Snowbirding Magnus Style, Day 18

Friday, November 21

Still at Abilene state park.  I scheduled two days at the park not because I thought there was anything interesting to do there, but just to give Ed a break from driving every day. And I was correct—there is nothing interesting to do.

There were lots of gray squirrels for Molly to watch. Six young deer moseyed by, not scared even when Molly ran full out to the end of her leash and barked. The big mamas were over by the bathroom and didn’t come that close.

There is traffic noise from the smallish roads outside the park. There are some little trails in campground area, but the signage is confusing. Still it ended up being a nice place to walk, partly because it’s so small that you can never really get lost. The bird blind, very near the campsite, was nicely set up with seeds and all. But no birds.

After a very lot and lazy waffle breakfast, we drove over to Lake Abilene to see just how dry it was. Answer: very dry. As in, completely dry. We walked on the lake bottom for a little while and saw nary a sign of any of the rain that had fallen on the day before.

They still had a boat launching stand with a few canoes and kayak there on the ground. Sad. We walked out to the dam; the spillway bank was eroded to the point where it would be crumbling any day. The creek (Elm Creek) that created it was pretty much dry, with only a few pockets of water here and there. I couldn’t imagine it getting wet enough to fill the lake back up in a hundred years. But what do I know?

In the afternoon I took Molly for a jog. We pretty much circled the entire park in about 45 minutes. Which included smell breaks. We were on trails/roads so we might have cut off some corners of the park. Starting at the dump station by the Brushy Trail camping area, we went southwest on the Elm Creek Nature trail (.9 miles) to the Buffalo Wallow Nature trail, I think, for about a quarter mile to Wagon Circle; then to the playground and then around the road back. Aha!  We did cut off the corner of the park where the entrance station is. So I really don’t know how far we went, but I’d guess 2.5 miles.

We had to do some exploring around to make it the full one hour and 15 minutes jog time I wanted. Oddly enough, we discovered that from our campground, if you go to the restroom and then cut across one of the picnic areas, you end up at a set of stairs that climb to the swimming pool. It’s an easy walking distance for a young and active family.

So the whole park is pretty small but very nice. My only problem with the trails is they aren’t blazed or marked very well, so it’s easy to get off on a “social trail” and get totally turned around. Not normally, when the skies are mostly clear and the sun will tell you where to go. But when it was cloudy during our early morning walk, I kept getting lost. Not seriously, of course.

Birds seen: Hermit Thrush, Black- capped Titmouse. Carolina Chickadee. Robin. Blue Jay. Blue bird. Lesser Goldfinch. Barred Owl.

Note from journal:

Tonight will get down in the 40s. And then tomorrow we head home to see what sort of damage the heavy rains did. So exciting.