Lake Brownwood Day 2

Monday, November 2

High 71; low 42
Birds seen so far: Kingfisher. Osprey. Gulls. Coots. A bevy of small ducks. Mockingbird. Little birds by water, probably Yellow-rumped warbler. Great Blue Heron. Red-winged blackbirds.

Although we got up early thanks to the time change, we didn't eat breakfast until after nine. Sunrise over the water was even more gorgeous than sunset the day before.

The only thing on the agenda for the day was a little hike up to the "Wildlife Viewing Area". 

 

 The little hike ended up being a very long hike (for Zack) because we lost the trail on the return trip. It followed the lake shore, so it was impossible to get really lost, but you couldn't see the lake most of the time due to the eight-foot-tall scrubby oaks all over. I didn't want to return by the same route we went out on, which was very rocky and difficult to carry our little old Shi-tzu dog over. So we took the right fork, went along for a while, lost the road and ended up bushwhacking down the hill on a deer trail. Deer are not notorious for being good trail makers,so we waded in knee-high grass part of the way.

 

 

 

 

It was quite an adventure for us old folk, and once I'd picked the cactus spines out of my thumb, I was enthusiastic about our journey. We found a really old CCC era camping spot out in the brush, with giant-sized chairs and a fireplace hearth:

By the way, the Wildlife Viewing Area was an old deer blind on the ground with a plastic chair next to it. But there were a couple of deer there when we arrived--I imagine that if you spent a couple of hours there at dusk, you'd see some interesting critters.

 

 

In the afternoon we took a little jaunt in the new Jeep, exploring the rest of the park. There wasn't much to look at except the outsides of the the recreation hall until I noticed on the map a reference to The Grand Staircase. 

 

It was some very massive old CCC era stone work--they'd build a boat landing on the lake with a great big staircase leading up to the recreation hall and adjoining dance pavilion. It was...well...massive.

During World War II, the park served as a rest and recreation site for soldiers stationed at nearby Camp Bowie. The camp was part of a huge encampment for the years of the war, but there's not much left of the camp--most of the land is occupied with a national guard site, businesses, football stadiums, and parks. Like the one we were in.