Thursday, 7 April 2022
Home to Double Lake Recreation Area
Planned time: 3:51
Actual time: 4:26
Stops: pee stop Navarro County Safety rest area 6 minutes
Long gas stop at Love's--24 minutes total. There was a huge crowd of trucks and we had to wait in line forever.
Finally we arrived at Double Lake Recreation Area. Again. We were there approximately one year before with grandkids, and I'd written it down as a nice place to come back to--when I could actually enjoy it. With the grandkids, it was all about the grandkids. It was the first place we traveled to on our 3-stop trip with them, and things were all new to us. We were full of anxiety--would they sleep? Would they eat anything? and most worriest of all--would they cry the whole time?
And the answers were YES (after a rather long lullaby session and a weak attempt at bedtime stories), YES (like a couple of little piglets), and NO, hardly at all. I'm sure we had an episode of tears or two, but I don't remember them. At one point Ethan fell out of bed and cried a little. All I had to do was put him back and rub his back for a minute. Another night he fell out of bed and never even noticed it--I got up to go pee, checked on the boys to see if they had covers on, and found him sound asleep on the floor.
It was nice, really. At one of these places--I think this one--we had to run to the laundromat after a diaper leakage left poo all over the sheets. The laundry trip was a little boring--we had some toys, but couldn't really play together too efficiently. We went on a walk or two but couldn't go far. Basically, all my long-ago methods of keeping kids entertained had evolved to games and plays that involved communication. And we couldn't.
They're talking a little better now, and that is good. But at the time, they understood most of what we told them but were absolutely incapable of answering back. Not even the simplest "yes" or "no". They could point at something they wanted and that was all.
But back to here and now. The trip this time was kind of boring, which is the best kind of all. It seemed rather short, despite us making it longer by about 5 miles by going to get the cheaper gas at Love's. The line at the truck pumps took freaking forever! Twenty-four stinking minutes! We only had one truck in front of us, but he had to wait on a truck in front of him that had pumped his gas but parked there to go inside the store. We figured that Wendy's must have had a lunch rush. Unlike cars, when trucks are finished pumping and want to go inside, they usually pull their trucks up and allow access at the pump for the person behind. But then, if they're still inside when you finish pumping, you're stuck for life. (Or so it seems)
I've seen a yellow-rumped warbler and a kingfisher, American Crows (3), chickadee, a pair of cardinals, and a strange gray and white bird in the trees that was probably just another yellow-rumped warbler. But I heard one that was almost certainly a red-eyed vireo! We don't have those at home yet. And other birds that could have been warblers of one sort or another. But nothing else seen.
Dogwoods are in bloom here!
Molly watches while we set up camp
I should have brought my game cam, darn me!l There are tons of places that look gamey.
After supper I took Molly for a sunset walk. Ended up sitting on a bench in the swamp, waiting for the sunset and looking for swamp birds. I saw neither--there were trees across the swamp that hid the celestial event, and there were no swamp birds in evidence. But it was a lovely bit of sit-down.
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