Mammoth Goes to a Birthday Party

 Friday 4/29/2020

I can put this as camping, because we are taking the RV and we are staying at a campground. A very full campground, on the weekend. So...not my kind of camping, but camping it be.

We arrived pretty early after a drive that turned out to be almost exactly 4 hours. It should have been faster, but there was a stoppage and severe slowdown in Waco followed by an extremely slow fill-up at Love's in Belton. Add in our quick pee break at the rest area in Hillsboro, and I'd estimate that the amount of time we were actually moving was about three hours fifteen minutes.

 

The place was as lovely as ever, with Painted Buntings and Bewick's Wrens singing from every tree and a Canyon Wren or two singing on the cliffs by the lake. There were a lot of swallows nesting across the water, too--I wasn't sure if they we're Cliff Swallows or Bank Swallows but decided I'd get the spotting scope out later and try to figure them out.

Despite the loveliness of the place--and by the way, it's a lot less trashy than usual. Someone must have done some serious trash pick-up this spring. But despite that, it's just too crowded to really enjoy ourselves. Luckily there's no country music next door to us, but there's plenty of it over in the other side of the campground.

Birding moment of excitement:
Saw a Lark Sparrow!  Right there on the low grass near the boat ramp and swimming area.  I saw it very clearly...and decided to run back and get the camera. That's when Molly got attacked by a dog--it snapped its tether and took right off after her at about 90 miles an hour.

No harm was done other than to my pride. No picture of the lark sparrow either.

Saturday 4/30

Just hanging with the kids. Molly and I tried to take a jog and found beaucoups of blackberries down by the west end boat ramp. But it was just too hot to keep moving--my jog became a fast walk. Mind you, by hot I simply mean low 80s. Last year--and all the recent past ones--I considered that temperature cool and comfortable. But I'm not acclimated to it yet, so I found it unbearable.

Later we played on the playground--again unbearable. I even had to sit down a couple of times. Maybe I'm not drinking enough water; maybe it's the diet; maybe it's old age. But I didn't tolerate it very well at all.

Then we ate supper at a very slow American restaurant in Temple. I just hate American food these day. My salad had so much cheese on it that I might as well have been eating a cheeseburger. So I didn't. My fault for not asking them to hold the cheese. Sorry to be so gripey, but eating a bowl of iceberg lettuce when I have all kind of fancy lettuces and spinach going to seed in the garden...well, it sucks. I have salad in the fridge, too--why didn't I just take my own?