Sad good-bye to Purtis Creek

Piglets crossing the road.




Ed off fishing early; I got up shortly after sunup to walk the dogs. I walked them over to the pier, then went back to make him a cup of coffee and get my own fishing gear. I used worms and didn't get any bites, so I gave up. Ed used minnows and caught a nice catfish and an lovely little crappy, bigger than mine!  In fact, one of the bigger crappies I've ever seen in my life but of course by no means trophy weight.

Then I had a little breakfast and fed the doggies, but of course Izzy didn't eat and Zack gobbled everything he could reach. Then I unrigged my two fish poles--ah, the sorrows  of unrigging!  On the one hand, it's sad to say goodbye to a weekend's fishing. On the other hand, shoving your rod-and-reel with hooks and line and weight still attached into the vehicle is just setting yourself up for an hour of misery when you next go out and are anxious to hit the water.  Any two rods and reels left with gear attached are sure to join together and tangle up hopelessly--no matter how far apart you think you put them. And, in our case, there were seven of them.

Yuck! After two days of carefully skirting around the pile of dog poop on the road, on that last day I stepped in it. Not my dogs' poop, but still I wished I'd picked it up. I guess that's the price I paid for not being a good Samaritan.




Sunburned top of foot? Seriously?




I took off my fourth tick that morning. One of them had overnighted and was holding onto a bit of my skin when I yanked him out. I'll probably die.

My notes say we left the site at 12:53 and it took us about ten minutes to get to the park gate. We arrived home after a pleasant drive thought fields of bluebonnets, Indian paintbrush, crimson clover, and that yellow stuff (wild dill?) that grows all over. We were home by about 2:48.

Important notes:
1. Wash the windshield before the next trip! Springtime = bugs.
2. I need to bring easy-to-eat fruit like oranges, bananas or cherries. No mangoes or pears--they're messy.
3. Instead of buying expensive frozen rice, I should just fix a tub and bring it along.
4. When calculating trip times, I must not count parking time because that would include taking off the tow dolly and that would skew the mileage calculation.  So I'll just call it "home" when we park in the driveway.