Friday at Cedar Ridge Park

Friday, 4 December 2020

Notes from the time:
We don't have anything planned to do for today. Molly will get a long walk, of course, but no jogging--my legs are still sore. Maybe I'll take the camera and see if I can get a good picture of a canyon wren. Then later, when it warms up, we can run over and see the little waterfall at Stillhouse Hollow. There are lots of interesting thiings to do in the area--Bell Museum at Belton, the mammoth exhibit in Waco, shopping...but nothing we especially want to do during the reign of Covid.

Or we could go fishing, but it's awfully cold. Not my cuppa. At least when it's excruciatingly hot and you go fishing you can always jump in the lake. (you can--I won't. But I can lower myself over the side)

Or I could work...

Or not. It's funny that here, here where we are only 75 miles west (and a little south) of Lake Fort Parker, the terrain and birds are completely different. Here it's all low cliffs with a lot of bare rock; cedar and post oak; scrubby grass. It was as if we'd crossed an invisible "dry line" in the terrain.

I took the dogs on a morning meander, wading down a path to the water, then walking on the big and small boulders around the edge. I heard a canyon wren but it was way across the canyon.  Which is not really a "canyon", but it was across the lake and the lake is sort of in a canyon. I saw an osprey, and while I was watching it, a bald eagle.

By the way, on the drive over here we saw a Crested Caracara in a field near the road. Vultures were wheeling around and so I looked over to see what they were looking at, and there was the Caracara!  Ed, driving the motorhome, saw it too.

After my walk, we went for a walk. There was nothing special on the agenda so we went over to see Chalk Ridge Falls on the Lampasas River, just below the dam that makes Stillhouse Hollow Lake.  The Lampasas river is only about 100 miles long--after the lake if flows into the Leon River, near Belton.

For reasons I can't imagine, at that point the rivers are renamed to "Little River". So how did I cross the Leon River while traveling down I-35? Aha! The convergence is about eight miles east of I-35.

An interesting note from the web:
The Lampasas river is the northernmost and westernmost river in the natural range of the American Alligator, which is still found there. In June 2015, two men were arrested for shooting and killing an alligator that they found on the river. 

 

 

Our walk was memorable because of the suspension bridge that you had to cross to get to the best viewing area of the falls. It was bouncy and swingy and Molly did not like it. (Neither did I, but I just closed my eyes and held on tight.) The drop below was only about ten feet and the water only about eight inches deep.

 

 

We did nothing else of interest that evening, but that's okay. We were content to hang out with Edward and eat leftover Thanksgiving Dinner. Without the dinner rolls, which I'd left in the freezer at home.