Mammoth at Foss State Park

 Tuesday 6/15
Low 68, high 97 and very few clouds

Really nice here, but too crowded. In the fall or spring when school is in session, during normal years not like last year, it could be magnificent. So many birds!  I wasted ten minutes yesterday watching a robin because he was singing so differently from the normal robin song that I thought he must be a different bird. But no.

But there's orioles, of some sort, or so I have to assume. They sure sounded like orioles. In the tree that shades our picnic table.  Ed saw a pair chase each other away and he said they were little yellow birds. So I don't know. Yet. Going outside to see now.

The golf course map, very faded:

Around noon we went swimming, or rather, Ed did some swimming while I just lazied around on the floatie, trying to see fish under the water. I never did see one, other than the one I saw the day before from the edge.

Before that I went for a jog on the heart-healthy trail.  It may have been "heart" healthy, but it was ankle-breaking cruel. Clearly it had been mowed, recently, but the ground was tussocky and very uneven.

I hit the .25 mile marker, then the .5. And then the trail split without any kind of sign saying which way, so I went to the right. Soon I was at the sign for the .25 marker for the other direction, and it was only a little ways after that before I reached the beginning sign for the other end. The other end was at a campground, which was a fine-looking place and only had a few occupants, but it didn't have the water view or lake access of ours.  It would have been a good place for an overnighter. Such as one to stop at on our way to Colorado....

I didn't linger. There was very little shade on the trail and I didn't have any water for Molly, so we turned back there. I amused myself by timing the span between the .25 marker for the other end and the .5 marker for my end--about one minute. If that had been real, I'd have been jogging a 4-minute mile!

I supposed that if I'd gone left at the split, I'd have ended up with a nicely executed, two mile jog. But no matter--what we did was plenty enough for the both of us.

Later. I find it amusing when I can take trip notes in almost real time. Like we're only doing things so I can come back and write about them.  It's a sign of a really boring trip, I guess.

I planned it so we'd get to the Route 66 Historical Museum with one hour to tour the exhibits before the restaurant opening time of five o'clock. But when we arrived at the museum, shortly after four, the ladies at the desk refused to sell us tickets for entry to the majority of the buildings--only the two main ones.  They insisted that the full tour took one and one-half hours so we didn't have time to do it.

So we paid our three dollars apiece and walked through the two main buildings. It would normally have taken about ten minutes, but I dawdled and drug it out to fifteen. And that was it. We had almost an hour to kill before the restaurant opened. In historic downtown Elk City. Whoopee.

After seeing the rather lame exhibits for route 66, I'm kind of glad we didn't pay the full price to see the other buildings. They'd have been the same old junk we see everywhere--the contents of Grandma's attic spread around without even a few tedious, uninteresting placards. I swear, I could have done a better job.

Prairiefire Grill in Elk City--excellent. Oddly enough, I don't think I'd eat there again. But I highly recommend it to anyone traveling by on Interstate 40 at dinnertime or lunch time.  Just for a change, I had decided I'd try to pretend I didn't know what amount of animal cruelty goes into commercial pork and that I would order their signature dish--sausage-stuffed, hand made corn dogs with spicy Sriracha dipping sauce. But they weren't on the menu that night!

Instead I had a salmon salad--no doubt it was farmed Atlantic salmon from a pollution factory in the ocean--but it was excellent. On greens with blueberries and sugary toasted pecans. And some very good sweet potato fries--good, but not as good at those at The Old Plantation.  Still,  a very, very good meal. I wish I'd remembered to see if they had a non-alcoholic ginger beer.

We were done and back by six-thirty, but the dogs thought it was way too late. Still, it was too hot for much of a walk--with the sun still blazing down and near one hundred degrees. They got a quickie and a promise, and we took a long walk later, after the sun started to go down. It vanished into a cloud bank, thankfully. But those were pretty much the only clouds we'd seen all day.

After picking off my third tick of day, I got curious and checked Molly. In spite of the extremely overpriced flea, tick and heartworm medicine she gets, she had one behind her ear. I had to hope it was going to die soon. After getting into bed, I felt and removed another tick on myself. buggy, I was beginning to get a little antsy about all the bugs. In addition to ticks, there were a lot of flies, and a plethora of minuscule winged bugs in the Mammoth-mobile. They were smaller and fruit flies and they didn't seem to bite, but every time I felt one on me, I thought it might be a tick!

Day 4 Leaving Great Plains State Park

 Monday June 14

All that scenic driving yesterday didn't leave much room for dog walking. And when we got back it started in raining and didn't stop until almost six. So I took them for a walk with umbrella, and after Zack had his little exercise, went on to take Molly for a long walk.  We didn't make it all the way to the boat ramp before I grew very hungry. (I'd skipped lunch, after all.) So she got about half the walk she needed.

She got another one after supper but still could have used a good long jog. Maybe today. No--wrong choice of words. Definitely today.  The problem is, the next campground is barely one and one-half hours from here. If we were to stick strictly to the three p.m. check-in rule, we wouldn't leave here until one-thirty. But we don't expect the other campground to have a gate with limited entry, so we should be able to drive right in any time.
Bye, campground.

Bye mountain we never climbed.

Bye lovely flower.

Bye Great Plains State Park.

LATER: at about 2:30 p.m.  I should be working right now but I don't want to. The drive took an hour and a half, with no stops other than traffic lights. I thought, when we started this retirement traveling thingy, we'd be spending more time on Interstate Highways. But we don't. Other than I-35 between Dallas and Killeen and I-45 between Dallas and Corsicana to get to Killeen, interstates don't seem to take us anywhere that we want to go.

 

 

So instead we traveled through Hobart and Rocky and New Cordell (missed that one) and Clinton, Oklahoma, slowing down to 35 miles per hour or even 25 at times. I don't actually recall any traffic lights although there might have been one or two.

No more mountains. 

It was a strange drive. Going north, we passed a few more "mountains" but then hit long stretches of rolling plains. When we turned west, after crossing I-40 at Clinton, we went across a red-dirt erosion field of deep ditches and rather lovely green bushes. And then it went flat again. No mountains around this lake-it's flat as pancakes here.

Having not planned out this trip very well--remember, this was just a substitute for the long anticipated week at Palo Duro Canyon--I didn't have a campground map or anything. So when we came on the park headquarters to the right and camping area to the left, I was only looking to the right and neglected to tell Ed to turn. There was nowhere else--we headed across the dam and away into space. It took a very sharp right hook to get turned around and back where we belonged.

And then, when we got here without a map, there appeared to be no numbers in the campsites at all.  They were all pull- throughs, angled to give the door side a view of the lake as well as the camper next to you. We asked a guy outside his RV, fiddling with his boat, and he said he was in seven so that made our "six" right beside him.

Later we found a very faint 6 painted on the electric box.

So now I'm sitting inside because it's 101 outside but only 86 in here with both air conditioners running full blast. I promised Molly a jog, but there would be no shade trees to jog under and I'm not acclimated to 101 yet. There are some trees here, just enough to keep our satellite dish from pointing South and just enough for some shade to side under. But not--not for jogging. It would be  great day for swimming; that's it.

Day 3 -- sightseeing in the Wichita Mountains

 Sunday 6/13

Today was a sightseeing day, and did we ever see some sights. It's hard to explain the mind-boggling grandeur of rocky hills and big, sweeping valleys. Creeks flooding the feet of boulders bigger than you can climb on, all jumbled up in a pile of rock and roll ruin. Hard...shall I say, impossible?

Yeah, I've been places that were, on paper, more beautiful. It's hard to beat the lush green hills of Oahu; the valleys of far western California were bigger in a way that distorted vision; the Lamar Valley of Yellowstone held secrets far in the distant folds and shelves. 

But here, in the here and now, there wasn't anything I wanted more than to stay. If I'd been alone with boots, water and a snack, I'd have taken off cross country just to see what I could flush out of the grasses. I think this is called short-grass prairie...it looks barren but green and full, full, full of flowers. But you can walk across it with only a little difficulty and detour around the occasional prickly pear or brushy clump of woods.

I could be wrong about that. The little walking I did was more like hopping from stone to stone. The rocks are weathered, sometimes to an extreme, but they're rough enough to make simple walking tricky. It would take twice as long to cross a valley as I expected, and in the doing I'd scare away all birds, snakes and creatures in a mile-wide circle. Best I didn't.

Enough of the trying to write poetic. Here's what we did--drove due east on the very good gravel road on the other side of the highway from the park entrance. After some time, it merges into 49 and soon enters the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge, by crossing a cattle guard. And then we started seeing herds of longhorns in clumps here and there.

We'd driven through the refuge the previous night, on the way back from eating, and found the longhorns and bison clustered in areas where the speed limit drops from 45 to 30. We wondered, then, how they knew where to place the speed limit signs...did they feed the animals at those locations?

But on Sunday they seemed to be more widely scattered all over. We took a detour to see the picnic areas and check out three or so lakes. One had a group of people fishing at the dam where the water was spilling over. Another was way down in a valley below the parking area, too far to scramble unless I packed everything into the backpack and let Molly loose while I crawled and squeezed down a very steep jumble of rock. Only at the third stop was the lake close to hand so that the dogs could wade out and get a drink...but that one had a picnic area with porta-potties and bunches of people picnicking. Too bad--pretty as it was, it was the least of the three.

We went on, stopping at the prairie dog town near the center of the area. Several cars were always stopped, looking at the little varmints, and I guess the constant tourist traffic had inured them to human interference. There was a wooden fence between the parking area and the town, and I guess most people took that as a hint they weren't supposed to go over into it. At any rate, the dogs were so accustomed to people just outside the fence that they didn't let out a peep. (You can call it a bark, if you like, but it sounds more like a bird peep.) Normally a dog town is peeping alarm from the moment a human comes near. As you walk along, one dog hill takes up the call and it precedes you for your whole time moseying along.

But these were eerily silent. Fat and happy, I'd say. I bet they'd have sung a different tune if my dog came out of the car.

By then we'd made several stops, and I'd left my drinking water back at the Mammoth on Wheels. So we headed on out of the park to get a soda. That done, we went to drive to the top of Mount Scott.

On the way up, we passed exactly two people walking up the road ad one person bicycling it. I think that if there were a decent walking path up, more people would have chosen to make the hike. It would have been a lot of fun...but only if you didn't have to skirt the edge of a narrow, heavily trafficked, two-lane road

It was really nice up there. The view, for a long way in every direction, magnificent. But meaningless. if only a single person of the hundreds who visited every day got his mind blown with awesome wow! It would have been better than I imagine.

On the way back we stopped at a site used for an annual Easter Pageant. Cool place, if you're into Holy Land kind of stuff. Grazing on the grounds was a very un-Palestinian denizen:

And we saw this really cool lizard, two of them:

Birds for the park:
Western Kingbird, Scissor-Tailed Flycatcher, Ladder backed woodpecker, Common Grackle, American Crow, Turkey Vulture, Canada Geese, Lark Sparrow LB despite it being extremely common all over, Purple Martin, Mississippi Kite, House Sparrow, Red-tailed Hawk, Mockingbird, Brown Thrasher, Nighthawk.

Mammoth at Great Plains Day 2

Saturday 12 June 2021

Lovely camping morning. It was downright chilly when we walked the dogs in the morning. The thermometer said 70 but a breeze was keeping us brisk.  On our way back to Mammoth we saw the campground host, so we asked him about the smoking ban in Oklahoma State Parks.

He looked incredulous, and said, "Nobody told my wife about it." He'd quit smoking years ago, but his wife still smoked and sure enough, later I saw her out on the picnic table, having her morning cigarette.

It's really funny that he doesn't know. But that's okay with us--what he doesn't know, he won't be going to enforce. He said there wasn't even a Park Ranger for this park, just one who stopped by occasionally from another park and made more trouble than he was worth. But not trouble about smoking.

Sounds typical, that a state legislature would pass a ban on smoking in all state-owned properties, and not tell anyone about it. The only person who does know for sure is the software programmer who created the camping reservation system--when you make a reservation, you have to okay an acknowledgement of the park rules, which includes "no smoking. Anywhere on state-owned property. Period."

Enough. At least now Ed can enjoy his morning cigarette on the comfort of the concrete seat of his very own picnic table. I was feeling guilty that he wasn't going to be able to enjoy the outdoors at all, if he had to smoke in the RV bathroom with the fan on.  We'll see if enforcement of the rules is just as lax at the next state park, Foss, where we're going in a few days.

After a comfy camping breakfast we set out to drive to the wildlife management area on the other side of the lake--Tom Sneed Reservoir. We didn't get far, though. Right after the road became interesting, a locked gate barred our way. So, no wildlife drive.  Maybe we would catch something running through camp the following morning.  I got up at 6:45 or so, earlier than my normal, but the sun was already way up and any creatures of the night gone back to bed.

So instead of a wildlife drive, I took Molly on a hiking trail. Right behind our group of campsites, there was a sign with an arrow pointing up, mounted on a pole that was stuck in a bright blue Lowe's Hardware bucket full of dirt. Trail!

It was a lovely hike. We clambered over boulders, ducked through woods, waded through grassy weeds--ouch! And--in my case--screamed and swore bloody murder when I brushed up against some stinging vine in the low shrubs. It was probably Thimblevine, same as we have back home in disturbed soil.   I never saw it, but it hurt and went on hurting for about the same amount of time. Some fraction of eternity.

I was wearing my hiking sandals with no socks, of course. Big mistake. But other than the stinging, I would have been fine. I picked up a tick, but he didn't get far on his hasty journey. He'd barely gotten halfway up my leg before he was plucked off and thrown back. I hope a bird ate him.

I'd hoped the trail was going to take us all the way up to the top of the hill, a jumbled mess of boulders like this:

But we'd not quite gotten there when the trail started to veer off and head down, and I noticed another hiker off in the woods in front of us. Alone with Molly, I tend to be shy of other hiker, in the single. If there are hundred of hikers, who cares. But if there are just a couple of guys and they're moving quietly through the woods, I get paranoid. Too many horror stories in the news, I guess.  And just last night I'd been reading about a couple of women murdered on the Appalachian trail....

Anyway, it was nearing time to head back. I didn't want to go all the way down to the Otter Creek campground, and without a map I had no idea where this trail was going. But it seemed to be headed that way. Actually I wouldn't have minded going down to the campground because then I could take the road back, rather than backtrack the route I'd come up on. It's always so boring to do an out-and-back, because any wildlife you might have seen have already been scared away. By you.

So we started back and hadn't gone far before we found ourselves ducking (only me, ducking--Molly didn't even notice) under some fallen trees.  We were suddenly on the "blue flag" trail instead of the "orange flag" trail.  It seemed to be going in the right direction, between the lake shore and the big hill that I'd hoped to climb to the top of.  (I can't bring myself to call the big hill a mountain, but some people might.)  The blue flag trail wasn't well marked but it was clearly a trail--no chance of getting lost.  But after a while it turned to the right, away from the lake, and I had no way of knowing how far it would go on that way before it crossed the road.

Yes, I had my phone with its GPS, but I was treating it as a remedy of last resort. Kind of a hopeful fallback plan--if all else failed, I still had hope my phone would get me back. But if I tried it and it failed, I'd have to bushwhack across boulders, cactus and brushy weeds downhill toward the lake. Now, that would have been a way to see some wildlife!

But the morning was young, so Molly and I turned back and backtracked along the blue trail until we found a spot where a tree was tied with both blue and orange flags.  I made a promise to myself I wouldn't go any farther afield until I found the next orange flag, but that was impossible. We were right in the midst of massive boulders, and no other flags in sight.

So we walked downhill...or rather, we clambered over boulders and slid down the downhill sides. It took two tries in different directions, but soon we found the next orange flag. Saved!

This has been a lot of words to describe a hike that took about an hour and a half. But it sure was fun.

Here was the view from as high as we made it:

Molly found a snake but couldn't catch it in the distance of the 4-foot leash. Poor puppy!  (I wouldn't have let her have it anyway, but she didn't know that. I told her it was because the leash was too short.)

 

Why are these boulders lying around? I need to consult my geology book.

Later in the day:
It was still a lovely day--so far.  But not for dogs--they got left behind. After taking showers, Ed and I left at about 2:30 to go to the Museum of the Great Plains. It was very good. Their sight-and-sound recreation of a tornado destroying a farm overhead while you cower in a storm cellar below was somewhat thrilling. Don't have your expectations overblown and go in with your imagination wide open. Imagine you, yourself, being right there--in a tiny, cluttered storm cellar with crashing and roaring all around you...and your family somewhere outside.

The exhibits were good, too, and a whole lot of hands-on. Some were for children but we enjoyed them too.  Ed spend a remarkably long time in the theater watching a documentary on Judge Parker in Fort Smith and the black enforcers he had working for him, who was later honored with a statue. We then did the outside exhibits, not too exciting as we bypassed the builder where a couple of volunteer "interpreters" were holding forth. We were being shy.
ammonite

It was a little too early for supper, so we checked out the upstairs of the museum. It wasn't exhibits, though--it was a cool kids playground like at the Discovery Science Centers we've seen here and there. It would have be supremely great with kids.

Great place. So on we went went to the Old Plantation Restaurant in Medicine Park. We were shocked--out in the middle of nowhere, suddenly we ended up on a couple of narrow streets lined with parking and people in bathing suits and traffic and people walking every which a way. It appears that the whole area along Medicine Creek there is a prime swimming and rafting spot, and the crowds had gathered. It was wild.

But we lucked into a parking space and since it was only a little after five in the evening, a no-wait table in the restaurant. Great!  I would have had the cedar planked salmon but (a) it was probably Atlantic Salmon and (b) farmed with great environmental impact and (c) thirty-four dollars.  I "settled" for the second-best fried catfish I ever ate accompanied by the best sweet potato fries I ever ate, plus sauteed mixed vegetables that were darn near perfect and huge, fluffy rolls with cinnamony honey butter.  

Wow. Stuffed we were. And pleasantly so. Great place. But I still needed to give Molly a nice long after supper walk to make up for our absence. I gave them both a short walk, then supper, and waited until the sun got a little lower in the sky, like maybe at eight o'clock, to give her the long walk she deserved. It was nice...but did I walk off any of that supper? Maybe.

  

n the road back we cut directly through the wildlife refuge.

Gardening in my Roots, end of June

 

We interrupt this presentation for a garden report:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Good! A first carrot harvest; more to come. 

 

 

 

Sadly, they're not real tasty. I was warned that carrots, like most cool-weather crops, are not very sweet if you leave them until June. I need to get them started earlier next year. 

 

The beet harvest turned out much better than expected. If you consider that the farmer's market probably charges about $3 for a bundle of four beets, then I clearly harvested about four of five dollars worth today. They were mostly small, but tasty. I have two different varieties planted and I don't know which is which--one is smaller, with dark red-green leaves; the other has bright green leaves and is much larger. But the one of the bright green variety I harvested last week had no flavor. Today's were the dark variety, and they tasted just fine.

I also found a rogue cucumber growing where I didn't plant any. But I did have cucumbers in that spot last year--Suyo Long. But this looks more like the other variety I had, Straight Eight. We will see. If either of those were hybrids, then it's very possible that this cucumber will taste horrible, being a throwback to one of the hybrid variety's parents. We will see...if no horrible varmint steals it off the vine before it's ready.

 First purple hull peas are coming in.

Mammoth takes the alternate vacation

Great Plains State Park
Friday, 11 June 2021 - Monday 14 June 2021

The park was supposed to have simply been a stop-off on the way to Palo Duro Canyon. That trip got canceled. Water leaks in the campground caused the Park Service to close the whole campground, and there were no reservations available anytime in June or July for other campgrounds in  the canyon. So, bleah! This trip was an attempt to salvage what was left of my shattered plans.

The drive wasn't bad, but after a couple of hours it turned off extremely hot. A check of the weather forecast revealed that we are in for it--a week straight of highs in the mid-to-upper 90s, lows around 70.

As we drove the world got flatter and flatter 

But then I was surprised to see mountain

 on the horizon. not just the Wichita Mountains, but a bit of elevation all over in the front of us and on both sides. Not big mountains, but still, some serious bumps on the earth.

 

The lake looks out on them, but they don't photograph well. Tomorrow we'll drive around into the mountains and see what we can find.

Meanwhile we're just sitting around and waiting for the temperature to drop enough that the air conditioner can make it livable in the Mammoth. The indoor thermometer says 90 right now, but I doubt if it's really that hot. If it were really 90, I'd be dead.

Or in the lake. This lake is stupendous for swimming--very clean, gravelly sandy shores, and full of Canada Geese. I may go in floating tomorrow afternoon.

The park is very pretty too, and very clean. The spaces are too close together, though. Our neighbor on one side is closer than a softball pitching mound is to home plate, and on the other side, if there were a neighbor, even closer. The campground is not completely filled up yet even though it's a Friday afternoon in June.

But the layout and the surrounding greenery make it feel that even if it were filled up, it wouldn't seem crowded. We have nothing but grass and trees behind us and beyond that a floodwall that's closing off a big puddle of somewhat stagmant water. I'm going to sneak over there with the binoculars later and see if I can find any wildlife.

\

I guess it's some sort of overflow area for the lake. The dam is across the way from us, so it couldn't be the spillway.  Maybe it's a holding tank for the septic systems. 

 

 

Lots of huge, white 'shrooms all over.

OWLS of course

Owls of the Eastern Ice:
A Quest to Find and Save the World's Largest Owl
by Jonathan C. Slaght

Confession up front: I skimmed a few of the chapters. I thought the book was great...but still...there was that certain something missing that would have made me stick close and read every page with careful attention to place and time. I don't fault the author for sticking to the facts--that was the purpose of the book, after all. He was writing about his time spent tracking down, trapping and observing the Blakiston's Fish Owl in far northeastern Russia, and he is a scientist, not a poet.

Part of my problem was that I was holding back emotion, trying not to care. As with any scientist in a vanishing world, death and destruction were all around. But the owls seemed to be doing okay--they were surviving and raising chicks, still finding a few of the large trees with splits or cavities they used for
nesting. It's possible that their world is remote and inhospitable enough that they can go on eking out their meager lives for a long time to come.

A good bit of the book dealt with the ways and means of getting to the wilderness, the strange and unusual places Mr. Slaght and his fellow researchers occupied, and the weird people they met on the way. In fact, it was almost as much about the people who studied the owls as it was the owls themselves. There was much story of eating of odd foods, drinking vodka (once opened, the bottle must be emptied. it's a rule), and strange conversations with the wayfarers on the way.

But there was enough science that I should have loved it. I don't know why I didn't.

Alaska I must go

 

 

The Sun Is a Compass:
A 4,000-Mile Journey into the Alaskan Wilds
by Caroline Van Hemert

Why in the world would a man and woman hike, paddle and sludge from Seattle to places way up on top of Alaska where Russia seems a short swim across the Chukchi Sea? Because....

Grainy photographs show a man and his dog in the summer of 1989, tracing their way across the Brooks Range through many of the same areas we plan to traverse. The landscape is exactly how I had imagined it, endless tundra-covered ridges and valleys thick with caribou. Basking in the low-angle sun, this patch of earth sings from the page. I hear the early-morning chorus of Lapland longspurs and Savannah sparrows, Arctic warblers and gray-cheeked thrushes. I feel the pulse of energy that arrives with summer's short glow.

This is hands-down the best travel book I've read since Blue Highways. Ms. Hemert pours her guts out on the page, and she's got plenty of guts to spare. It's hard and happy and uplifting and so very depressing on every page. And scary. And glorious. Yeah!

Makes you want to go throw rocks at frogs

Riverwalking
Reflections on Moving Water
by Kathleen Dean Moore

There were some gorgeous, thought-provoking, eye-opening essays in here. And some that surprised me. Toward the end she wrote of Lillian, the elderly neighbor who "forced me to spend part of each day doing nothing." When Lillian went off to assisted living, she took another chunk in the wall that separated the author from being a "former thing", an old person, a useless relic of a bygone time. Scary.

She wrote many essays based on trips she'd taken--floating the Smohalla, the John Day, walking along the Aguajita Wash--and she names each es
say after the river which inspired it. More descriptive names for the essays would have given away the delights of the book:
<i>The art of poking around.
Crossing against the current.
The logic of the dunes.
Staring into Orion.</i>
But she held back, naming her essays only by the river or wash or sometimes even just a dry creek, and making the reader work hard to uncover her wondering magic.

A few of the essays were difficult for me--the study of philosophy always hits a roadblock in my head, but mostly she wrote of the elusive rhythm of rivers. And it's a wonder, as the old folks say. A wonder.

Harrowing tale of anorexia and much more

Elena Vanishing
by Elena and Clare B Dunkle

The spoon on the cover tells it all. It's a book about eating and not eating...but not really. While anorexia is the central part of the picture, there's a lot more going on in the mind of a truly messed up young girl.

The book is harrowing but worth the pain it caused me, and anyway, once I got started I couldn't stop. There was no way I wasn't going to follow it through to the end, no matter how bad it might be.

I wished she'd written more in the last few chapters, although I suspect she might have been forced to trim it back in order to make it suitable for the YA book market. Publishers seem to think YA books have to fit a certain length and can't exceed it. But I think they're learning that's not necessarily so.  But some of the therapy sessions and the ways she'd learned to deal with her own evil inner critic would have been very interesting. She had a voice in her head like Jared, the evil demon of Bryony Gordon, constantly nagging on her faults, insecurities, and pain. how do you learn to shut your own, worst inner critic down?

Great travel great history great

Spying on the South
An Odyssey Across the American Divide

About the only thing that would have improved this nearly perfect book would have been more direct quotes from Olmstead's writings. Possibly it would have been hard to choose quotes suitable for the modern reading audience, given the propensity for wordiness in writers of that era, but I think Mr Horwitz could have culled out a few. He did a great job relating the written observations, but sometimes there is no substitute for reading a person's words.

A great book can come about at any time, on any subject. But this one happened at just the time when I needed it--the parallels between Olmstead's era and ours are shocking--and oddly reassuring. Surely, if the nation of America could get through the chaos and divide of the civil war, they could get through today's. I hope.

...I couldn't help seeing commonalities between his troubled era and mine.
The most glaring parallel was the retreat into tribal and partisan camps, tuned to frequencies so divergent that the reasoned discourse Yeoman [Olmsted's pseudonym] had initially sought was a virtual impossibility. Also resonant was the role of what he called 'ultraists," who stoked and exploited the nation's divisions and spread conspiracy theories, especially in the South. One of many examples: fire-eaters' success in convincing a large swath of the white South that Abraham Lincoln, a peace-seeking accomodationist, was a "Black Republican" in league with radical abolitionists bent on destroying slavery.
Many Northerners were possessed by an opposing specter: the "Slave Power," viewed rather like the Koch brothers today, as a sinister cabal pulling the strings at every level of government, including the Supreme Court.
...
Americans, in short, not only despaired of their government and laws. They abandoned the fundamental compact and creed that citizens of diverse religions, backgrounds, and faiths were united by a common history and allegiance to founding principles.

Mr. Horwitz goes on to describe a few voters in the 2016 election and their reasons for voting as they did. His next few paragraphs--too long to transcribe here for you--relate the many thoughts and emotions that led to the election outcome which surprised us all. But perhaps we shouldn't have been, just as people in the 1850s shouldn't have been surprised when the South's politicians decided that reconciliation was impossible and succession the only answer.  I wonder if the nation was not truly reunited until the wars of the nineteenth century and the great depression...I hope it won't take events so painful to unite us now.

Mr. Horwitz' book gets five stars for its history, analysis, and human encounters. And the author worked hard to stay true to Olmsted's route on the journey. He wrote it well.
As a physical travelogue it's pretty good too, although you can tell he's not a natural history expert. But he's appreciative of natural scenes and describes them well, drawing lessons from them in understanding the parks and places that Olmsted's later created. I thought that last chapter--modern day reviews of some of Olmsted's creations--was cut a little short. But only a little bit, and more might have been too much. I'm satisfied.

Good, and unusual, mystery--for me.

 Open and Shut


In most ways this mystery is nothing like the others I'm reading and enjoying these days. It's written by a man with a male protagonist; the man is a lawyer; and the central problem to be solved is a defense appeal, not a murder. Or at least, not a murder than happened anytime recently.
Still enjoyed it. And it was funny, too.

Gardening in My Roots and

...cooking in my Leaves

I took my second great big head of Bok Choy from the garden and chopped it up into a pan, added mirin, fish sauce, and soy sauce, and simmered the  dickens out of it.  And the result is heavenly!

Okay, I'll admit it looks gross. But tastes heavenly.

Dear Mr. Magoo. No, who?

 Dear Bob And Sue by Matt Smith

It's taken me several months to listen to this. It's not that long, but my listening kept being interrupted by trips of my own. Twice it's gotten automatically returned to the library, and once of those times it was borrowed by another patron and I had to wait for it to come back.

My persistence in finishing it despite the interruptions tells you something. It was enjoyable, and after hearing about the first twenty or thirty National Parks, I really wanted to hear them all. And it got better as it went along.

At first I was so put off by the couple's snarky descriptions of each other that I seriously considered quitting. Each seemed to be determined to use the letters to bitch about their partner--he was an over-packer; she wouldn't even pack sunscreen. She had an irrational hatred of squirrels and pretty much all of nature's small wonders--why was she even venturing outside? He was incapable of shrugging off fellow traveler's idiocies. They seemed to be going places just to stay at cheap lodging (and complain about it), eat bad pizza, and drink beer.

I put up with this for several hours at least, but then when they finally started getting out into the wonder of the world, especially toward the end, they started writing about beauty and awesomeness and sp;ashing through rivers and close encounters with grumpy bighorn sheep--

It got good. Very good, especially in the final adventures. And despite all their picking on each other, I grew to like them.

Mammoth at White Flint Park, and return

Here's my review of White Flint Park:

The RV sites are roomy and the covered picnic tables would easily seat eight. The surface underfoot is hard-packed, pea-sized gravel. In a heavy rainstorm our picnic table area became a lake, but heavy rain is unusual for this area. The 50-amp electric is reliable and the water (at each site) clean and convenient. The parking surface was fairly level gravel and the sites plenty long for our 32' RV plus toad and an extra parking spot for a guest. Great place to bring a boat.

The only faults I would give this campground are the road noise and the layout. The road noise from the Highway 36 bridge across the lake is constant, even at night. And the layout is peculiar--the camping loop winds around the lake shore, but there are screened shelters on the lake side of the road. The RV sites are on the other side, blocked from the lake view by the shelters. The RV sites are back-in and placed such that the door opens to the picnic table, with no view of the lake at all; the opposite side (hookups) looks out toward the lake.

The campground was crowded on the May weekend we were there but not especially noisy. People were mostly quiet, older couples or fishermen with boats. The campground host came by to greet us and answer any questions we might have. She was very pleasant. There was no attendant at the gate but we got a gate code in an email shortly after making the reservation.


Sunday 5/16 and Monday 5/17, return home

We had a boring and almost horrible day Saturday. We went to a farmer's market that had no farmers and it took two stops to find it. Then to a massive estate liquidation sale that had no furniture; then to Edward's. And there we sat. Eventually we all went shopping--Filipino grocery, O-Mart, then Walmart. Boring as heck.

Then we sat around for a while until I induced him to go ahead and order the pizza, estimating that it would be seven-thirty before we even started eating.  Which came close to being true.

On Sunday I made this note:
I personally am sick and tired of this trip. Always doing things I don't want to do and never doing anything I want to do. Blah!  I'll go for a jog in a minute and then get a little while to do work while Ed is at church. Not that I particularly want to do work, but it's been nagging at me.

Here is a quote from last spring:
And now I was losing yet another April, May and June of the last good years of my life
This was written after I decided to work an additional three months, due to the stock market crash. And this winter, when vaccination progress was reported and that idiot was voted out of office and we knew life would be getting better, I thought those days were over. But now I've lost another April and am on the way to losing May. I will not let June escape me!

Happy to say, all that bellyaching did some good. When Mammoth brought me home, I made a list of the big picture items I wanted to accomplish this year, and started working on them. Next post will be positive, I promise!

Mammoth goes back to White Flint Park on Belton Lake

Thursday 5/13

Possibly I have unrealistic expectations. Just as I'm sitting around complaining (to myself) that I'm tired of going to places I've already been where there aren't any birds, I see a lesser goldfinch in the brush by the lake. Way out of its range for the time of year. Earlier a couple of geese took off. And just now a large bird exited the water's edge. I didn't get a great look but I suspect it was a Caracara.

So there are always birds. Truth is, I'm tired of going places I've already been and didn't love all that much the first time. There is a good place to take a walk here, down to the boat ramp and around the tent camping area, but nothing spectacular. Maybe I'll walk out that way again later and try to see the little falcons.

I have a second chance to actually enjoy my time, and I need to take it.

Later we pulled up camp and loaded the Mammoth for the two-hour drive to White Flint campground on Belton Lake. Only because our favorite, Cedar Ridge, was completely booked up for the weekend. But I saw birds--

Cuckoo--very good view, could see the yellow bill. Hummingbird. Something like a spotted sandpiper by the water, but not in breeding plumage, Bunches of black-headed gulls in the water...Bonaparte's???  What are they doing there now?

Friday 5/14

I can no longer boast I haven't had a doughnut in forever. Ed and I went to Shipleys' for a true camping breakfast and I got a Kolache (not worth it) and a chocolate cake donut. Really not worth it. A Hostess cupcake would have been better.

Mammoth at Crane's Mill Park, Days 2 and 3

Tuesday 11 May

Good day visiting with old friends. We went over to New Braunfels and ate lunch, indoors--a first for us in over a year.

The outside of the restaurant still showed signs of the hard freeze this spring--dead ivy. We couldn't guess what they're going to do with it.

It threatened rain all morning but only in the late afternoon did it open up and pour for a while. Probably around four p.m. At about five Theresa and I went for a walk--it was cloudy and threatening but held off until seven or so, when it set in again. We drove back in the rain, but by the time we arrived at Canyon Lake it had stopped again.

Late night, for us old folk--we got back at about nine p.m. But that's okay. We don't have that many nights, late or otherwise, left, so we might as well enjoy one occasionally. But what I'm missing is what we had the first year of RV camping--lovely, lazy days with nothing planned other than long walks and lots of bird watching. Last year we were obsessed with the boat, so most trips were planned around where we were going to take the boat, when we were going to take the boat out, how long we were going to stay, and so on. Of course, part of that was due to Covid. We couldn't do any stores, museums, or indoor activities, so it was all about the boat.

And this year, so far it's been all about Edward. That will be changing, we hope, starting now. This is the last trip I have planned just because Edward might need company. He has his wife back, so he no longer needs us. Hurray!

My contracting work should be winding down next month, too.

Wed 12 May

Tired.  It's kind of physical, a little. Mostly mental. Trying to be cheerful and amusing is hard work.

We left at a little after ten and met Bob & T at their house. From there we went to Guadalupe River state park, the Birch creek unit for some hiking/birdwatching. At the very beginning of th ewalk there might have been some birds in the trees; at the abandoned house mid-walk there were hummingbirds in the bushes, and right before that some very interesting warbler song in the trees. I never saw the warblers, though.

It was very cool and windy at the start, but gradually, very gradually cleared. By the end it was almost too warm, but only in the sun.

Lovely walk, though. Mostly level and not too long, although I did have to carry Zack most of the way back. About two miles, I'd guess. I could check it on the map but I won't bother.
Guadalupe River

After that we left the dogs at their house and went to have sandwiches at some shop with a funny name in downtown new Braunfels. No one there was wearing masks. Yes, it was outdoors, but I'd still expect the servers to be wearing them. If I get Covid after all the crap we've been doing, I'm going to be extremely upset.

We returned early, leaving at seven and getting back here at seven-thirty. I think they'd had enough of us just as we had of them. But they're excellent hosts.