Sunday and leaving White Oak Lake

Morning walk with Zack and Izzy. First we went out the peninsula where I could take a few snaps of the RV reflected in water,

 
Next we took a birdwatching circle. I headed out the path by the water and saw/heard nothing except frustratingly invisible Peewees.

Then I decided to go find the Pileated woodpeckers for one last time. That walk took us up to the higher ground in the direction of the visitor's center, the spot where I'd seen them before. I was just about to give up when....

BUM BUM Bum Bum bum     bum        bu.

Very distinctive drumming. I headed that way at the speed of Zack, then eventually heard the tap-tap-tapping of a bird actively hunting food. The technique for seeing these birds is something I've just learned...listen for the tapping, get close enough to see all the way to the top of the tree without breaking your neck, then watch for the chunks of falling wood. Once you've seen that, follow the line upwards.

So I got my Pileated Woodpecker fix, then came back to camp to find a couple of small warblers in the tree by us. One was solid, pale brown-ish, like a young yellow warbler; the other yellow under the belly and whitish under the tail. I could see wing bars, but he was moving around a good bit. So no ID.

Annoyed, I decided that with all the dragonflies and the Tiger Swallowtail butterflies floating around, who needed birds?  I never saw so many. Maybe an occasionally black swallowtail or two would float by, but mostly just tigers and tons of them at that.  I wonder what food they eat? I wonder why those were the only two butterflies I saw?  I wonder if it would be interesting to learn to tell the dragonfly species apart, or at least a few of the commoner ones. I wonder if I'll live long enough to have time to learn about all of the things I wonder about?

As we cleaned up, packed up and prepared to leave, I remarked that it seemed to be getting a little hotter every day. Which it was, of course. I'd known that.  But not unbearable. Other than the near disastrous start and the real disaster mid way, I'd say it was an uneventful trip.  But so very enjoyable.

Goodbye to my beautiful bathhouse.

We were pretty efficient packers by then and I wished I'd timed us for proof. At any rate we departed the campsite at 11:47.  When the weekend approached, our nearly empty campground had become slightly less than empty but nowhere near one-quarter full. I counted about seven RVs (motorhomes, fifth wheels and trailers) and about six sites with tents. We were told that traffic at the park picks up in September, which is surprising to me. It makes sense that August would be dead--too darn hot--but September is school. Odd.



Return trip was pretty much boring...up until the point where we came on the exit for Highway 380. We've taken it like hundred of times before in our lives...but we were going 75 miles per hour and Ed asked me if that was the right one and I had literally a split-second to think and I remembered they done construction a couple of years ago--I saw the word Business on the sign and nixed it.  We took the next exit which would probably have been a better route--no stoplights at all--but my phone told me to turn left when it should have said stay straight and we ended up doing a mile and a half on a gravel road to get to 380. Which sucked. My car was coated with a double layer of dust.

With an eight-minute stop for gas at the Shell station again, we arrived home at 3:39.  So that was 3:52 for the trip.  (227 miles this time)  Google said 3:34.

NOTES:

1. If camping in summer and especially if boating is on the agenda, pack two changes of clothes per day. I ran out of shorts and was down to my last "spare" pair of underwear and teeshirt. Luckily I'd thrown in a pair of running shorts for my daily jog. (Made a funny, there.)

2. The pre-packaged salad I took made a delightful addition to lunches; it's expensive and wasteful, but do it again unless I happen to be overflowing in salad makings. The bottle of Gold Peak Tea was refreshing. Plan ahead for a return trip lunch: make a sandwich; heat a frozen burrito; take a hummus/cracker dip bowl.... 

3. Never give me the keys. If taking the fish finder on a rental boat, pull in the transducer before you head back.

4. In the hot months of summer--July through September--we really want 50-amp hookups. This applies to Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and any other state whose temperature will be in the 90s. But turning on the generator for an hour before bedtime let us run both air conditioners and get the place nicely cool...after than just the bedroom air conditioner would suffice.  However, if we ever decide to upgrade an RV, I sure would appreciate one with a quieter air conditioner.

5. Tall pine trees are delightful--they make great shade. Tall pine trees are annoying--they hide birds in the tip-tops.

Saturday (Aug 17) at White Oak Lake

Another magnificent sunrise over the lake. Whenever possible we need to camp on the west side of a lake so I can lie in bed and watch the sunrise through the window. Yes, yes--I know it would be better to get up and go outside, but that means putting on clothes, leashing up the dogs and taking them for their walk--and by the time we get back, sunrise is over!

Best to let sleeping dogs lie and enjoy the brilliance all to myself.

After a slow start with breakfast, I walked over to the welcome station and picked up a trail map. There was still a little morning cool in the air and I was determined to get some exercise. Ed came with me, so we locked poor little Zacky in our Mammoth home and went to walk the two-mile Beechwood loop.

It was a very well-maintained trail system, with two short hiking loops and a 9-mile bike route. The parts of it I saw were plenty wide and so smooth that even I--the wimp--could have enjoyed pedaling a mountain bike ride on it.  But for two elderly, overweight adults, the two-mile walk was sufficient.  There was nothing much to see except tall pine trees and the eternal wonder and mystery of a walk in the woods. Even if you see nothing at all, you see something...does that make sense?

I mean...I'd hoped to see deer, wild hogs, or a lumbering raccoon. I'd hoped to hear a nearby gobble of turkey or a stray bob-white call...a wood thrush song would have been magnificent. But what I got were pine-covered slopes mixed with hardwoods and mostly clear of the dense, prickly underbrush you typically find in forests of northern Texas--there you can't see farther than you could throw a pine cone. Here, you could see far away, on ether side of the trail...and imagine what you couldn't see.

A short stretch of boardwalk crossed a dry-ish creek, with only a few hand prints of raccoons and some small-pawed critter, maybe a small dog but possibly a fox. The prints were pretty old, though, and not worth taking a picture of for later identification. The trail wound up to the top of a hill, something that used to excite me but now I know better. Most of the time when you get to the top of a hill, all you see is, more hill.

But this time it really was the top of the hill; no view, but nowhere to go but down. On the way back we were taunted with red-eyed vireos, one to the left and one to the right, one singing the verse and the other immediately repeating. It reminds me, in retrospect, of an old-timey gospel church. The choir leader calls out the text, one line at a time, and the people sing each line after.

Back along the lake we were met with the bluest of bluebirds, a huge chestnut oak hanging over the water, and a mighty scrawny squirrel ducking around the back of the trees.
And more bony knees.



A few notes from the afternoon diary:
It's clouding up a little this afternoon. Could a shower be in Mother Nature's plans?
There's a dragonfly on my computer monitor. I moved outside to type this and eat some lunch--I was enjoying sitting inside in the air conditioning, but Ed came back from fishing and turned on the TV.  I enjoy the shows he's watching but I'm just not in the mood for the noise and nonsense of TV right now. So I've moved out and unfortunately, displaced my crow from his chosen spot. The sun is on my back and I need to move...but where?  Mammoth's awning is making a nice bit of shade, but Mammoth's body is blocking the breeze.  I don't know the temperature but without shade and breeze, it's way too hot outside.


It's funny that with a view and a bit of a breeze, I can endure temperatures that would send me running inside screaming at home.  My guess would be 92.

After eating a little fruit and some leftover beans and rice for lunch--
Note: gotta get some vegetarian refried beans in here!  A bean burrito would have been perfect!
I sat out in the ever-shifting shade to write on the computer. Then I selected a book to read. Not Bone-Gap Travelers #2...not Kingbird Highway...not the Good Sam Guide to RV camping. I selected Pete Dunne on Birdwatching and read it for a little while. It's very interesting...but after a while i decided it was silly to sit and read about bird watching when I was right there in a place where I could do it!

So Zack went in the Belly of the Beast while Izzy and I made a complete circuit of the park. The paved portion only--we didn't attempt the 9-mile bike route. How many birds did we see?  None.  (It was 4:00 in the afternoon on a mostly sunny day in the mid-nineties in August.) The only birds we saw were the mother and father bluebird feeding their young ones...they had two young birds on the ground in my pet crow's favorite spot. Ed says he saw a cat there on the first day...I hope he was wrong but I'm sure he wasn't.

Sitting around in the evening we saw a few other birds: blue-gray gnatcatcher, yellow-shafted flicker, chickadees, titmice. (Do the names chickadee and titmice even need a singular form? Because the birds don't.) I'm almost for certain sure I finally observed one of the omnipresent but elusive Peewees. But I didn't for sure see the wing bars.


When the sun finally started getting low in the west, I took another lovely shower and sat out to enjoy nightfall.

Friday at White Oak Lake

I forgot to mention this, but our campsite was backward. It took me a while to realize this...but once I did, it became glaringly obvious and obviously annoying. When Mammoth was backed into the campsite, the hookups were on the lake side and our canopy/front door were on the side away from the water. Normally, with a back-in site, the scenic view (lakeside) is on the right side of the RV and the hookups on the left, away from the water.

Arkansas chose to reverse this natural order of things. So after boating yesterday, Ed reversed the RV. He'd the good sense to buy an extra long electrical cord and water hose, so after a brief moment of difficulty--backing up the wrong way down the one-way drive--parking was a easy maneuver and hookups only took a little longer than usual. And then, the door and canopy were where they belonged to be.

It seemed much cooler that morning with a gorgeous red sky just before dawn. But I had remembered--
Red skies at morning, sailor take warning.
And there was a high spattering of cirrus and nimbus clouds. Since the "cold" front just went through on Wednesday morning, I suspected it was a warm front coming back. But I could dream, couldn't I?

That morning we had the smarts to get out early with the rental boat, but without a fish finder we were skunked. One small smallmouth bass for Ed; nothing for me.

Before fishing I absolutely positively identified a spotted sandpiper. It was hanging out on the little isthmus? peninsula? of mowed grass that extends part way out into the water to make a sheltered space for the boat dock.  The markings were right on, and the teetering motion of the rump clinched it.

When we were done "not-fishing" there was a bit of a breeze stirring, just enough to let me eat out lunch outside and re-rig my fishing poles. After a delicious shower in the clean-as-a-pin bathhouse.  (I'm in love with that bathhouse.) Lunch was salad and a small serving of pinto beans. (planning to pig out at suppertime.)

The only birds to watch were bluebirds and a far off cormorant, moving rapidly. Not a duck nor a goose.

Zack the turdlet caught me with my back turned and got into the water to get his feet and underneath all muddied. Normally I wouldn't mind, but my brother had scared me by sending reports of dogs dying from drinking water with a blue-green algae bloom. There were several reports of this in the Eastern United States this year. I knew how to tell normal green algae from blue-green algae, but rather than aggressively test every algae bloom I see, I decided to just keep the dogs out of the water.

There was a lonesome crow who lived near our campsite. I'd seen him both days, all by himself, never saying a word.  So---against all park rules--I put out a little plate of bread, dog food and grapes for him. He walked around and ignored it, of course, so finally I moved it up to our concrete pad so a ranger wouldn't drive through and see me "feeding the animals". Later a squirrel came by and chowed down on the bread; ants enjoyed the dog food and the grapes just sat there, spoiling.

After all that activity I retired inside to wait until the sun started to droop, when it would be dog walk time again.  First it was dishwashing and floor sweeping time.

For dinner  had Neogiri ramen which nearly wiped out every taste bud in my tongue. Someone sure overspiced the flavoring packet on that one. Next time I need to either adulterate it with some of the frozen shrimp or vegetables we stock for the purpose, or else skip a quarter of the flavoring packet.  But as usual, by the end of the bowl my sinuses were clear and the noodles were tasting mighty good.

After that I snacked a little and found myself so sleepy I couldn't get up the energy to go find a book to read. Early bed for me.

Thursday, Second Day at White Oak Lake

We got a very late start, with lots of coffee drinking, lake gazing, bird watching--I saw at least two pileated woodpeckers!  Three or more Belted Kingfishers!  And some very, very annoying little solid gray warbler with a long, pointed beak and a long darkish tail and absolutely no other markings at all. Next day I saw them again, and again the next. At the end I decided they might have been just blue-gray gnatcatchers. The first few times I saw them they were completely silent and, of course, moving so rapidly I only occasionally saw the flashes of white in the long, dark tails. Fall warblers are annoying enough, but gnatcatchers pretending to be warblers are infuriating.

We very much enjoyed the traditional camping breakfast: burritos. Sausage, cheese and egg for Ed; egg and salsa for me.

I had plenty of Eastern Kingbirds to observe, a few bluebirds, a peewee or two heard but not seen, and a pleasant abundance of Great Blue Herons and Great Egrets. Of course you know that, with those last two birds, two is an abundance.  Three in one place--except during the spring flood season back home--is a miracle. They must have an extreme intolerance for their own species.

Over across the creek I kept hearing crows that didn't sound like American Crows. I strongly suspect they were Fish Crows. On Friday I heard a few American Crows, so I was sure I remembered what they sounded like--who wouldn't?  But the oounk, oaunk, from across the creek had to be something different. (Note on Saturday I heard and saw them--Fish Crows for sure.)
[jigsaw]
We didn't rent the boat until 10:30 or so and yes, it was awfully hot. Ed kept hearing blips on the fish finder, so we knew that fish--or something--was down there. We mainly fished for crappie using baby bluegill for minnows (all he could catch). I switched to night crawlers after a while and had even less luck.

So we went further down the lake and tied a buoy to some structure he found with the fish finder.  That should have been great, but the "anchor" they rented us with the boat was simply a chunk of concrete on a rope--a rope that was far short to let the concrete rest on the lake bottom. So, needless to say, we drifted. A buoy is pretty useless without a decent anchor--we had about five minutes to fish at it before we drifted away.

No fish met its end at our hands that day; I don't know that I got a single one bite in the whole three and one-half hours we were out there.  It's pretty stupid fishing in the middle of the day--I know that and you know that, but the park rental service didn't open up until eight o'clock and the boats had to be turned in by four-thirty. So we were stuck with midday no matter what we did, although we decided to go as early as possible next day.

On the way back, disaster struck. The fish finder's sensor thingy caught up on something underwater and broke off. We typically leave it in the water the whole time the boat is moving but maybe that's a mistake. Ed has a plan for a device he'll build that will prevent this from happening again--if we can replace the part.  Which we can't do here. After unloading and turning the boat in, we drove toward Prescott so we could get Internet service and see if there was a major sporting goods company nearby. Did I mention, no phone service at White Oak Lake State Park?

But there wasn't anything other than an Academy store in Texarkana and that would have been a long shot at best. After about twenty minutes of driving--to get a signal--we headed back. 

I took a long, lovely shower at the bathhouse, and it was time to think about supper--skewered vegetables, portabella mushroom caps with a tomato-garlic-Parmesan filling, baked potato or rice, and steak.  Then we sat outside after dark and watched bats come out. Bat flight is demented. But cool.

Mammoth Goes To Arkansas

14 August June 2019
Home to White Oak Lake State Park, Arkansas
Route: US-380 to Greenville, I-30 to Prescott AR, AR-24 E to SH 287.
1. Planned distance: 225 miles
2. Map time estimate: 3:29
3. Adjusted estimate: didn't calculate
4. Actual distance: 231 miles 
5. Actual time:  4:30 (minus stoppage = 3:50 driving time)
6. One bathroom break, two gas stops
7. Average mph trip: 60.2

We departed a little later than hoped, at 11:22. A small bit of rain had dampened the flowerbed and garden, but that's not what slowed us down--we were just moving slowly. The rain was a happy coincidence. It's funny that the last few times we've had a prediction of thunderstorms they've turned out to be small showers.

Immediately we stopped for gas at the Shell station between Princeton and Farmersville. They're not listed as a truck stop on the map, but they had diesel and after we pulled in, Ed discovered that there were truck pumps around the back. Back on the road I did some quick research on the difference between "road" diesel and "reefer." Since you're dying to know, I'll tell you. Reefer is used in refrigerated trailers and it doesn't include the road tax that regular diesel does. So it's cheaper, but it usually has dye in it. The purpose of the dye will have to remain unknown, awaiting another day's research. I was getting nauseous from reading in a moving vehicle.

That little bit of rain wouldn't help to keep the garden alive, but the "cold" front left behind some lovely, low clouds. Driving wasn't unbearable with the air conditioning on high. And it was August. In Texas. The day before had been 90 degrees when I got to work--90 degrees at nine o'clock in the morning!  The forecast high was 101 but when I got in the car that evening the thermometer said 103. As I drove home, it got higher, which never happens--it always registers higher when parked in a lot, and as I head toward home it drops three or four degrees. It didn't.

But on Wednesday, travel day, a "cold" front--air quotes there because "cold" represents a difference between 100-degree highs and 95-degree--was coming through.

I'd had the good sense to remember that I'd be wanting some lunch during the ride, so the day before I'd bought a bowl of Blazing Noodles with tofu and extra veggies at Masala Wok. With fruit for dessert, half a bowl is more than a meal. So I had the leftover half to eat cold. And there was much rejoicing.

We stopped at 2:10 at the rest area just across the Arkansas state line. I didn't note our departure time because a disaster had occurred and I was too depressed to do anything intelligent for a long time. Trying to speed up things, while Ed went into the rest room I asked the for RV keys and I went back to get the dogs. I was planning to walk them while he went to the bathroom; then hand them to him.  But I made that decision spur-of-the-moment, with my brain not switched into gear, so instead of harnessing up Zack before I took him out the door, I just picked him up and I carried him to the nearest grassy area, harness in hand. Before walking across the pavement, I locked the doors and shoved the keys in my pocket.

Well, I was wearing women's shorts. Women's clothing has one thing you can be sure of--crappy pockets. When I bent down to harness Zack, the keys fell out in the grass.

Not noticing this I proceed to walk round and around the various picnic areas, letting the dogs smell and pee. After a period of time just short of a millenium, Ed finally emerged. I handed him the dogs and reached into my pocket to get the keys. And shit! No keys. Frantically I started retracing my steps-- which was going to be darn near impossible since I'd been following Zack in meandering circles, wherever the smell took his stinky little Shit-zu fancy. He or Izzy could have tracked us all the way out and back, but I couldn't. And the grass was abnormally tall and cushioney.

A short drive was about to become hideously long. In fact, I doubt if either of us had our wallets with our Good Sam ID cards/phone numbers in them.  All of that was locked in the RV.  But we can be grateful Ed is very good at spotting lost items on the ground--I might have seen the keys after three or four circuits around, but when I took him back to the place where I'd stooped down to harness Zack, he spotted them immediately.

New rule and new item for the Notes section:
Never give me the keys.
Ed has his keys; I have mine. And if I leave them behind, he has to take me back to get them. Losing even one set of keys would have been a real pain in the kiester, but being locked out at a highway rest stop was a total joykiller.

We took a second gas stop on the exit to highway 24/371. We weren't empty, but just wanted to top off the tank. Outdoors it was 91 degrees, humid, and horrible. The stop lasted thirteen minutes and we were back on the road. We arrived at 3:52 with 201.5 miles on the trip odometer.





What a gorgeously beautiful wonderful little lake! The park was as clean as everyone said it would be; the workers very friendly; the facilities in near-perfect shape. There were recycling and garbage containers conveniently placed all over, in pleasing shades of green and brown to blend into the landscape. Our campsite had huge, mature pine trees that would shade it in the mornings; they were mixed with a smattering of hardwoods like sycamore and (blackjack?) oak, and a lovely array of cypress trees with their bony knees poking up by the water's edge. It was one of the prettiest lakes I have ever seen.






Even the car had a view.

The water was a bit on the murky side of brown, but it seemed to be productive. There were perch minnows, frogs and turtles everywhere I looked. Dragonflies abounded; water ripples sprang constantly from fish unseen dimpling the surface with their little fishy lips....   It was not a swimming lake or a water-sking lake but something much better--a fishing lake.

And better for me--a birding paradise. If the temperature had been fifteen degrees lower I'd have been in heaven.

The usual first day supper--barbeque chicken for Ed, baked potato for me (with a scoop of stolen blackeye peas). Sunset, TV, beer and bed.

Mind bendingly weird book

Eleanor Oliphaunt
is completely fine
by Gayle Honeyman

Wow oh wow. I very much wanted to stop listening to this. I was taking it very literally ,and in the beginning, Eleanor Oliphaunt is very literally a highly disfunctional social disaster. Yes, I suspected she had some reasons for being so strange but I didn't think I'd ever find out what they were. She was simply this really odd, really unhappy person drudging on and on...and then she slipped into a world of fantasy.

I think I can tell you this without giving up too much of the plot...she seems to be an ordinary-looking, 30-ish something woman who doesn't have any interesting hobbies. But one day she sees a musician at a concert and decides that she is the woman of his dreams...and he the man of hers. So she starts preparations for their eventual meeting, the inevitable falling in love, and the happy cohabitation for ever after.

Luckily these preparations, combined with an accidental meeting with a coworker followed by their having to call an ambulance for a man who passed out at a bus stop, brought her kicking and screaming right up against the world of reality.

For long-suffering me, after enduring page after page (in audio) of mildly irritating descriptions of her fantasy life, suddenly I really wanted to know how it ended.  And I was not disappointed.

History coming alive, gotta love it

The Hired Girl
by Laura Amy Schlitz

Great YA novel that doesn't sacrifice depth for trendiness! It's a historical adventure so very real to life, starring a young woman who leaves a hopeless home and runs off to a glamorous job in the city....

Or not so much. She becomes the hired girl to a family of well-to-do but not exceptionally snooty working folk. The head of the family runs a business--clothing? or maybe furniture? I don't especially remember. But he keeps an excellent library of the classics and allows our heroine to wander there at will.

As she grows up, she encounters all the usual teenage girl emotions--wanting to have nice things, wanting to please people, friendship, first love--and also some emotions that aren't typically discussed in YA literature--a need to find religion, to stand up against injustice, and to make her place in a family. And to learn and be educated.

And on top of all that, it's not the slightest bit preachy.

Reading a cookbook--because people raved about it?

Cravings
by Chrissy Teigen

I was prepared for this--I knew it would be nothing more than recipes with amusing headnotes--so I wasn't disappointed. But I wasn't prepared to actually want to cook a few of them.  So I won't rate the book until I've tried.

The notes were indeed amusing, but not "worth the price of the book" as Jennifer Reese used to say. Neither were the endless shots of the author/model/cook's enormous cleavage. The line between food porn and fashion mag was muddied somewhat...at first I just chuckled at the photos and turned on to the next recipe, but after a while I started to laugh. I imagined the instructions the photographers might be giving her....go, baby! Really lean into this one! Love those spicy melons!

No matter. With assets like that, who needs to cook?  But from reading the recipes, I think she really can. We shall see.

Blah and books

I should write something thoughtful and moving on the anniversary of my birth day. But all I can think of is I'm sixty-one years old and still wasting 2+ hours of my day sitting in rush-hour traffic!?!? 

It is indeed Time To Move On, as my current password suggests. I need to change it soon...what will the next one be? NearingEndOfSentence? GetReadyNow!ItsAlmostOver? OhHappyDayIsComingSoon?

Meanwhile, I read.




Turning the Tide
(Quaker Midwife Mystery #3)
by Edith Maxwell


I'll give her a Michelin star for consistency. This one was different from the previous ones only in that it featured a good bit of the heroine's mother, albeit in a flat, one-sided role, and it dealt much with women's suffrage. The ongoing saga of the heroine's engagement, fiancee, and future mother-in-law was advanced a bit, but nothing has really changed. And she still goes on questioning her fiancee's every thought even while he remains as steadfast and loving as a man can possibly be. If these were real people, I'd be wondering what kind of marriage they could possibly have with all her mistrust and insecurity and fear.

The murder and detection was such a sideline to the midwifery/marriage/suffrage plot that I barely remember a thing about it.

And despite all those horrible things I just wrote, I'm still looking forward to the next one.

Almost a book of the year for me

The Keeper of Lost Things
by Ruth Hogan

Absolutely gorgeous book.  I write that knowing it is my own, highly subjective opinion-- many readers of serious literature would scoff at the notion. Ghosts creep about unseen; people (but not all people) are genuinely kind to each other; gossip burns the cheeks but isn't confronted with angry words; mildly retarded people have mysterious second sight; dementia can be kind of funny; true love ignores age and appearance....

But that's not to say the story is light, sweet or cozy. Bad stuff happens. People hurt. And people who deserve it get told off in the end--hurray!

Besides, how could you not enjoy a book about a man (or really, the people he comes in contact with), who loses a precious thing and starts to collect, label and store all lost things he finds, in hopes of giving them back to the person who once treasured them?