Friday at Matagorda Bay and Yegua Creek Campground

(August 14)

Moving day, but I had plans first. I ate a quick breakfast--actually, I fixed one for both of us--did dishes, cleaned up all my stuff, walked Zack and then headed out with Mollydog and the camera. My original plan was to walk out the boardwalk to the end and see the ocean waves crashing one more time. But on the previous day, my plans had changed. I wasn't there to see ocean waves, I was there to see birds!

Least tern(foreground)

 

               Laughing gull  in breeding plumage (background)

Molly didn't care much for the exercise.  Nor did she have interest in sitting around on hot sand while I snapped endless pictures of birds. It's tricky to argue--on the one hand, she really needed the exercise; on the other hand, I would have had a lot more fun without her. But I set a timer to get us back in under an hour, so, too soon, we had to turn back.

I was delayed on the way by a couple of people in a small SUV who wanted to know if the road they were on led to the beach. What could I say?  Yes, it led to the beach--but it went through a puddle of indeterminate depth and unknown consistency of bottom, and then it went through deep, soft sand. I strongly advised them against it.

Oddly enough, there was a short power glitch during the night--I only knew because the microwave oven clock had reset. But the refrigerator was cooling again! The thermometer read about 42 when I got up. So it was very possible that the AC power reset had "fixed" it. We'd tried switching to LP gas and back to AC but that hadn't made a difference. But we hadn't tried powering it down completely.

When I returned from my walk, Ed was almost finished hooking up. In fact, he was closer to finished than I'd expected and I actually held him up by fifteen minutes or so by going into the office to look at the exhibits. We headed out, happy that we might expect cool drinks in the fridge when we arrived.

The plan was to stop somewhere on the way and fill up the gas tank, so as not to have to stop again on the day we went home. We found a little truck stop in Brenham but, sadly, the gas pump we chose to use was operating very, very slowly. We pumped and waited and waited and pumped, and after ten minutes had added only nine gallons. I suggested we give up at ten gallons, and Ed agreed. We ended up with the fuel tank a little over half full.

When Ed went inside to pay, the lady said she'd just been about to come outside and suggest that he move to a different pump. That was very decent of her, but it's not so easy moving a 32-foot RV with a tow dolly attached. It's not like we could simply back up and scoot over.

Note for future: there aren't many truck stops on the 290 loop around Brenham, Texas. At least not on the westward loop.

We arrived at 3:16. I expected Edward and Bob to have showed up already, but no one was there. We'd finished hookups at 4:02 and were just hanging out when people started arriving.

Bob and Theresa have gotten themselves a lovely little Casita, which is basically a bedroom on wheels. But somehow the designers engineered a mini-kitchen, a bathroom, and a shower in there. It's so small you can take it almost anywhere--it's like tent camping without the work. Cool.

The campground was full and became more so as the evening wore on. As to be expected on a Friday in August.

Thursday at Matagorda Bay

 (August 13)

Thursday started out with a Mammoth disaster trying to happen. The refrigerator wasn't cooling--the inside temperature was nearing sixty degrees. We turned the setting down lower and put a block of ice inside (a frozen half-gallon milk carton from the stash that we keep for the cooler).

For no apparent reason, I was feeling bummed that day and I wrote this:
I need to learn to shake off camping's minor issues, like my sore upper hip/lower back, the fridge not cooling, and the heat, of course. It's August in Texas--we expected cool? Not likely. And my Pepperidge Farm bread sucks.

Ed went surf fishing again.  He didn't have any bites, not even a nice big conch-type seashell like the one he pulled in Wednesday.  Meanwhile I took my camera and walked Molly out back to the pools of water with the sea birds. I spent a long time trying to photograph a Ruddy Turnstone, only to go back to Ed on the beach and find two! They don't hug the shore a lot like Sanderling, and they're a whole lot bigger, too. They don't even go hear the waves.

I took a lot of pictures of the other birds, too. Later, looking at the pictures I took, I realized that I'd seen both a Caspian Tern and a Royal Tern. Here's the Royal:

 

That's also when I identified the Willet. 

 

 

 

 

And I'd gotten pictures of both a 

Ring-billed gull --

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and a
Black Skimmer---

 

Such an interesting bird! It forages at night, flying in small groups to skim fish off the surface.

I didn't see them at all, yet they showed up in my pictures. It's lucky I didn't see them with the binoculars. Molly was bored enough standing still while I snapped pictures without having me spend an extra hour identifying the birds.

That was the day we decided that we were tired of driving by fresh seafood stores and it was time to go inside! We'd expected to see people selling shrimp by the side of the road, like they do in the suburbs of Houston, but we never did. However, we'd been driving by a building with a "Fresh Table Shrimp" sign every time we went out. I believe it was called Rawling's Bait Camp.

They did have all kind of bait inside, but they also had big tanks of freshly caught shrimp. We got four pounds of the jumbo sized ones, six or eight per pound. The guy said shrimping season had started July 15, which was in keeping with what I'd researched. I wish we'd bought more and brought them back...but I don't remember the price and don't want to ask. I heard him say it, it sounded reasonable, and that's okay.  Sometimes it's better not to remember.

We were soon back at camp, de-heading and peeling shrimp and throwing together tempura batter and cutting up a few vegetables. Ed did most of the cooking this time--he does a better job than me, probably because he takes more care at it. I tend to slop things around when I get bored. Soon it was ready--tempura vegetables and big old shrimp.

It was hard work, but we finished them all.

Mammoth at Matagorda, Wednesday

(August 12)

 

 

Molly discovered that when we walk close to the edge of the mowed grass, near the sunflowers and other scrubby brush, sometimes a rodent will get flustered and scurry around. Very exciting! Lucky for me, she never got ahold of one.

In the morning Ed went surf fishing and I tagged along to spy on birds. We took Zack in our little wagon, and while it wasn't exactly easy pulling the thing though loose sand, it allowed us to carry a cooler of water, Ed's tackle, my backpack and our short-legged though stout-hearted doggy.

This time there were indeed Ruddy Turnstone to observe--they stayed more away from the water's edge and didn't mind hanging out for a photo op. Also a few Willet.

 

 

 Ruddy Turnstone

 

In the afternoon we went to the San Bernard National Wildlife Refuge. It was marvelous! And to think we almost missed it--the web site didn't tell us exactly how to go in, so we turned in the first entrance that had official-looking buildings. No maps or permit stations were posted, so we wandered around the small parking lot feeling helpless. Just as we were pulling away, a nice employee came over and told us that we wanted the second turn on the left, not this one.

So that brought us to the 9-mile auto tour. Not a circle, as I'd expected, but an out-and-back road that had a loop to the right and one to the left. We went left first, to Moccasin Pond. (I think that was the name) After a short drive alongside a stream, me thinking every minute that this was it--that's all there was going to be, we came to the pond! Open water was crammed with green muck but full of birds. There was a raised platform there to give you a better look--but we had to be careful--it was showing its age. And probably a hurricane or two passed through since it was built.

 It's there I got this photo of Ibis, species unknown but probably Glossy Ibis

 

 There were black-necked Stilt [stilt] there, too,

 

and egrets:

snowy egret.

 

 

 

 

 

 Common Moorhen and Barn Swallow.. And this very peculiar bird, lurking in the water at our feet:

We were joined by a man and woman there so we all put on our masks. Silly, isn't it--no cars anywhere for further than the eye could see; nothing but nature, birds and buzzing insects; and we meet another pair of humans. They were nice, though. The said they'd tried to take the Bobcat Loop hike on the right-hand turn of the road, but been turned back by all the spiders (Shudder).

After admiring the gator and helping us look for other ones, (if there were any, they were so motionless that we never saw them) they went on. Shortly thereafter, we did too. We met up with them again at the end of the road, where a small river crossed over. It's called Cedar Lake Creek and there's a short trail there, but we didn't see it. On the boat dock someone had set out a couple of crab traps and one of them had a crab.

On the way back, even though time was running out and the refuge closed at 4:30 or 5:00, we turned aside to look at the Bobcat Loop. I was curious to see all the scary spiders that daunted a supposedly normal pair of tourists. The trail was an extremely nice boardwalk in very good condition heading off through a swampy meadow. I looked to be an easy, pleasant hike...but time was getting on and the day was extremely hot. So we just walked a little ways and turned back.

The spiders? I dunno. There were a good number of friendly little "grass" spiders of the sort we have all around our house and hard.  But Shelob had left the building. The ones remaining certainly didn't seem capable of nabbing a dozen dwarfs and stringing them up in webby cocoons, let alone waylaying a pair of mortal men and women.

It was about an hour drive back to the campground. Since the dogs didn't get to have any fun at the Wildlife preserve, I took Molly for a walk down to the beach via the "scenic route." Even though our RV park doesn't have a view of the ocean, there is a road going north along the shore and along it a line of expensive ocean view houses. I can't even imagine paying the flood insurance on one of those.

 I kept intending to drive out just to take a look at them, but that never happened. Instead, Molly and I took a road that we thought was going to lead to them but it soon disappeared into two narrow tire tracks through scrubby grasses. And there lived the motherlode of all mosquitoes. One minute I was trekking along happily, looking for birds--next minute I was dancing and slapping and jitterbugging in place. I'd feel a mosquito biting, slap her, and see on my leg a dozen more than I hadn't even felt. We were running by the time we hit the hot sand and left their winged world.

Safe back in sand and surf, we wandered south to the raised walkway and passed under it, coming out at a section of waterfront where huge granite boulders broke the surf in spatters. We climbed up on one, but when the next wave hit and splashed Molly in the face, she spooked and tried to move too quickly on the slippery surface. Her back end went down in a crack between two boulders and her front end couldn't pull the back end up.

I had hold of her by the harness, and was just about ready to heave her out when she got enough traction to scramble up.

Away from the rocks were some pools of water with marsh grasses growing around them, and the Fish and Wildlife service had put up a short, orange plastic barrier with signs asking people to stay out--crucial bird nesting habitat.  The barrier wasn't in good repair but I hope the reminder was enough to warn people away--there was a bucketload of birds in the pools. I stood and stared until it was starting to get dark and Molly was completely disgusted with me. She sees big birds on the ground and she really, really wants to chase them. And I wouldn't let her!  I'm such a spoil-sport!

Mammoth at the Ocean, Tuesday

(August 11)

So many birds. So not enough time and energy...or time to write!

On Tuesday--our first day--I got up at seven or so, about the time when the sun started showing over the sand dunes to the northeast. The Colorado River goes almost due north, so the ocean is to the South, but we're facing west so it feels all wackydoodle. I guess that's because on my mental map the Colorado flows west to east, which would make our campsite face south. But it doesn't.

So we took the dogs on a little stroll and then I made breakfast. Then we tried to take the car down the road toward the nearby beach area (not on the ocean, on the river), and immediately got stuck in the sand. Luckily Ed was able to push my little Mazda 3 out.

After that we stayed sensibly on the pavement. Over at the beach parking area--on the pavement--it was still an awful long way to the beach, or so it seemed at the speed of Zack. A few days later I went without Zack, and it was still a long way.

There were many of these little birds, which by behavior are surely Sanderlings. The day before on my walk with dogs, I was amost completely sure I was seeing Ruddy Turnstones--"the bird that looks like a calico cat."  But these were different, and Sanderlings obsessively chase the waves' edge just like these did.

 

 

 So, Sanderling.

We puttered around on the beach for a while, then went back. Ed considered fishing but finally suggested that we go driving out to investigate some of the nature places I'd wanted to see. It was really too late in the day for that--everything was over an hour away and I didn't just want to "see" them, I wanted to stop the car and walk all the little boardwalks and hang out at the bird blinds.

So we compromised on going to Quintana Beach to check out the campsites there. I'd heard it was a pretty good place to RV camp. The drive was boring, on narrow but very straight little roads that cut through farmland. Not boring in a bad way, but not like the scenic drive I was expecting.

Quintana Beach is, of course, not all that near the beach. The walk to the beach was about the same as that at our campground...maybe a quarter mile? Google maps shows 500-1000'.  Through soft sand, of course. The park was pretty clean and the buildings were kept up, but there was little vegetation and no trees to speak of, and there would be nothing to look at except your neighbor campers. So our conclusion was, almost certainly not.

As we were coming back down the road to our home base, I noticed something off to the left perched at the top of a few scrubby trees--Crested Caracara. Molly and I returned to take a closer look at them, but we couldn't get any closer than this:

The side of the road they were on had a long, narrow canal blocking me from walking over. When I tried going into a convenient "ice house" parking lot and then cutting across country on a little dirt road, I soon came to a barbed wire fence in very good repair.  I could have gotten through but it would have been a real pain in the neck. Not to mention my jeans, teeshirt, and skin.

 

 

So Molly and I went back to camp, hung around and ate supper, watching boats go up and down the channel. And birds, of course.              Killdeer->

Mammoth goes to the ocean (or at least the Lower Colorado River)

 

Matagorda Bay Nature Park August 10 - 14, then
Yegua Creek Park at Lake Somerville August 14-17

1. Planned distance: 361 miles then 136 miles then 236
2. Map time estimate: 6:03, 2:35, 3:56
3. Adjusted estimate: didn't calculate
4. Actual distance: forgot to check
5. Actual time:  7:32
6. On way out, slowdown on 380, then two Buc'ees stops and a Shell station refill. On way back, 10-15 minutes gas stop at Buffalo, TX.
7. Average mph trip: unknown

Our very weird route: South on I-45 to Buc'ees at Madison. Then 190 West, but first we  shopped at a Shell station just north of the 290 intersection. 90 South to Navasoto; 6 to Hempstead; 159 to Bellville; 60 to Matagorda; 2031 to the park.

This was kind of an experiment, travel-wise, to see how we did with a 6-hour Google maps drive. Was this the longest we'd ever undertaken at once? Actually, no. When we returned from Sea Rim State Park we did a 5:56 hour Google drive in 6:40. So the lesson learned is that I should typically add about 30 minutes to every six hours estimated by Google Maps.

It turned out to be an okay trip, but I did mess up a little and force us to make an unplanned U-Turn. Here's what happened.

We departed at 9:18. It was sunny and hotter than heck.

We got through Dallas with remarkable speed. Not even a traffic backup! But after getting on I-45, going down the road going at Interstate highway speeds, we suddenly heard a whop-whop-whop coming from outside the driver's side of the vehicle. Ed stopped on the shoulder and found that the rubber seal around the windshield was loose. It appeared to have stretched, and was bulging out in two or three places. Thank heavens the ends were still attached.

It wasn't a super big emergency, but Ed got the idea of trying a little superglue on it. We'd been seeing signs for a Buc'ees coming up in ten minutes, so we went on to there. Parking in an empty area of the lot, we got out the ladder and tried to superglue the rubber seal.  It didn't work very well.

But after we got back on the highway, the whopping noise did not resume. Maybe the superglue caught in a few places, or maybe the wind shifted.

Our planned mid-route gas stop was at Buc'ees in Madisonville, the location where we were going to leave I-45 and go off down back roads to avoid Houston. With all the Covid-19 in Harris County, I had no desire to go anywhere near it, and definitely not into Houston.

But when we got to the Buc'ees in Madisonville, it was about 1:30 in the afternoon and the place looked like Times Square on a New Years Eve. The double pump stations, for cars, were mostly full, and the bigger ones for RVs were full too--of cars. Ed circled the pumps and decided he didn't want to wait. Best I could figure, people stopped to get gas and then left their cars at the pump while they shopped and dined inside.

We should have waited it out. But instead we drove away, with me frantically searching for other gas stations in Madisonville that were big-rig friendly and on our route. All my search activity caused my navigation to crater, and if I hadn't written down the route beforehand we would have had to pull off the road and stop. Which would have been smarter, because I got us going down a county road to nowhere and we had to make a U-turn. Not easy.

But after that, things smoothed out and we had a decently boring drive. We barely squeezed in to the RV park before their five o'clock office closing time, but that didn't matter. Since our spot was reserved and paid for in advance, it would be held for us.

As you can see here, the park was crowded. But it was definitely not full--they should lower their rates. Everyone there was affluent enough to afford a higher rate, or at least rich enough to afford one of these big-box clones:


 

I took the dogs for a walk along the Colorado River. It's pretty much deserted on the opposite side, and really very nice down here.

You can't see the ocean from our campsite but it's not far away--you can tell by all the cool birds cruising up and down the river.
Brown Pelican

 Laughing Gull

 Caspian Tern

Our site was right at a fishing pier which was lighted at night. All night long, two green lights were shining on the water and fish were jumping up to snap at bugs. If you went out there and stared straight down, you could see fishy shapes--it was the coolest thing. The fishermen all cleared out at about 10:30 and I tried to get Ed to walk out and look, but he skipped it. (Big mistake, it turned out--on all the other nights of our stay, there were people fishing way into the night.)

There were, of course, tons of lights at the RV park. But when I walked down the sidewalk along the Colorado River to the South, and I held up my arms to cup around my face, I could see Scorpio. The whole shebang, tail and all. And even with scattered clouds, the Milky Way was visible. Awww.

Needless to say, bedtime was late that night.

So light a fluff

 Anna and the French Kiss

by Stephanie Perkins

A YA E-book that I got from the library because I was bored and a little depressed. I wanted to read something that was light, breezy, and sure not to touch any deep chords. This filled the bill admirably.

As a teenager I would have loved this, so I recommend it to that target audience. Anna is smart and introspective and totally obsessed with boys, or at least one boy. Love and sexual attraction are the same thing, which is usual in kids that age. After all, they're not thinking of spending the rest of their lives together or raising kids together--too soon for all that. Which is why I enjoyed it, as I said. No depth at all--like a prime-time sitcom.

Couple of non-finishers...for future reference

 Murder, Curlers, and Kegs

by Arlene McFarlane

I was thinking this was a different book in the series, but no matter. AFter two chapters of this "mini-mystery" I quit. And shan't be trying the others. It's too full of goofy characters and it's straining to be hilarious. Not funny; not interesting.
\

Underland
A Deep Time Journey
by Robert Macfarlane

This book is awesome. Yet I'm giving up on reading it, for now. I might pick it up again in the deep of winter when there are many more hours in the long nights. Here's a short passage of what I read,

Much of Paris was built from its own underland, hewn block by block from the bedrock and hauled up for dressing and placing. Underground stone-quarrying began in earnest towards the end of the twelfth century, and Prisian limestone grew in demand not just locally but across France. ...
The residue of over 600 years of quarrying is that beneath the south of the upper city exists its negative image: a network of more than 200 miles of galleries, rooms and chambers, organized into three main regions that together spread beneath nine arrondissements. This network is the vides de carrieres--the 'quarry voids', the catacombs.

Cool, huh? This book is packed full of so much cool stuff that it hurts your head to read it. It needs to be savored slowly, and I'm embarrassed to admit I ran out of steam power to handle it.

So disappointing for a police dog book

Paw of the Jungle

by Diane Kelly

Aaarrrghhh. I couldn't stop reading but it made me mad all the way through. She's a good writer and she had a couple of interesting crimes for her detective--a K-9 officer--to explore. But the book was about twice as long as it needed to be...why?

For one, she lectured. She went off into long paragraphs of preaching about illegal animal trafficking or poaching or whatever, all valid subjects of outrage, but did I need to read it? I'll let her off the hook on that one--after the first one or two, I detected when a diatribe was coming and skimmed until the story resumed.

For another, she started off in the perpetrator's head, in third person, then switched into the detective's head in first person, then the dog's in third. That was irritating as heck--if you're going to write in first person that's fine, but stay there.

I personally had zero interest in being inside the perp's head. I never want to be in the murderer's head, and It ruined the mystery for me. Maybe she was trying to teach a lesson--to show us how our social system perpetuates crime by not helping ex-cons obtain and keep jobs. Maybe she was teaching a lesson about how the right amount of money corrupts even the best of intentions. Whatever! I read mysteries to be entertained, not lectured to!

And for my last and final gripe, the detective needs to learn how to pay attention to her dog. She's got a highly trained K-9 officer with a nose that can smell things she can't even comprehend, and she doesn't bother to use it! The dog had to disobey her before she'd pay attention to it.

Sorry, Ms. Kelly. I'd like to read another of your books and I will. But this one pushed all my buttons in the worst way.

Witches, a little, and amusing, a little

 
Hex-Ed

by Sarina Dore

I lost the review I wrote on this book, but that's okay--I'll reproduce it.
It's amusing and could possibly be the start of a decent series--an extremely twisty take on witches with a lot of tongue-in-check sexual situations. Funny thing is, this is the second book in the series...but I have no interest in reading the first. The story starts here with a young adult realizing that all the strange things that happen to her aren't just strange things happening to her.

So just to level-set, this is about witches and a non-Hogwarts universe. It's amusing, silly, light and not at all mind-improving. But it didn't bore me, so that's something.

Great research, great writing, depressing as heck topic

 

 

Quit Like A Woman

by  Holly Whitaker

I am humiliated--I had a whole lot to say about this book and had even copied out a quote or two, and somehow I deleted it all. Here's what's left.

It's really really really good. There are whole chapters in here that I re-read just to be sure I absorbed them. One of her big points is this: why is it that alcohol is the only mind-altering, addictive drug that society expects us to be able to use but not overuse? Another: why is it that alcoholism is something that you "have" only after you quit using alcohol? People who admit they have a problem and quit using it are automatically labeled as "alcoholics" and stigmatized as having something wrong with them because they chose to quit using the drug. People assume that those poor unfortunate souls are then doomed to a boring life of strong black coffee, AA meetings, and craving drink.

Not necessarily so, she points out. Or as she would be more likely to point out: not AT ALL. A lot--dare I say most--of ex-drinkers don't want to drink again. And a whole lot don't waste their time in meetings endlessly confessing "and I'm an alcoholic." And they're most definitely not teetering on the one-drink-away edge of disaster.

She's got a lot to say about feminism, too, although to use that word, so commonly said with a sneer, is to weaken her message. AA was developed by men, for men. In the days of its inception there wasn't any notion of "lady drinkers". Yet it remains the only accredited program for most healthcare plans. All its preaching about "giving up control" and "surrendering ones self to a higher power" doesn't work for women, who never had any power to begin with.

And consider smoking. When the tobacco industry needed to widen their market, they invented the story that "cool women smoke" and proceeded to demonstrate that in every insidious manner they could devise. Women were portrayed in movies, billboards, television shows and every other medium, holding onto that insidious cancer stick, asserting their right to be as free as any man and "by gum, smoke if they wanted to!" And of course, they wanted to.

Smoking had its day, and now the day belongs to Big Alcohol. Only we don't call it that. Instead we have "rocky mountain pure spring water" and microbreweries and little local vinyards in every neighborhood. Did you know that most of the little wineries you see on the roadside don't even grow their own grapes? How stupid is that?

But no matter. Big Alcohol has set their sights on making women think that all cool women drink wine all the time. And the American public is swallowing this wine hook, line, and sinker.

And for what, she says? Why does every social event have to be experienced through the fog of partial intoxication? Why do we expect to see a margarita tent at the end of a marathon? During the symphony orchestra intermission, why is the booze line the longest?  Why did we Americans let ourselves believe that a woman with a wine glass in her hand is just a normal woman, asserting her right to take drugs in order to make it through another crappy day working a crappy job for seventy-five percent of her male coworker's salary?

It's hard to argue that advertising is evil. If alcohol ever ducks into the back alleys the way cigarettes did, I'm sure advertising will find equally bad to push. Sugary soda had its day, and bacon. Right now it seems to be water in plastic bottles--even though the bottled water you pay $1.98 for is merely someone else's tap water and the plastic is polluting the planet and our bodies. But advertising only played a small part in our nation's addiction to intoxication, and her book goes into other factors, too.

The only thing she didn't research to my satisfaction is how did historical factors enter into our current obsession. Remember, alcohol was a whole lot safer to imbibe than most water sources in early America--not until the 20th century was most tap water safe to drink. How did we get here?

But that's too much to ask from a book that's already so full of fascinating, depressing and downright scary stuff.

Wednesday, leaving Cedar Creek Campground (July 29)

Nothing much happened this departure day. Edward left before I got up, of course, although the moleskins we'd given him for his blisters stayed behind.

I had my same old camping breakfast: a poached egg with canned pinto beans and rice. Boring but I like it, and the preparation is minimal. It requires two bowls and one spoon to prepare. I could probably figure out a way to do it in just one bowl if I tried, the way I do when eating egg with spinach and rice.

We left at about 10:40 and arrived at about 2:42, but the unhookup/rehookup took 40 minutes. I don't count us as "home" until all vehicles are parked in their proper spots and the electricity is running.

It was a hot drive. We did a short gas stop at Buc'ees in north Temple, but once again we didn't go inside at all. After that all I had to do was follow the RV and keep an eye on the boat...and find myself going 80 in a 75 mph zone when a cop appears over the Mammoth Mobile in front. He didn't consider us worthy of his attention.

We took the return route around Dallas on 635, but instead of doing the I-30/George Bush Freeway jog, we just stayed on until we hit TX-75 in Richardson. I may want to reconsider taking that route when going south. I remember the section of 635 through Garland as being exceptionally icky, so that's the reason for the zig-zag on I-30.  Maybe it's worth another try. Or maybe not.

Birds seen: Canyon Wren! Roadrunner, Black Vulture, Northern Cardinal, Bewick's Wren, Great Egret, Great Blue Heron. Two big hawks of unknown species.

Trip Notes:
1. The tuna salad made a great supper, but the rye bread not so much. I suspect that it's the variety--Pepperidge Farm's Jewish Rye. Don't repeat.
2. Pack a little less food for myself. Especially fruit--I always take twice as much as I eat.
3. Prioritize bird watching over fishing, especially if there's a chance of getting a picture of a new bird. I managed to miss at least four perfect photo ops of the canyon wren.
4. When taking a person out on the boat, personally supervise their application of sunscreen. Even it if makes you into a old mother nag.
5. Try to force yourself to write some trip notes every day, even if it's just jotting down bits and pieces.

Tuesday (July 28) at Cedar Ridge Park

 My failure to take notes is making me crazy. Last year, pre-Boat, I'd often spend an hour in the morning sitting at the table and writing down notes.  But when we are going fishing in the morning, I have only enough time to eat breakfast and then it's all about getting ready--doing my morning toilette: putting on the makeup, styling my hair, choosing my wardrobe....

Ha ha. Can you believe people actually do that stuff? No, me neither. With me it's more like deciding which clothes I still have left, putting water and snacks in the cooler, and getting my bird book and binoculars in the boat. And walking the dogs, of course. And taking pictures of the deer across the river:

The Bewick's Wren came by while I was getting ready. Those guys have an amazing song--I'm sure it would get old after a while, but for a few days it's awesome.

I'm thinking on future trips I need to make a solemn vow to always get up fifteen minutes before sunrise. I'll need to check sunrise time and then set an alarm, but it would be worth it. This trip I got up at about seven o'clock each morning, but sunrise was at 6:38. By the time I emerged from Mammoth's dark bowels, the cool of the night was being driven out by the blast furnace heat of the day.

But at least we got on the lake early that morning--we were there by nine o'clock according to the fish finder's clock. Sadly, the fish had gone to sleep. My theory is they stay awake feeding all night and then go to bed when the sun's rays start angling into the water.

I saw and heard the canyon wrens again, of course, and a couple of thousand of Black Vultures. But other than that, whatever birds were hidden in the bushes stayed hidden. I once believed that in the boat I'd be sure to see see scads of birds, but that's seldom true. I saw about a million Cormorants and a few hundred Pelicans one time, and I saw a troupe of Mallard Ducks on Lavon, but mostly since then it's been nothing--a few swallows; a lonesome Cormorant or two; Great Blue Herons and Great Egrets. I hope it will get better in the fall, when the northern migrants return to Texas.

The fish weren't biting so well that day. I think I eventually caught a couple of small crappie...or maybe it was just one. We tried the previous day's spot, then went on down Cedar Creek toward the main lake, testing out both shallow waters and deep. No fish. Eventually we returned to our original spot and had more bites but fewer fish. And the trolling motor decided to go whacky-doodle and spin us around in circles for now apparent reason--it had never done that before and after resetting, didn't do it again. But it was a pretty scary event.

I think we were both a little tired of fishing after four days of it. In future, I think two or at most three consecutive days of fishing would be enough.  So we knocked off early and went to get ice for our sushi dinner.

But first we went over to the other Corp of engineers park on this lake. There are three of them--Westcliff where we stayed before, Cedar Ridge where we currently abided, and Live Oak Ridge. Oddly enough, Live Oak Ridge was a whole lot more crowded than Cedar Ridge and had a lot less to offer. Some of the sites were very close together, almost none of them had lake views, and the landscape was flatter and sort of boring. Note to future self: if you have to camp there--with no other choice--get one of the sites on the lake side of the road and farthest away from the gate. They were spaced out better.  But either Westcliff or Cedar Ridge would be preferable.

As we were heading out, Edward came in. He'd left work a little early because he was still miserable from the sunburned feet and legs of two days before. I remember getting a  blistered back once as a teenager, but I don't think I've ever seen blisters quite so hideous as the ones on top of his feet. We plied him with all the medicines in our stash--Aloe Vera lotion, antiseptic spray, gauze pads, moleskins.... With any luck this would be the worst day of it, and he'd start feeling better on the morrow.

So the "big plan" for the highlight of our trip was a sushi/tempura dinner. Ed did 95% of the work but I washed the dishes before and after, so I consider it equal. (That was supposed to make you grin.) In any event, he made the rice while I took the dogs for a long walk, then he prepared the tempura batter while I cut up the vegetables and started cooking some frozen shrimp in an electric deep fryer out on the picnic table. It worked very well once I got the hang of it. However, I will have to admit that the frozen, pre-battered shrimp came out tasting a little greasy. They were made to be warmed up in an oven, so the coating was already cooked in oil. Recooking them in oil ended up being too much oil.

So next time we'll just do fresh shrimp, and maybe some scallops if we can find any that are harvested in an ocean-friendly manner. The vegetables were okay--squash, mushrooms and onions. Next time I'll add broccoli.

And that's pretty much it for our camping trip with Edward. It's a shame that we let the television dominate so much of our conversations--at one point he was describing his day and his sunburn issues, but I was in the bathroom and couldn't understand a word he was saying over the loud TV. It has to be loud to be heard over the air conditioning fan, but what's the harm in turning if off for ten minutes every once in a while, to allow conversation?

He fell asleep on the couch shortly after supper. Ii took the dogs for their walks separately that night--I just couldn't handle them both at once. Zack is old and crippled, of course, and while he can move pretty darn fast when he wants to, most of the time he doesn't. And Molly is straining on the leash whenever I take my attention off her. So it's no fun for me walking them together.  I can go at either dog's speed and have a good time--at Zack's speed I get to do a bit of stopping and staring; at Mollydog's, a bit of exercise.

Monday at Cedar Ridge Park (July 27)

Edward went back to work and we were on our own. In a way that made things easier, since we didn't have to worry about his sunburned legs getting even more sun exposure. But it was kind of lonesome.

The agenda for the day was fishing, of course, and switching campsites. The site we were occupying had turned out to be much nicer than we expected, especially since no one ever moved into the site behind us (behind relative to the lake).  We hadn't picked it out for its lake view--we'd chosen it because it was the best one available for the weekend.  It was a little bit shady but didn't feel closed in, and there was an excellent view of hunting roadrunners, lizards perched vertically on tree trunks, and deer walking through in the early evening.

A lake view wouldn't have helped me see birds, because there weren't very many shorebirds. I did see a couple of Great Blues and a Great Egret, and one night I saw three long-necked birds by the boat ramp just after dark. If I had to guess, I'd say two of them were Yellow-Crowned Night Herons and the other one something smaller, like a Green Egret. But I didn't get a good enough look.

The campground had cleared out a little when we crept away. Ed dumped the tanks while I walked up to the entry station to get a new site sticker for the truck. When I was walking back, I was surprised to see Mammoth coming back away from the new site. Was the site I'd reserved too short? Occupied? Missing in action?

But before he reached me, he turned to the left and went back toward the campsites. I guessed the answer--the one-way road didn't connect up to the boat ramp road. When I'm walking I tend to ignore little details like "one way" signs.

Mollydog and I hurried along to help and soon caught up to him backing into the site. It was the second site from the courtesy dock and boat ramp, right on the water with a lovely view. We'd gone walking earlier to check out the sites, and in my opinion the two sites at the top of the hill--same 'loop' but farther from the boat ramp--were prettier. But this site lets me walk the dogs right down to the water without going past anyone else's dogs. (The site closest to the lake was empty)

Before we'd finished hooking up, we were serenaded by a Bewick's wren. I didn't get a photo, which was dumb. But the thing wouldn't stay still long enough for a picture anyway.
 

Then on to the lake, where I got a second look at the Canyon Wrens I'd been watching the day before. They're all over this place!  New bird for me! I saw the white throat clearly and the rich rusty brown color, and on the second day I saw the beak well enough to verify the curve. They really do hop along cliff faces energetically, and they also vanish into holes in the cliffs when they feel like it.

I also had a glance at a departing hawk. It was large, about the size of a red-shouldered hawk, but it had a very marked pattern on the face. So either Peregrine Falcon or Prairie Falcon. A Peregrine was reported in July 2018 on a cliff face at this lake. They are not "supposed" to be this far south in the summertime, but then Prairie Falcons are not likely to be so far east. So take your pick.

But I soon quit bird watching because we'd gotten into a mess of crappie. I ended up catching seven, two of which were about 13". (That's a very decent size for a crappie) I even caught one of them on a lure. And of course for every fish I caught, there were two or three that I missed. We were running out of minnows by the time we stopped.

And now a few observations on a delicate subject--

Toilets. In particular, RV toilets. To be more specific, our RV toilet. We've learned that you can use it for about three days and then it starts to smell. They make chemicals you put in, but the cheap "red" stuff from Walmart doesn't work. We finished off what we had, but we were happy to get back using the good "blue" stuff. But even with the chemicals, after dumping the tank (which never gets it all) and then sloshing things around, the toilet stinks to high heavens. We're beginning to wonder if there is an exhaust vent which is supposed to divert the smell but is currently blocked by something.

LATER NOTE: the exhaust vent is at the top of the RV, and the wind blowing helps to exhaust it. But those days had very little wind at all.

But after our day of fishing, when we returned we found that the chemicals and an air freshener had tamed the raging odors. Mammoth was good again.

But I wasn't allowed to rest in Mammoth's air-conditioned comfort. The dogs had been cooped up far too long. We went walking.

An awful lot of deer live here and my suspicion is that people have been feeding them. For example, Molly and I were walking along and saw a deer about fifty yards away. It was medium-sized, not a baby but probably not a breeding adult. And it came towards us. At first I thought I was dreaming, but no--it was clearly looking at me and very obviously stepping in my direction. Only when Mollydog barked did it turn and bound away.

Strange. We did see one very interesting behavior on our walk. We saw a mother with fawn in the field by the playground. The mother ran back into the woods--the fawn ran for a patch of tall grass and lay down in it. To my eyes, it totally vanished. I'm assuming that the biologists are correct in saying that baby deer have no scent, so if I'd let Molly try to find it she wouldn't have been able to. But of course I'd not try such a fooling thing.  If I'd been alone I might have tried sneaking up for a peek, but not with a crazy-ass dog jerking my leash.

We had a lovely long walk, all around the cliffs by the old campsite. The setting sun on the water made it sparkle like ice crystals after a winter storm. Dazzling. If the temperature had been ten degrees cooler our walk would have been two hours longer. But I can't complain--July in Texas--I'm lucky to be out walking at all.

And that's about it for the evening.

Sunday at Cedar Ridge Park (july 26)

 I wasn't up particularly early, but we had pretty much everything ready so we were able to make a quick trip out with the boat. Not sure what time we hit the water, but it was certainly earlier than ten. It was cloudy, but not as much as the day before. We were burning up out there. I'd forgotten to wear swimming gear and so had Edward, so we didn't take a dip in the lake.

The fish were down there but not biting. Ed had a really nice, big bass. I think he said 16 inches but it could have been 14. I forgot to check to see if it was a largemouth or a smallmouth. I had a blue cat and he had a smallish crappie. Then--finally!--Edward snagged a fish. A lovely catfish, would have made supper for one if we'd been into cooking.

I was fishing with the ten-foot pole right next to Ed, and the lines got wrapped around each other. It was a real mess and it took him a good while (5 minutes?) to almost get them untangled. And just as he was on the last few loops, a couple of folk on a jet ski swam over and asked if we could give them a tow. It was a borrowed vehicle and the motor had been kicking out on them. It wouldn't have been a bit of a problem to help, and it wasn't, but in the confusion of it all Ed laid down the fishing poles and the lines tangled up again. And I made it worse by hastily shoving them to the front of the boat when they turned on a motor--the trolling motor is "fore", so I had the lines "aft", but the real motor is "aft" so I moved them "fore".

In any event, I got them disentangled (with help from a knife). And Ed got the people towed far enough they could swim the jet-ski over to the dock. Then we fished some more...but our heart wasn't into it. Edward had gotten his legs and various spots on his body sunburned the day before, and even though the clouds kept trying to build up, the sun went on scorching him. So we quit and trucked back in.

I'm not sure when we got back, but it was probably three-ish. I walked the dogs, had a quick sandwich for lunch and took a well needed shower. (I stunk) Then sat outside for a bit, talking to my brother on the phone and watching the clouds. 

Molly found me this lizard:

 

 

 

 Storms were building up in the south and west, but the wind was blowing from the east and that's the direction the rain came from. Just a sprinkle...but I waited and waited and it didn't seem to be going away....

Until I gave up and came inside. It quit, of course.

Saturday at Cedar Ridge Park (July 25)

I woke up early and should have got up, but instead I slept until 7:15 or so. The sun was up in the east, but it hadn't yet come over the hills to shine on our campground. When it finally reached the lake, it was way pretty.

Dog walking, dog walking, dog walking. Story of my days, dog walking. And yes, all those deer pellets on the ground all over the campgrounds do indeed mean there are a lot of deer here. They're cautious, but not all that afraid.

I fixed myself breakfast--eggs and rice--but while I was searching on the phone for a bait shop nearby, I saw mention of donuts. Ed had already mentioned that he never got donuts anymore because he didn't get hungry for breakfast, such as donuts, until around ten o'clock. And at that point, the coffee is all gone.  But it was about eight o'clock and we were about to head out for minnows, so why not?

We ended up at Shipleys on the edge of Temple. I had a Kolache but it wasn't very good. I gave some to the dogs, and they had no complaints. Note: Shipley's has a bavarian cream filled donut, Ed's favorite.

After that we puttered around getting ready. It took longer than usual, mainly because the boat had slipped a little on the trailer and a chain (I think) was hanging up the motor support rod. It took both guys and a jack to accomplish removal, but they got it out.

There were a lot of cumulonimbus clouds hanging low, with rain and threats of rain in all directions. But no lightning--we never saw a bit. Eventually we found a spot with crappie and Ed caught one. I got a small but doughty bass. I lost a lot of minnows and that's about all she wrote. There were a lot of fish, but they were small ones, and what big ones we saw weren't biting.

As we were going along a cliff face I heard that bird song agaub, a soft whistled whee-whee-wee-we getting softer at the end. And I saw the bird--wrenlike, seemed larger than a Carolina wren but it was at a bit of a distance so I couldn't judge. Very white throat. So it was almost certainly nearly ninety-percent sure a canyon wren. But I want to see it again to be sure.

We quit at about four o'clock, I think, and I returned to some very bored dogs. But I made it up with a biscuit and a couple of long walks. Mollydog is very interested in roadrunners; also vultures of which there are tons and tons here. I watched one vulture land in a tall tree and get attacked by a couple of mockingbirds--they succeeded in driving it away pretty fast.

And of course Molly loves deer. There were plenty for her. And she discovered that deer pellets taste pretty good, it seems.

Sadly, the campground was filling up with people. Almost all the empty spots that showed as reserved on the reservations page were finally filled. But there were two of what I'd considered to be prime spots with water views that were still open. Either someone was a no-show or someone canceled after I made my reservation--I would have liked one of those spots!  It became hard to go walking over to the cliff's edge--too many campsites lined the way. I finally walked back to the entrance and came down the edge beside the fence to take this picture:

 

Country music. Kids on bicycles. Mom's yelling "you better stop that or I'm going to pop you one!" And dogs everywhere. But hey--that's the weekend crowd in July at a popular lake near Temple/Killeen/Belton. And I won't even mention the light show on the side of one RV--that was plain silly.

But soon we were cozied up in our family nest, all the family we could get to, anyway, and we cared not. We were together--we were home.

Back to Belton Lake

Friday, 24 July 2020
Turkey Roost Campground, Cedar Ridge Park, Belton Lake, Texas

1. Planned distance: 200 miles
2. Map time estimate: 3:20
3. Adjusted estimate: didn't calculate
4. Actual distance: forgot to check
5. Actual time:  4:03, return trip 4:02
6. On way out, slowdown on 380. On way back, gas stop in Temple.
7. Average mph trip: unknown

It's the same lake as the last one, but this campground is nothing like the other. And it doesn't even look like the same lake. The other campground--Johnson Creek--was close to the dam. But this one is a good bit upriver and it's on Cedar Creek, a tributary to the Leon River. It's all steep, dry cliffs here, with a sharp drop off down the the creek; the ground is dry and sparsely sprinkled with scrubby oak and cedar.

The reason for this trip was that we realized we had a few weeks before the next scheduled trip in mid-August, and since we were so close to Edward, why not go spend a weekend with him? The last trip was all week days--we only saw him in the evenings. So I started looking. None of the good, lake view sites were available, but we could get a decent site tucked back into the "woods" for the weekend and then move to a lake view site for the next couple of days. So we were at site 9 for Fri-Sun nights, then site 31 for Mon-Tue.

We were completely packed and ready on the day before this trip--except for, of course, the normal departure day activities like the topping off of cat food, scooping the litter boxes, and filling the water bowls. So now I finally know what it's like to be camping while retired!  Plenty of time to prepare in advance and nothing left for the night before. It's nice. But still just as much work.

We could have gotten an earlier start if we'd pushed it, but we had no interest in tackling rush hour traffic through Dallas. We left the house at 9:38, stopped at the church parking lot to hook up the boat, and got our actual start at 9:58.

Google told us there was a ten-minute slowdown on highway 380--the best RV route going south from our house--and there was. Such a silly--just some road work or something that was causing a lane to be closed. It took us ten minutes to go two miles. But soon we were underway to accomplish a nearly picture perfect drive down to Belton.

The only little hitch was this: about two hours out, I needed to make a pit stop. We hadn't discussed one, but Ed nearly always makes a pit stop on his own after an hour or so of driving. I waited and waited and held it and held it and he didn't stop. I could have called him, of course, but I try not to do that except in emergencies. Maybe someday we'll get a pair of walkie-talkies so we can squawk at each other on the road.

I found a roadside park on the map, but when we approached it I could see that it was on the wrong side of the road and had a very challenging entrance. Shortly afterward we were on a long, straight stretch of the highway with nice wide shoulders--I goosed the gas pedal, passed the Mammoth and pulled off. And yes, I made it to the potty without losing any dignity.

We arrived at the gate at 1:55, and we were parked and hooked up by 2:23. Not bad. It was hot, of course, but very cloudy and windy. The wind--when it was blowing--was 'almost' cool. At the least one might call it 'pleasant'. But then it stopped.

The dogs got a walk down to the water, then Zack was left behind and Mollydog got to go down to the boat ramp and around. She swam out to fetch a piece of stick willingly, but when I tried it a second time, she wasn't interested. It wasn't a great walk--I found myself excessively tired and hungry, despite having a tortilla roll-up with crab salad and half a bag of cheese nips on the road. Plus jellybeans. I think driving tires me out more than I would expect.

Note to self: the following made an excellent traveling snack and was only a bit messy:

Coarsely chop 6-8 ounces of fake crab , and mix with a little mayo (I used Hellman's Lite), minced onion, lemon juice, and Old Bay Seasoning. I added a sprinkle of salt but it may not have been needed. Roll up in tortillas and cut in into appetizer sized slices. Perfect!

Birds seen: about a million black vultures; a Roadrunner; a little bird in the low scrub around the water that was probably a Bewick's wren. Oh, well--we didn't come here for the birds. But if a Golden-Cheeked Warbler were to swing through....
 

                              Vultures at sunset:


Edward joined us and we had a cozy evening with steaks, salmon, baked potato and skewers. Boring but delicious.