  

We do have to be diligent about watching for skunks in the yard before letting the dogs out.  The skunks are pretty habituated to humans, so they don't run when we go outside, and if Mr. Brown isn't restrained, he tends to run after them and has been on the receiving end of the skunk spray 3 times!  He hasn't learned that his actions caused the unpleasant experience.  We are glad to see that the skunks seem to have learned to stand their ground and Brown will not approach too closely if they don't run.  I wouldn't expect that to be a sure thing, but so far we've watched two encounters where Brown approached a skunk, but stayed back and came away from it when we called him. :)

The days are getting short and the nights have been a bit chilly lately, so Fall is in full swing.  Leaves are changing color slowly and beginning to fall.  Next weekend is Octoberfest here in Portal and this will be the first one we have been involved in, so we're looking forward to another fun community event.  The Forums started last week with a talk about Machu Picchu by Carol Simon & Howard Topoff.  Such a diverse community of knowledgeable people to learn from.  I've joined a writer's club too and have been inspired by some of the successful authors who live here and share their knowledge.

As the winter residents (human & animal) return to Portal, the activities never stop!  There is always something to do.  The Sandhill Cranes are returning now too, so we will be monitoring their activity for the next few months.