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.