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.
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