We were not amused

 

Southern Lady Code by Helen Ellis

Like so many books of short, funny essays I've read, this was laugh-out-loud in the first chapter and meh in the others. I don't know why, exactly. After, "If you can't say something nice, say something mean in a nice way," it went downhill. And so unmemorably that I'm having trouble remembering anything to write about here.

At the very end, she has a serious essay about a friend who's a lawyer prosecuting a very difficult murder case. That was good. But the articles on neck lifts, mammograms, and obscene twitter accounts weren't all that funny. Who can't write funny about a mammogram?  

I just don't get it. Very possibly other people find her hilarious. Try for yourself and see--but don't say I recommended it.

If a mystery is just okay, do I really need to read another?

Artifacts
by Mary Anna Evans

Great mystery plot--I didn't figure it out until the end. Interesting heroine and a fairly believable big shoot-'em-up scene at the end. (Not literally shoot-'em-up -- I think the murder weapon of choice was a garotte.)  I almost but not quite want to read a third book in her series...maybe. Oh, yeah--the historical angle was great. So yes, I do want to read a third, but only if the library has it.

The only real complaint I had was the perspective. Third person omniscient--is that a technical definition?  It's the kind where you jump from chapter to chapter into different peoples' heads, and in this case, too many different peoples', even one of the bad guys. I couldn't keep track of them all and I found it pointless and irritating.

Makes me start looking for more autobiography to read

 Bound For Glory
by Woodie Guthrie

Here's a question for you: at what point does the transcription of dialog become so difficult to read that you almost give up? And another: is it necessary? And another: is it even possible to read three hundred pages of it without going mad?

It's easy to read something like this: "I wuz born travelin'." You don't have to do a double-take, like I did on a lot of phrases, but did it add anything to the narrative?

When he's transcribing a black person's speech, maybe it's even necessary: "Some weeks it's buttah. Some weeks eggs. An' now you speaks out something' 'bout milk. Lawd God, little rattlesnakes! C'mon, I'll he'p you."

But other times, I don't get it, "I'm driver 'n d'lilvery boy."  Why wasn't it, "drivah" instead of "driver"? I've struggled with it myself, and I think the answer is clear--add in just enough colloquialisms to give the mood, but not so many as to overwhelm the reader.

Anyway, I'll shut up now. It was really good all the same--a unique voice from a unique time of history telling his life story like he remembered it. His family and their tragic split; playing war with slingshots and rocks; living in an Oklahoma oil boomtown and returning to find it busted; escaping the dust; freight trains to Cal-i-for-ni-ay where fruit spoils on the ground but you're not allowed to pick any of it. At end he started putting in snippets of songs--I wish he'd done that throughout. But I guess that didn't make sense when he wasn't a singer--for the first twenty or so years of his life he was a sign painter and a bum.

Magical and still so sad

 

Prairie Time: A Blackland Portrait

by Matt White

Phenomenal book--but of course, so sad--about the vanished prairies of north-east Texas. He goes in search of them and finds remnants of the unplowed land in railroad easements and sometimes in prairies preserved by the people who owned them. or by neglect.

When a virgin tallgrass prairie is plowed it never returns to its former plant communities. Or maybe never is too harsh a word...some restorations have come close to what we think may be the original state. Lacking fire and buffalo to regenerate the native plants, prairies were quickly grown up in cedar and scrubby hackberry or elm. I've seen that myself on the Corp of Engineers field that adjoins the Trinity River behind my house. The former owner of the nearby field kept the Corp. land mowed, but it hasn't been mowed in twenty years and the little trees are creeping in from all sides. It'll be a forest when we leave.

Our own pen area is suffering the same fate, but I'm determined to reverse it. Never, however, will I succeed in restoring it to the Blackland Prairie that it once was. We have only Johnsongrass, Bermuda and Dallis Grass imported from Asia and beyond. There are no coneflowers, sunflowers, or other native beauties to adorn the fields in summer.

The prairies he describes were dominated by Big and Little Bluestem, Indiangrass and Switchgrass. I suspect I've seen them all but I can't find them in my fields.  But he writes this,

Perhaps, then,, there was something unique about our pioneer ancestors who refused to chop down every tree, who refused to plow under every blade of grass. What impulses motivated some people to preserve the world around them in an era when doing so was terribly out of fashion? What traits did they possess that caused them to see the world as something that could be used without being completely destroyed?

It's a question, and he still seeks to answer it. But it may be unanswerable.

Leaving Belton Lake Friday (June 10)

I made myself take a bird watching walk in the morning. I'm just not and never will be a morning person. I got out of bed at 7:05 but had to take Zack for his morning constitutional first; I probably got on the road with Mollydaa and my binoculars at about 8:00.  Just at the start of the road we listened for a while to a catbird, or so I  believe. It reminded me a lot of the catbirds I heard back in Paducah. I only got the quickest glimpse of it.

Then on and up and over. There were many cardinals singing, and painted buntings, although I only saw one painted bunting for sure. At one point I heard a bird call that I didn't recognize at all--but no luck. Only a couple of calls and no bird.  

We walked down to the boat ramp, mostly in the scrub cedar and oak, but heard no more birds. On the way back I watched a Bewick's Wren for a minute or two.

And that was that. Time to pack and load up.

The drive back confirmed our belief that we have no business taking Mammoth on I-35E. Going through Temple was fine--we stopped at Buc'ees to get gas but didn't go inside. There was nothing we really needed and no reason to go inside except to finally see the insides of one--we've never actually been inside the dwelling place of the buck-toothed beaver which is taking over Texas. Most people in the parking lot were wearing their masks, and we had ours, but what was the point?  Some other time.

When leaving Buc'ees, we were supposed to head east and cross over to I-45, but Ed's phone navigation reset itself and we ended up on the shortest route. The road construction at Waco was bad but not horrid. Another round of it, probably at about West (the town) where 35-E and 35-W join up, was also bad but not horrid. But then we hit Waxahatchie and it truly sucked big time. We shan't be doing that again.

Home.

Trip Notes:
1. On Thursday it was 97 degrees and the A/C was having trouble keeping up in the hottest part of the afternoon, but it was okay by nightfall. So we can handle pretty much the worst that Texas can throw at us. (Yes, I've seen temperatures of 110 on my car thermometer but that was in a parking lot, not a campground.)
2. If we camp here again and want to park the boat in the water, remember that the westernmost sites have a gravelly bottom. However, the site farthest to the northeast, next to the tent camping area, has a gravelly/sandy bottom. It's a great spot.
3. Don't be alarmed if Zack doesn't eat on the first night. By the second day he was ravenous.
4. How did they get those pipes drilled through the mountains out to the water?
5. Is highway 171 the same as the old Meridian Highway, the one that was mislabeled by Ackley as the Chisholm trail?
6. Need to tie a red flag on the boat propeller. It sticks out past the trailer.

Thursday at Belton Lake (July 9)

 

No boating. We took a drive up to explore a few places: Mother Neff State Park, the COE campground called Turkey Roost, and the Miller Springs Nature Center by the dam. The state park was small but interesting, having heavy cover of cedar and scrubby oaks. We took a short walk out to the bird blind (no birds), the CCC table and observation tower, and the cave. No great shakes of a cave by my standards, but it would have made a decent hideout for a wandering tribe of midget Indians.

 

On top of the tower

Cave

The cave had one thing of remark--spiders. We thought they were clumps of moss...big, black balls of fuzzy moss. Moss that was moving. As you got closer, the moss dissolved into millions of restless little legs...eeps!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I like Daddy Longlegs, and even I got the creeps.

 

 

Then we went to the Turkey Roost campground to see if it would be nicer than this one. Other than not being able to park the boat by the site, which we're not doing here anyway, it was. Some of  the sites were too close together but most of them had a tree or two and a decent view of the water. I'd thought it was on the Leon River, but it's actually on Cedar Creek, a tributary of the river. There's a good bit of relief around here--I guess I have to assume that the creek was creating a canyon before its downstream river was damned.

I'd been across the Leon River many times, while traveling south on I-35 just north of Belton. It was large, but not so large as what we saw there. Looking at the map, it appears that what they call Leon River includes the upper portion of Belton Lake, so the water's surface are is way larger than it originally would have been.

It was getting onto afternoon when we set out to walk from the Miller Springs Nature Center to the dam, and it was hot. Really hot. Zack got to walk only a little way before I decided to carry him. It's hard enough to hike in midday heat at a normal speed, but at the speed of an elderly, crippled Shi-tzu, unbearable.

Yes, it was an interesting place with a lot of good jogging trails, and yes, there were lots of "slightly scenic" views, but no. Not the right time of year or right time of day. It would be very enjoyable at dawn, maybe. In midwinter.

Mural on the dam--just a little bit of it. It goes on to the right a long ways.

All that driving and walking got us sweaty and tired; we returned at about two o'clock. Plenty of time to tidy up the Mammoth, scribble a little on the computer, wash dishes, and scribble a little more. Then I put on the bathing suit and tried to get Mollydog to fetch her ball in the lake. She fetched, but not with the enthusiasm she reserves for tennis balls in the back yard.

Leftovers for dinner, and no complaints.

Wednesday at Belton Lake (July 8)

The rain of the previous day had been the result of a "cold front" pushing through--the campground was pleasantly cool in the evening. But it was filling up--with people, dogs, noise and lights, lights lights. What is the deal with people and all their lights? It's bright enough already with the water treatment plant and the various houses and buildings across the lake. But people who go camping at these campgrounds are--IMHO--just plain silly about stringing up their dumb lights.

Our next door neighbors are as old as us and even more slow moving. Yet they spent an hour putting up tarps on either side of their picnic table roof, as if for privacy, and hanging very bright white lights all underneath it. Around the door to their trailer, they put up some sort of tarps on either side of their canopy, with lights under there too. So, basically, they've traveled all the way out to a lovely campground on a beautiful lake, only to narrow down their view into an eight foot tunnel, lit up like Manhattan. What the hell is wrong with people like that? It's like owning a 3000-square-foot house but spending your time in a single hallway with spotlights overhead.

Never the mind--we're not them. (Thank heavens!) We loaded up the boat and went fishing. It was a great morning for it--the water was a little rough at first but calmed down as the day wore on. It was cloudy for a long time but eventually got hot and so sunny that I had to apply a second dose of sunscreen.

Ed searched the lake for a long time, past the water treatment complex and along the shore. I wonder if the ground was blasted out when they put in this dam, because there are 70' cliffs by some of the edges and right beside them, the water drops almost straight down to a bottom depth of 70'. I'd never been in water so deep in the boat before. Even away from the cliffs, we would be within a stone's throw of the shore and still see the water depth at 35 feet.

On the high cliff just behind the water treatment plant, I was excited and amazed to see a waterfall! I didn't stop to think it out--water gushing out over the side of the cliff, at the top of the highest ground around. Duh...where did it come from?

Of course. Man and his pumping engines. It was the water treatment plant's discharge pipes. But they made a pretty waterfall all the same.

No birds to speak of. Maybe a Great Blue or so, and a few cardinals. I never saw such a birdless place...it's kind of scary, somehow. This lake should be full of ducks, terns, and gulls. It's most definitely full of fish. Where are all the birds at?

The day stayed hot but an occasional breeze and/or cloud floating over kept us from being miserable. We came in at some point during the late afternoon and took it easy for a while. I finally blew up my cheap floatie and went for a swim. Then Edward came, and the guys went out to let him learn how to drive the boat

I took the dogs for a walk, then left Zack behind so Molly and I could quickstep over to the boat ramp and try to take pictures of the guys driving the boat. Edward finally got to drive...and at speed. They say it reached 55 miles per hour although I have to wonder about that assertion...I've never seen the speedometer working when I was driving the boat. Why'd it magically start working for them?

I tried to take pictures but at my angle you could only see heads--

They didn't stay out late but it was about 8:25 by the time we ate supper and started to wind down for the evening. We've really kept the vacation hours this trip so far...breakfast at eleven, lunch at four, dinner at ten--that's the tradition for our vacation trips. I hope Edward gets some sleep when we're gone.

Tuesday at Belton Lake (July 7)

I woke up when Edward left, but only because I saw a flashlight beam. I went back to sleep immediately and didn't arise until shortly after dawn.

This day was the day of poor choices. We loitered around and didn't take the boat out until ten-thirty. There were two park attendants on duty--one came by and told us that we couldn't park the boat trailer in our camping spot even though there was plenty of room for it. He said to put it across the road in the overflow parking spots, which would have required us running an extension cord across the road. I believe he also reported that we were leaking water on the ground. Ed replaced a washer, easily fixing the leak, but was having trouble re-hooking the hose for some reason. And a second, different park attendant came by and helped out. And he also said that the boat trailer was fine where it was--it wasn't hurting anything, wasn't in anyone's way, and wasn't on the grass. Exactly what we thought.

But we were already hooking up to go fish. We launched the boat into a calm-ish lake under a cloudy sky. Since we'd planned to pull the boat up to shore in front of the campsite, and store it there for the night, I went ahead and drove the truck and trailer back to camp. Then out we went to fish.

Not thirty or forty yards out, we found a mess of fish on the sonar. No structure or anything, just a big concentration of fish. We fished that area for a while, catching a few small ones, and then we went out further, past the boat ramp. But I could be wrong about that.  After a while, though, it came up a squall. The wind and waves were seriously scary--wind out of the north and thunderclouds up there, too. We gave up, took the boat to camp and tied it up, then headed inside in a peppering rain.

The waves were occasionally hopping (I shan't say "lashing"-that would be an exaggeration) over the stern of the boat. And we discovered that one one of the two bilge pumps

wasn't working. I think the other was working, at least at first, but I don't remember the details. In any event, Ed was scared to leave the boat in the water all night with the wind whipping up waves and it looking like a major thunderstorm was about to hit any minute.

So we took a short break indoors, watching the wind and waves. Eventually, we decided to load the boat back on the trailer for the night. But it had stopped raining, so we took the fishing gear with us and prepared to sneak in an hour or two of fishing first.

But the boat wouldn't move. Ed had pulled it up as far on the bank as he could, and the northerly wind pushed it farther ashore. It was stuck in the mud, as firm as a cork in a champagne bottle. Pushing and shoving accomplished not one bit of motion. After a frustrated minute or two, eventually we got the idea of shoving the bow to the north, which put the boat sideways to the wind and loosened the grip of the mud on the stern. Then we could move it, slowly and fighting for every inch, directly away from shore. A kindly neighbor came to help, too, but we would have gotten it without him.

So...I drove the trailer back to the ramp and parked it, and out we went fishing. The fish failed to cooperate, even when Ed found a likely spot or two. I believe we caught a catfish, a sun perch, and a white bass.  But the rain started peppering down--it would rain enough to make us miserable, then stop and pretend to clear up, then start raining again. Eventually we'd had enough...and even though the wind was dying down and the the lake becoming smooth, we loaded the boat back onto the trailer.

Back at camp, Ed fixed the barbecued chicken and I walked dogs, I guess. I really don't remember what I was doing for all that time. Not writing notes for the blog, for sure.
I could live here:

When Edward arrived, we took him out fishing for a bit.  He caught nothing and I doubt if he had a very good time, because we weren't able to find enough fish on the sonar to show him what they looked like on the display. I had to rig up another rod, which took awhile, and almost immediately I lucked into a nice bass who managed to break the line and lose every bit of my rigging. I didn't even get him into the boat, so I'll never know what sort of bass he was.

When I'd re-rigged a second time, it was nearing time to go in. We loaded the boat on the trailer, and then I decided to run back to camp instead of riding in the truck. Since I could take a short cut through the grass while they had to go far around on the winding road, I thought I could beat them back. But I was wearing swim shoes--old, worn-out swim shoes--and the gravel hurt my feet enough to slow me down even slower than normal. I made it back at the same time as they did, but only because they got delayed by a stopped truck.

In any event, it felt good to run without dogs for once in a while. I was pleasantly tired at bedtime.

Mammoth goes fishing. Again. But with the Sergeant

Home to Westcliff Park COE at Belton Lake 

 July 6 through July 10

                                                  Nothing makes a fish bigger than almost being caught
                                                  -unknown                            

Southwest on Sam Wrayburn Tollway (SH 121), to the 121/820N TExpress Lanes. 820 North loop around Fort Worth, then Chisholm Trail Parkway south. Got off on 171 South to get to 174 South, then 6 to Valley Mills, 317 South, then let Google navigate us on Adams street and other small roads to the park.

I have no statistics for the drive down, but the trip back on I-35 E took 3:34. Not bad.

Date    Temp    Humid Wind
July 6    92/76    88/54    0-16
July 7    92/72    92/74    0-22
July 8    95/75    91/46    5-16
July 9    97/79    82/41    9-18
July 10    96/78    84/46    3-17


This trip is all going to be written from memory. We got there on Monday and I only starting writing down that first word on Thursday.

But that's okay. We went to see Edward, and we saw Edward. Just in the evenings, after he got off work, but that would have to do. I assume the reason I didn't add a weekend day or two to this trip was because they were all booked up. They're weren't full when we left, but close. When we arrived there were maybe three spaces empty (out of 27). On Tuesday a few people left, but by Wednesday it was nearly full again.

We took the westerly route in order to avoid I-35E around West, Waxahatchie and Waco--the three sucky W's. Road construction, narrow lanes, delays. I amused myself as we drove by wondering if we were following the Old Chisholm Trail of cattle drive days. Here's what my research found on that:

In the late 1800s, cattle were driven north through this whole area, but there wasn't a specific, well-defined "trail" and it wasn't called the "Chisholm Trail". 

Quote:

Military and Interior Department maps of Indian Territory rendered between 1872 and ’87 refer to the trail north from Red River Station as the Abilene Cattle Trail, while the trail north of Fort Arbuckle and between the North Canadian and Cimarron rivers is labeled Chisholm’s Trail or Chisholm’s Cattle Trail—names that remain consistent throughout the era. Not until 1901 did maps label the trail past Monument Hill the Chisholm Trail. Someone, it seems, had extended the trail.

The Chisholm Trail appeared sporadically in headlines between 1911 and ’38, usually amid news related to the construction of the Meridian Highway from the Canadian border to the Gulf Coast of Texas. In the mid-1920s Oklahoman P.P. Ackley, an aging former drover, announced his intention to turn the old Chisholm Trail into a highway and install commemorative markers along the route. As a result, by 1930 the length and course of the Chisholm Trail had changed to largely match those of the Meridian Highway. That year the Texas Highway Commission approved a motion to allow the Chisholm Trail Association to map a course and install markers, pending approval of the route and marker design by the commission or state engineer. After the project fell by the wayside due to disagreements and the Great Depression, Ackley began his own private project and installed an unknown number of Chisholm Trail markers from Texas north to the Canadian border. Some of his markers, which bear a distinctive Texas Longhorn insignia, still remain, while others have been replaced or removed. Given Ackley’s meandering route far beyond the parameters of the original trail, his markers remain controversial.

For clues to the original route, one must scour the record a half-century earlier. Published between 1874 and 1905, the books Historic Sketches of the Cattle Trade of the West and Southwest, by Joseph G. McCoy; Report in Regard to the Range and Ranch Cattle Business of the United States, by Joseph Nimmo Jr.; Historical and Biographical Record of the Cattle Industry and the Cattlemen of Texas and Adjacent Territory, by James Cox; and Prose and Poetry of the Live Stock Industry of the United States, compiled by the National Livestock Association, are invaluable resources, containing more than 400 biographical sketches of cattlemen and other information regarding the cattle business. Given the claim the Chisholm Trail name had come into common usage during the period, one would expect to find mentions of it throughout these accounts. Just the opposite is true, with scarcely a mention of the Chisholm or any other trail by name. It seems cattlemen of the era tended to name a trail according to its point of origin or destination, if they named it at all.

It appears the Chisholm Trail name only fell into common usage after 1911, well after the cattle drive era and in keeping with the name change on period maps. Whether use of the name in news stories based on old-timer’s recollections also had an effect is uncertain. While some old drovers certainly used the term to describe the trail through Texas, as many if not more disavowed the Chisholm label on the Lone Star section of the trail. Regardless, use of the term during the early 1900s is at odds with the period tradition of naming a trail for its origin or destination.

Again, the aforementioned 1872–87 military and Interior Department maps of Indian Territory refer to the trail north of Red River Station as the Abilene Cattle Trail and that between Council Grove on the North Canadian to the Cimarron as Chisholm’s Cattle Trail. But surveyors and cartographers did not extend either name to interconnecting trails during the era. Although many popular maps show the Chisholm Trail stretching unbroken from some vague point in Texas to some point in Kansas, all were produced post-1920 and are subject to opinion and changing perceptions. On no known period map does a route in Texas bear the legend Chisholm Trail or Abilene Cattle Trail, nor do any depict the Chisholm extending north of the Cimarron River. The only known period map on which a cattle trail crosses the Red at Montague County is Map of Texas Showing Routes of Transportation of Cattle, 1881, published by the Interior Department for possible inclusion in an 1880 census report. It labels that section as the Eastern, or Fort Worth, Trail.

For cattle the trail north from Texas ended in Abilene, Kan., where drovers loaded them onto Kansas Pacific Railway cars bound east. By any name it proved a profitable route.

Turns out, a surprising amount of what we “know” about the old Chisholm Trail draws on information from the post-1920 period of reminiscence. While many interesting interviews and tales originated in those years, they were rife with inconsistencies and contradictions, especially concerning the name and route of the Chisholm Trail. One old trail driver said one thing, another something completely different. A reader often gravitated toward the account favoring his own opinion, swallowing it for no other reason than simply because an old cowboy said so. Thus the debate has dragged on for decades.

Although contemporary maps and other sources might have slipped the notice of past researchers and authors, recently rediscovered documents from the era bring new and relevant information to the discussion. Researchers can now reference such documents, rather than rely on imperfect recollections transcribed decades after the actual events, a surprising number of which are unsupported by period sources. Fortunately, maps from the 1870s and ’80s are remarkably consistent with regard to the location of Chisholm’s Trail.

If a story is unsupported, by definition it is folklore. There is certainly a place for folklore and legend; everyone loves a good yarn. In the myriad stories about the Chisholm Trail shared over the intervening decades, it pops up alternately as the Texas–Kansas Trail, Eastern Trail, Texas Trail, Kansas Trail, Abilene Trail, Ellsworth Trail, Beef Trail or just the trail. But as Texas rancher and historian Tom B. Saunders IV used to say, “What is more important than the trail name are the people that actually did all the work.” The drovers who faced the dangers, took the risks and got the job done deserve more than just a good story; they deserve to have their history recorded as faithfully as possible. WW

Fort Worth author Wayne Ludwig started researching the Chisholm Trail in 2011. His recently published book The Old Chisholm Trail: From Cow Path to Tourist Stop includes citations and a bibliography for this adapted article. For further reading he suggests The Shawnee-Arbuckle Cattle Trail, 1867–1870: The Predecessor of the Chisholm Trail to Abilene, Kansas, by Gary and Margaret Kraisinger; The Trail Drivers of Texas, edited by J. Marvin Hunter; The Chisholm Trail, by Wayne Gard; and The Chisholm Trail: Joseph McCoy’s Great Gamble, by James E. Sherow.        https://www.historynet.com/know-ol-chisholm-trail.htm

So until I get around to reading all those books, we'll just have to assume we driving on remnants of one or more of the trails. Good enough.

Our drive down was weird, to say the least. We got a later-than-necessary start. As usual on trips with boat, Mammoth takes the boat and I follow in the truck so I can keep an eye on it. I wrote down the route for Ed to put in his phone, but his maps app wasn't cooperating. He fought it for twenty minutes at least, and ended up with a route that took us on two very annoying detours. I was following blindly, and on the first detour I thought he'd forgotten something and turned back to get it. On the second one I figured it was a necessary maneuver to allow us to get from the I-820 loop onto Chisholm Trail Parkway--I'd remembered some difficulty before. But I'm not sure about that. The third detour it was my fault; I'd been in a hurry when I wrote it down, and there might have been a more straightforward way than the one Google chose for me.

NOTE: 820 does not have a simple intersection with CTP; next time, look it up and map it out carefully.

So we headed out from the church at 10:24, after hooking up the boat, and it was sprinkling on us the whole time. But it soon quit. We arrived at the park gate at 2:32.

Traffic wasn't bad at all, even in the innumerable small towns that my route took us through, and the drive was less than tedious. I ate jellybeans to amuse myself, but when we took a short potty break in a closed-down bank's parking lot, I grabbed the almost empty bag of honey mustard pretzels and supplemented my sugar rush with a salt + fat snack.

This park is wide open, as many COE parks are, with absolutely no shade at the lake front spots. And of course we wanted lake front. The spots are spacious, well separated, and have double picnic tables under covered buildings metal roofs. Our pad is paved but the patio area is gravel, a tiny, beige gravel that's almost pleasant to walk on barefoot. (And it's delightfully willing to travel into the RV on our feet)

All the spots by the water are pull-through spots, located on the lake side of a narrow road. On the other side of the road are parallel parking spaces. They've mowed the grass all around the park but left some splotches slightly taller--to the great delight of the phoebes, bluebirds and western kingbirds.

Western Kingbird ^^^

Speaking of birds--a very bold Green Heron visits the lake shore every morning and night, and he's sometimes joined by a Great Egret. It's very odd to see such birds within a stone's throw of my dogs and me. 

 Green Heron >>>

 

The edge of our patio is only six feet from the lake shore, and the space between is kept mowed. So we can walk out our door and into the lake without much trouble. The lake bottom is thick, sucky mud at our site, but on the upstream (or is it up-lake?) sites, it's gravelly. Much better for boat parking. (More on that later)
\
The Sibley's Guide says this about Green Herons: Uncommon and inconspicuous. ... Forages along tree-lined streams and ponds, also seen in more open or grassy or weedy pond-edge habitats.  I guess this one didn't get the word--he hangs out at the edge of the lake where there isn't a tree, grass, or weed in sight. And he's anything but inconspicuous--to a bird watcher.

                                                      Great Egret

Edward had Monday off. On the way in, while we were sitting at a stop light I texted him that it was going to be about 3pm when we arrived. But we ended up arriving at 2:30. So about the time we finished hookups and started to settle in, he was there. I was still walking dogs after their long (to them) confinement. I can't remember for the life of me what happened between his arrival--oh, wait. It's coming back. He arrived and almost immediately got a call about some work he needed to finish up on the computer. I'm not sure if was work related or school. 

So I took the dogs on a long trek out to the boat ramp, while he did his work and Ed cooked supper. Molly was happy:

Nothing else much happened the rest of the day. Just resting up and getting lazy. We did the sofa-bed conversion for the first time ever, and found that the extra cushion that makes the middle had decayed badly in storage. The vinyl cover is flaking off in messy little chunks and it scatters all over the place. But the bed works better than you'd expect.  Here's what it looks like as a table.

 

To make a bed, you pick up the tabletop, remove its pedestal, and put it down on the little lip along the edges of the storage cupboards that support the seats. Then you put the extra cushion in the middle and there!  A nice little bed that's plenty wide enough for a human being. A rather short human being, or one who doesn't mind his feet hanging over the edge of the mattress.

Edward had to leave at 5:30 in the morning, but that didn't stop the guys from staying up late eating cookies and watching Impractical Jokers. I went to bed.

Just a quick reminder for myself

Explore Texas
A Nature Travel Guide
by Mary O. Parker

Excellent!  A listing of the nature parks, walks, gardens and other places to go for learning about the animals, plants and birds of Texas. This doesn't go a lot of the off-the-beaten-path sites for seeing the real animals in the wild, nor does it go into details for precisely where to find the rare birds. But for a high-level introduction to some of the cooler natural places, it's a winner--it caused a great deal of updating to my "Places To Go" list.

good beginning but read on

Bed & Breakfast Bedlam

by Abby L. Vandiver

Wow--good beginning! For reasons never fully explained, the main character "Logan"--stupid name for a woman--is attempting to break into a restricted area in the dark to explore some ruins. It was a totally ridiculous premise, but in reading mystery fiction you sometimes have to let logic go and flow with the current. I did, and I enjoyed.

The real star of the show was the aged lady (in her 90s, according to Logan) who decides to solve the murder and takes over Logan as a driver and all-around assistant. She was a hoot.

I'd recommend this as a "rolicking good tale", but only if you're a fast reader who can let the typos go. When I was done with my Kindle copy, I went back to see if there had ever been a print edition, and apparently there was a paperback. The publisher is listed as Media Web Publishing Inc. but the paperback is marked "independently published." Which maybe explains things. I saw no misspellings, thanks to spellcheck, but the author must have turned off grammar check. Some phrases were misplaced, or confusing out of context, or just plain made no sense. And there were at least two places where the wrong word had been typed (or suggested by spellcheck). There may have been more--I have a habit of blipping over such things unless I'm proofreading.

So, if you like cozy mysteries with unusual turns and twists, and if you can ignore a lot of blazing coincidences and a grammatical howler or two, you will enjoy this. For me it was too shallow--too flimsy. I want some sand in my stories.

Unlike Fletcher's books, this won't give you sore feet

Walking Home
by Lucy and Susan Letcher

This is the sequel to Southbound. The Barefoot Sisters reach the southern end of the Appalachian Trail, turn around and start back north. I enjoyed the first on so much that I turned around and got a copy of the sequel immediately. (I'd have done this even if it hadn't been free from the public library's Kindle downloads.)

At first there seemed to be too little walking and too much socializing. Instead of a travel memoir, it was simply a diary. They kept jumping off the trail to travel hither and yon, visit friend's houses, go to festivals, vacation in the Caribbean.... The trail was just a thread that held the story together.

But when they finally returned to their business--walking north to their home in Maine--their way was strewn with flowers. Less of the injuries, foul weather, and unceasingly knobby knobs blocked their way. The mountains in springtime are a lovely place to be, and the sisters deserved it after putting up with the dark and dead winter.

There was still an occasional creepy person, a place or two where the food was less than adequate, and way too many rainy days. But they got along. Their chief obstacle this time seemed to be the crowds--summer is a busy season on the trail, especially for northbound travelers. The shelters especially were crowded at night, and the day hikers abounded.

And everyone--nearly--had to obsess over the bare feet. As anyone who's ever had to put up with unwanted attention from strangers knows, people can be real jerks.