Thursday, Second Day at White Oak Lake

We got a very late start, with lots of coffee drinking, lake gazing, bird watching--I saw at least two pileated woodpeckers!  Three or more Belted Kingfishers!  And some very, very annoying little solid gray warbler with a long, pointed beak and a long darkish tail and absolutely no other markings at all. Next day I saw them again, and again the next. At the end I decided they might have been just blue-gray gnatcatchers. The first few times I saw them they were completely silent and, of course, moving so rapidly I only occasionally saw the flashes of white in the long, dark tails. Fall warblers are annoying enough, but gnatcatchers pretending to be warblers are infuriating.

We very much enjoyed the traditional camping breakfast: burritos. Sausage, cheese and egg for Ed; egg and salsa for me.

I had plenty of Eastern Kingbirds to observe, a few bluebirds, a peewee or two heard but not seen, and a pleasant abundance of Great Blue Herons and Great Egrets. Of course you know that, with those last two birds, two is an abundance.  Three in one place--except during the spring flood season back home--is a miracle. They must have an extreme intolerance for their own species.

Over across the creek I kept hearing crows that didn't sound like American Crows. I strongly suspect they were Fish Crows. On Friday I heard a few American Crows, so I was sure I remembered what they sounded like--who wouldn't?  But the oounk, oaunk, from across the creek had to be something different. (Note on Saturday I heard and saw them--Fish Crows for sure.)
[jigsaw]
We didn't rent the boat until 10:30 or so and yes, it was awfully hot. Ed kept hearing blips on the fish finder, so we knew that fish--or something--was down there. We mainly fished for crappie using baby bluegill for minnows (all he could catch). I switched to night crawlers after a while and had even less luck.

So we went further down the lake and tied a buoy to some structure he found with the fish finder.  That should have been great, but the "anchor" they rented us with the boat was simply a chunk of concrete on a rope--a rope that was far short to let the concrete rest on the lake bottom. So, needless to say, we drifted. A buoy is pretty useless without a decent anchor--we had about five minutes to fish at it before we drifted away.

No fish met its end at our hands that day; I don't know that I got a single one bite in the whole three and one-half hours we were out there.  It's pretty stupid fishing in the middle of the day--I know that and you know that, but the park rental service didn't open up until eight o'clock and the boats had to be turned in by four-thirty. So we were stuck with midday no matter what we did, although we decided to go as early as possible next day.

On the way back, disaster struck. The fish finder's sensor thingy caught up on something underwater and broke off. We typically leave it in the water the whole time the boat is moving but maybe that's a mistake. Ed has a plan for a device he'll build that will prevent this from happening again--if we can replace the part.  Which we can't do here. After unloading and turning the boat in, we drove toward Prescott so we could get Internet service and see if there was a major sporting goods company nearby. Did I mention, no phone service at White Oak Lake State Park?

But there wasn't anything other than an Academy store in Texarkana and that would have been a long shot at best. After about twenty minutes of driving--to get a signal--we headed back. 

I took a long, lovely shower at the bathhouse, and it was time to think about supper--skewered vegetables, portabella mushroom caps with a tomato-garlic-Parmesan filling, baked potato or rice, and steak.  Then we sat outside after dark and watched bats come out. Bat flight is demented. But cool.

Mammoth Goes To Arkansas

14 August June 2019
Home to White Oak Lake State Park, Arkansas
Route: US-380 to Greenville, I-30 to Prescott AR, AR-24 E to SH 287.
1. Planned distance: 225 miles
2. Map time estimate: 3:29
3. Adjusted estimate: didn't calculate
4. Actual distance: 231 miles 
5. Actual time:  4:30 (minus stoppage = 3:50 driving time)
6. One bathroom break, two gas stops
7. Average mph trip: 60.2

We departed a little later than hoped, at 11:22. A small bit of rain had dampened the flowerbed and garden, but that's not what slowed us down--we were just moving slowly. The rain was a happy coincidence. It's funny that the last few times we've had a prediction of thunderstorms they've turned out to be small showers.

Immediately we stopped for gas at the Shell station between Princeton and Farmersville. They're not listed as a truck stop on the map, but they had diesel and after we pulled in, Ed discovered that there were truck pumps around the back. Back on the road I did some quick research on the difference between "road" diesel and "reefer." Since you're dying to know, I'll tell you. Reefer is used in refrigerated trailers and it doesn't include the road tax that regular diesel does. So it's cheaper, but it usually has dye in it. The purpose of the dye will have to remain unknown, awaiting another day's research. I was getting nauseous from reading in a moving vehicle.

That little bit of rain wouldn't help to keep the garden alive, but the "cold" front left behind some lovely, low clouds. Driving wasn't unbearable with the air conditioning on high. And it was August. In Texas. The day before had been 90 degrees when I got to work--90 degrees at nine o'clock in the morning!  The forecast high was 101 but when I got in the car that evening the thermometer said 103. As I drove home, it got higher, which never happens--it always registers higher when parked in a lot, and as I head toward home it drops three or four degrees. It didn't.

But on Wednesday, travel day, a "cold" front--air quotes there because "cold" represents a difference between 100-degree highs and 95-degree--was coming through.

I'd had the good sense to remember that I'd be wanting some lunch during the ride, so the day before I'd bought a bowl of Blazing Noodles with tofu and extra veggies at Masala Wok. With fruit for dessert, half a bowl is more than a meal. So I had the leftover half to eat cold. And there was much rejoicing.

We stopped at 2:10 at the rest area just across the Arkansas state line. I didn't note our departure time because a disaster had occurred and I was too depressed to do anything intelligent for a long time. Trying to speed up things, while Ed went into the rest room I asked the for RV keys and I went back to get the dogs. I was planning to walk them while he went to the bathroom; then hand them to him.  But I made that decision spur-of-the-moment, with my brain not switched into gear, so instead of harnessing up Zack before I took him out the door, I just picked him up and I carried him to the nearest grassy area, harness in hand. Before walking across the pavement, I locked the doors and shoved the keys in my pocket.

Well, I was wearing women's shorts. Women's clothing has one thing you can be sure of--crappy pockets. When I bent down to harness Zack, the keys fell out in the grass.

Not noticing this I proceed to walk round and around the various picnic areas, letting the dogs smell and pee. After a period of time just short of a millenium, Ed finally emerged. I handed him the dogs and reached into my pocket to get the keys. And shit! No keys. Frantically I started retracing my steps-- which was going to be darn near impossible since I'd been following Zack in meandering circles, wherever the smell took his stinky little Shit-zu fancy. He or Izzy could have tracked us all the way out and back, but I couldn't. And the grass was abnormally tall and cushioney.

A short drive was about to become hideously long. In fact, I doubt if either of us had our wallets with our Good Sam ID cards/phone numbers in them.  All of that was locked in the RV.  But we can be grateful Ed is very good at spotting lost items on the ground--I might have seen the keys after three or four circuits around, but when I took him back to the place where I'd stooped down to harness Zack, he spotted them immediately.

New rule and new item for the Notes section:
Never give me the keys.
Ed has his keys; I have mine. And if I leave them behind, he has to take me back to get them. Losing even one set of keys would have been a real pain in the kiester, but being locked out at a highway rest stop was a total joykiller.

We took a second gas stop on the exit to highway 24/371. We weren't empty, but just wanted to top off the tank. Outdoors it was 91 degrees, humid, and horrible. The stop lasted thirteen minutes and we were back on the road. We arrived at 3:52 with 201.5 miles on the trip odometer.





What a gorgeously beautiful wonderful little lake! The park was as clean as everyone said it would be; the workers very friendly; the facilities in near-perfect shape. There were recycling and garbage containers conveniently placed all over, in pleasing shades of green and brown to blend into the landscape. Our campsite had huge, mature pine trees that would shade it in the mornings; they were mixed with a smattering of hardwoods like sycamore and (blackjack?) oak, and a lovely array of cypress trees with their bony knees poking up by the water's edge. It was one of the prettiest lakes I have ever seen.






Even the car had a view.

The water was a bit on the murky side of brown, but it seemed to be productive. There were perch minnows, frogs and turtles everywhere I looked. Dragonflies abounded; water ripples sprang constantly from fish unseen dimpling the surface with their little fishy lips....   It was not a swimming lake or a water-sking lake but something much better--a fishing lake.

And better for me--a birding paradise. If the temperature had been fifteen degrees lower I'd have been in heaven.

The usual first day supper--barbeque chicken for Ed, baked potato for me (with a scoop of stolen blackeye peas). Sunset, TV, beer and bed.

Mind bendingly weird book

Eleanor Oliphaunt
is completely fine
by Gayle Honeyman

Wow oh wow. I very much wanted to stop listening to this. I was taking it very literally ,and in the beginning, Eleanor Oliphaunt is very literally a highly disfunctional social disaster. Yes, I suspected she had some reasons for being so strange but I didn't think I'd ever find out what they were. She was simply this really odd, really unhappy person drudging on and on...and then she slipped into a world of fantasy.

I think I can tell you this without giving up too much of the plot...she seems to be an ordinary-looking, 30-ish something woman who doesn't have any interesting hobbies. But one day she sees a musician at a concert and decides that she is the woman of his dreams...and he the man of hers. So she starts preparations for their eventual meeting, the inevitable falling in love, and the happy cohabitation for ever after.

Luckily these preparations, combined with an accidental meeting with a coworker followed by their having to call an ambulance for a man who passed out at a bus stop, brought her kicking and screaming right up against the world of reality.

For long-suffering me, after enduring page after page (in audio) of mildly irritating descriptions of her fantasy life, suddenly I really wanted to know how it ended.  And I was not disappointed.

History coming alive, gotta love it

The Hired Girl
by Laura Amy Schlitz

Great YA novel that doesn't sacrifice depth for trendiness! It's a historical adventure so very real to life, starring a young woman who leaves a hopeless home and runs off to a glamorous job in the city....

Or not so much. She becomes the hired girl to a family of well-to-do but not exceptionally snooty working folk. The head of the family runs a business--clothing? or maybe furniture? I don't especially remember. But he keeps an excellent library of the classics and allows our heroine to wander there at will.

As she grows up, she encounters all the usual teenage girl emotions--wanting to have nice things, wanting to please people, friendship, first love--and also some emotions that aren't typically discussed in YA literature--a need to find religion, to stand up against injustice, and to make her place in a family. And to learn and be educated.

And on top of all that, it's not the slightest bit preachy.

Reading a cookbook--because people raved about it?

Cravings
by Chrissy Teigen

I was prepared for this--I knew it would be nothing more than recipes with amusing headnotes--so I wasn't disappointed. But I wasn't prepared to actually want to cook a few of them.  So I won't rate the book until I've tried.

The notes were indeed amusing, but not "worth the price of the book" as Jennifer Reese used to say. Neither were the endless shots of the author/model/cook's enormous cleavage. The line between food porn and fashion mag was muddied somewhat...at first I just chuckled at the photos and turned on to the next recipe, but after a while I started to laugh. I imagined the instructions the photographers might be giving her....go, baby! Really lean into this one! Love those spicy melons!

No matter. With assets like that, who needs to cook?  But from reading the recipes, I think she really can. We shall see.

Blah and books

I should write something thoughtful and moving on the anniversary of my birth day. But all I can think of is I'm sixty-one years old and still wasting 2+ hours of my day sitting in rush-hour traffic!?!? 

It is indeed Time To Move On, as my current password suggests. I need to change it soon...what will the next one be? NearingEndOfSentence? GetReadyNow!ItsAlmostOver? OhHappyDayIsComingSoon?

Meanwhile, I read.




Turning the Tide
(Quaker Midwife Mystery #3)
by Edith Maxwell


I'll give her a Michelin star for consistency. This one was different from the previous ones only in that it featured a good bit of the heroine's mother, albeit in a flat, one-sided role, and it dealt much with women's suffrage. The ongoing saga of the heroine's engagement, fiancee, and future mother-in-law was advanced a bit, but nothing has really changed. And she still goes on questioning her fiancee's every thought even while he remains as steadfast and loving as a man can possibly be. If these were real people, I'd be wondering what kind of marriage they could possibly have with all her mistrust and insecurity and fear.

The murder and detection was such a sideline to the midwifery/marriage/suffrage plot that I barely remember a thing about it.

And despite all those horrible things I just wrote, I'm still looking forward to the next one.

Almost a book of the year for me

The Keeper of Lost Things
by Ruth Hogan

Absolutely gorgeous book.  I write that knowing it is my own, highly subjective opinion-- many readers of serious literature would scoff at the notion. Ghosts creep about unseen; people (but not all people) are genuinely kind to each other; gossip burns the cheeks but isn't confronted with angry words; mildly retarded people have mysterious second sight; dementia can be kind of funny; true love ignores age and appearance....

But that's not to say the story is light, sweet or cozy. Bad stuff happens. People hurt. And people who deserve it get told off in the end--hurray!

Besides, how could you not enjoy a book about a man (or really, the people he comes in contact with), who loses a precious thing and starts to collect, label and store all lost things he finds, in hopes of giving them back to the person who once treasured them?