Magnus in New Mexico, Day 12

Fri 29 Mar

On to Lake Colorado City state park. Marvelous drive--not. Google choose Texas State Highway 176 and showed an area of road construction, but not THREE areas of road construction with single lane road segments. One of them had a guide car with a driver who stopped to chat up the girl manning the "wait for pilot car" sign, and he seemed to delay a good five minutes after the opposite lane was through. It was awful.

We had a fuel stop, two pee stops, and the road construction stops, of course; also we got behind slow trucks that couldn't be passed and that seemed to take a long, long time. It was just horrid and I never want to go that way again.  I don't remember the exact timing, but it was supposed to be a 3:45 drive and it took 4:30 or maybe even five hours.

I didn't like Lake Colorado City at all the other two times we've stopped here, in summer. But in the springtime it's very nice.  Many flowers. Not many birds to speak of, not yet anyway.  Molly especially liked the ground squirrels.

 The Lake is formed from the Morgan Creek tributary, which joins the Colorado river just a few miles down.

I had a nice walk on a trail that ran through the big rocks along the western side of the lake; I started the walk by bushwacking from the campsite across the trail, and then I turned left (North-ish). But if I'd wanted to make the walk longer, I could have gone south, too.

 

And next day, we went home. Long drive and nothing else to say about it.

NOTES

1. Always, always always make a note of the route to use whenever you're out in nowheres-ville -- there may not be phone signal.  I guess some of the trips can omit this step--like in Central Texas or Louisiana. But in the Davis Mountains, or Utah, or even the mountains of Pennsylvania, check the route on Wifi before travel day.  There is NO data signal for AT&T in the Davis Mountains, period.  Maybe the Observatory has their own private tower; whatever. We didn't have it.

2. I'm not sure it's possible to always avoid all road construction, but I should try harder.

3. When I saw the swallows, I should have went and got my camera right then and there. They would have been a new species for me.