Willis Creek Last Day and Home

 Saturday, January 16, 2020

Written at the time:
So here we are for our last day at this Willis Creek COE campground. It's not so bad but I wanna go home. If I were driving I'd be home now. But I gave Ed the choice of staying or going and he opted to stick with the plan. So I will get some contract work done this afternoon and not fret. If I were home, I'd be playing in the garden or cutting trees or doing all kinds of junk. Here there's nothing else to do but work.  [yucky]

(Of course I could read or knit or type up my trip notes. But I ought to be working.)

I don't like this place much, even as a stopover for the night. It's too far away from Georgetown to be convenient to stores; it's no closer to our route home than Cedar Ridge would have been, and the look and feel of the place is like camping in our back field. I went walking with Molly this morning, up to the fishing access point and then along the river back to the campsites. 

At first I was following a trail, but that petered out and I had to bushwhack the last couple of hundred yards.

Birds for the day: Three hawks, an owl, a cormorant, a couple million butterbutts; phoebe, cardinal, mockingbird. 

On the upland Meadowlarks, killdeer and sparrows abound. Best I can tell they're Savannah sparrows and chipping sparrows.

 

Savannah Sparrow

Chipping Sparrow

Sunday 1/17

Home home home! The neighbors next door probably didn't party all night, but we don't know because the noise from our fan blocked them out. Luckily it was too cold to want to open the windows because we wouldn't have been able to.

It was a fine, cold morning. Little wind and even fewer clouds. We left "early" but by the time we dumped, hooked up the car and headed down the road, it was eleven-ish.  Heading straight up I-35 would have taken under three hours, supposedly, but we exited at Robinson (just before Waco) and headed east on US-31. There was an awful lot of traffic for a Sunday afternoon, but we made it in without incident by three-ish.

 

 

 

 

 

NOTES:

1. If you must pick a spot for an overnight stop and you suspect it's going to be crappy, don't reserve two nights. A single night stopover would have been fine.
2. Lake Bastrop South Shore Park is great for an overnight on the way to the beach. Willis Creek, not. Avoid unless inevitable.
3. Consider avoiding US-77 south. It's four lanes, but they're four very narrow lanes without more than a yard's width of shoulder. And at some of the bridges, no shoulder at all.