Mammoth Meanders to Toledo Bend, Day 5

Fri 1/20, out the window picture:

Notes at the time:
I like this little park, but it is, as I said, very little. Not the smallest one we've been to, but close. And there are a few "hiking" trails I didn't take, apparently a trail that goes all the way around the lake. The map doesn't indicate how long it is, but my guess it that it might take an hour in good condition.

Which I'm not in. I still feel drained and miserable. Although I managed to stay out of bed until almost 10 o'clock last night, I slept all night. At least until sometime in the wee hours when I woke up soaked in sweat. And then a few hours later when I woke up freezing cold because of my wet clothes. Stupid body. Or, was that what they call, "the fever breaking"? Hmmm.

But I like this place well enough that I wish I'd chosen it as part of the May trip route. It's a pull-through, full-hookup site and easy to get into/out of. Maybe I should swap one of them?

We'll see.

I tried really hard to see and photograph more birds today, but don't think I succeeded it getting much of anything. Just juncos.  I saw a brown thrasher, a mockingbird, lots of juncos, chickadee, titmice, and that's about it. I meant to go feed the ducks but a guy was stuck out on the fishing pier all day, and that's where they'd come to visit me. Molly and I walked around a bit but never saw them.

I still felt crappy but better after lunch. And I was well enough to go eat Mexican, so off we went. Pollo Alegre in Downtown Daingerfield--

Pretty much the worst Mexican food I've ever paid money for. The service was great; the salsa pretty good; and the little sopapilla-line desert they brought out at the end of the meal was excellent.

But the food was so very, very awful. Ed's supposed chile relleno was flat and didn't seem to have a pepper in it. His other thing that he thought was a tamale was really an enchilada, but that might have been confusion about the order. But my vegetable fajitas consisted of a platter of stewed vegetables (including chunks of celery), doused with canned tomatoes. No spices at all and not even a hint of a chili pepper. The tortillas were tough and tasteless, too. Yuck.

I shoved some of it down, but my taste buds weren't enjoying themselves.  How very, terribly, awful.  I used to get an TV dinner Mexican plate at the grocery. 100 times better--I miss it.

Mammoth Meanders to Toledo Bend/Dangerfield, Day 4

Thu 1/19

To Daingerfield State Park

Easy to find and navigate, but there's some definite highway noise.

Mandatory out-the-window picture

We got here pretty quickly, just at about three hours if I recall correctly. But I was feeling so miserable that it really didn't matter. Ii managed to force myself to take Molly on a little walk along the lake (aka pond), where we saw a very brightly colored pine warbler, some bluebirds, and another unknown bird or two. Probably juncos or titmice.

The pine warbler was foraging off the ground, and I didn't believe my eyes at the time. but consultation of my second bird book implied that was it, and they do sometimes act like that. It was awfully pretty, and very pleasant to see a bird up close that one usually sees only in a glimpse at the very top of a very tall tree.

When we walked out on the fishing pier in the pond, five male mallard ducks swam up in a tight grouping. Quanking and fussing at me for food, which I had none. Funny thing I didn't realize about mallards (and probably all ducks with brightly colored heads), is when the sun is at most angles, the head feathers appear all black. Very black. Impossible for me, a duck ignoramous, to recognize a duck that looks like a mallard but has a black head. I guess that's why real duck watchers go by the speculum. That is a patch on the backside of the wing right next to the body--in many ducks, it is a bright color. And in mallards, it is blue.

 

 

When the ducks turned into the sun at just some specific angle, their heads became glowing, florescent, green. Wow. Freaky.

SAME DUCKS::::>

Mammoth Meanders to Toledo Bend, Day 3

Wed 1/18

We took the trail again, dragging Ed along this time. But didn't make it as far as before. Later I decided to take Molly all the way down the road to the end of the park, and I found a bunch of really large, nice cabins down there plus another playground. Very nice.

But again, no birds to speak of and not much to see except pine trees and bare branches. It's a nice place, but not a nice time of year.

Mammoth Meanders to Toledo Bend, Day 2

Tue 17 January 2023

There was a pretty nice little trail along the road and across an inlet int he lake, then on around the edge to a nature center, I think. I didn't go inside it because I had Molly with me. We then made the walk longer by going all the way back and around the campground loop. My notes said I was feeling bad that day, but I really don't think I was. I think that came later.

We didn't see much in the way of birds or anything, but then I wasn't really expecting to.

Mammoth Meanders to Toledo Bend

Monday Janury 16, 2023

Camping at South Toledo Bend State Park. It started off really good, but then I came down with headache and chills and just a bit of scratching in my throat. I was miserable Tuesday afternoon and went to bed at nine o'clock. Kept waking up with headache.

In the morning I felt shitty and only a little bit more human. Still there was nothing I wanted to do except sit down and stare into space.

But that's later--Back to Monday.

We got a good start, pretty much on time. The drive was remarkably fast--just exactly five hours with one quick fill-up. The park was pretty much empty--only three or so other campers. One, of course, happened to be almost exactly between us and the water view.

It's a great place. Newly laid asphalt slabs; a lot of sites with little fenced off patios. Not ours, but that wasn't an issue. For reasons that eluded me, I chose a site on the side of the road away from the lake when there were plenty of perfectly fine sites on the lake side. After thinking about it for a while, I realized that I must have been in a hurry and took a recommendation off campgroundreviews.com, because the person reviewing said it had a great view. What they could have been thinking, I don't know--yes, it does, but there are a lot more better ones that do, too.

I went for a walk and found a flock of little "micro-birds" as Kaufman calls them, and guess what? Golden-crowned Kinglet!  Everyone else sees them, but I never had.

Of course I didn't have my camera. I went out next day with the camera and barely saw a single bird.

On Tuesday, we took a little drive to see the "Pleasure Point" Park that everyone had raved about, and was my original destination for coming here. I'm glad I changed my mind! It was kind of junky and there weren't all the tall trees we like to see. It was under construction, too. Not to recommend.

Molly got two nice long walks, but by the end of the day I was coming down with the miseries and didn't enjoy it myself.  

Short and deep and refreshing after a Christmas in bibleland

 Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible & Why We Don't Know About Them
by Bart D. Ehrman

Elucidative and engaging like all his books. His main theme--or at least one he kept coming back to--was that all of the contradictions and changes in the various books of the bible were well known to any student at a seminary...but
when they became a preacher, they "conveniently" forgot it all and reverted to teaching the literal word of The Bible.

Okay, he didn't put it so sarcastically. He is nothing if not fair in his judgements, and he presents the anomaly as a question, not an accusation.

Another interesting thing I got was that the typical way to read the four gospels was sequentially, from first to last and beginning to end. But a parallel reading turned up contradiction after contradiction. Some of which were simple omissions, but others appeared to be the result of the differing beliefs of the authors. Writing in hindsight as it were, about events they did not witness and only had a word-of-mouth transmission over the course of several years (30 or more), even the most careful of authors would choose the facts in a way that reflected their beliefs. It's human...a normal translation through the human psyche of a system of beliefs and an origin story for them.

Some very interesting observations are how various facts "crept into" the tales to make the stories fit in with the Jewish prophecies.  Which were mostly not about the Messiah at all. But so it goes.

It would be interesting to track down a modern, annotated translation from the older of the Greek manuscripts we have. Maybe I will. Someday.

Starting the year with an Almost

 At First Light
by Barbara Nickless

You know when you almost, sort of, kind of want to recommend a book to your brother--a mystery fan--but can't quite make up your mind?  That's this.

Good, twisty and turny plot. Although I wasn't exactly thrilled with the way the final "figuring out" went down. It seemed a little weak on that kind of foreshadowing that makes the reader say, "Ah hah! Cool." when it's finally revealed. In this case, it was more like, "Who?"

Maybe I shouldn't have said that. But on all the other counts, it's a very good novel. Just maybe not a super good mystery. However, the characters are quirky and fun and there are just enough of them to keep you entertained but not overwhelmed. The female detective and the male specialist in unusual things had an interesting dynamic going on, but I have to admit I would have been happier to always be in only one of the two people's heads, not both. But the author didn't switch back and forth unnecessarily, but only when she had to.

Also I really enjoyed learning all about vikings and poetry and runes, and all the other ancient and modern things that played into the story. For that reason alone, I'll read another.

Gardening in my Roots, mid-January

Planted a little spinach and lettuce seed today, under a row cover with plastic sheeting. The lettuce will probably not come up, because the seed was last year's and lettuce seed doesn't keep. The spinach, I dunno.

Other than a little miscellaneous here and there, I'm not having a vegetable garden this year. I'm going to concentrate on flowers, bushes, and trees.  Except that I'm planning to add to the strawberry and asparagus beds, plus I have a couple of pots of sage and parsley started, and I'm going to do some thyme and basil, too.

So today I dug up around the edges of the strawberry bed, getting it ready for planting. I need to add a bag or two of compost (I have some compost in the making, but it won't be ready for use until this fall), and then cover with wood chips before the weather turns wet again. At least, I hope it turns wet again.

Did my forsythia make it through last years heat and this winter's hard freeze?

Awful good book to end the year

 Ellie Dwyer's Great Escape
by Diane Winger

Brilliant! I won't tell the plot other than to say it was about a middle-aged (is 60-ish middle aged?) woman whose husband left her and then she escaped from a bad weather thing of some sort in the east (sorry, I didn't get that part clearly in my head and it wasn't a big part of the plot anyway) and headed to Colorado to see mountains.

It started off a little slow, which may be why I was fuzzy on the details of the setup. But it was a very good beginning for me, plus she liked staying in campgrounds and tried to camp out in the back of her little SUV (Jeep?) but kept having miserable experiences with rain and cooking outdoors and freezing to death and all that camping involves. So the notion of a small, pop-up sort of trailer starts haunting her dreams and her daily life as well.  She didn't have the money for it, but....

I was double-hooked and then the book just kept getting better and better.

Lots of stars for this and I am definitely reading the sequels.

Addicted to the series but not thrilled

Striking Range
by Margaret Mizushima

#7 in the series. I like them pretty well, and they're predictably good. But I wished I liked them better. The detective is smart, funny, and seems like a person you'd want to have on your case if you were a girl with a pregnancy that was promised to a nice couple that you'd never met. Her love interest is a pretty decent guy, but boring as heck. The parts where it switches perspective from her to him, and he agonizes over her and worries about her safety, then switches back to her so she can agonize over him and worry...well, you know. Boring!

Her dog does all the hard work, anyway. He's the best character.

And yes, I'll read an eighth in the series, if there is one...and there is. Guess I'm an addict.