Saturday at Cedar Ridge Park (July 25)

I woke up early and should have got up, but instead I slept until 7:15 or so. The sun was up in the east, but it hadn't yet come over the hills to shine on our campground. When it finally reached the lake, it was way pretty.

Dog walking, dog walking, dog walking. Story of my days, dog walking. And yes, all those deer pellets on the ground all over the campgrounds do indeed mean there are a lot of deer here. They're cautious, but not all that afraid.

I fixed myself breakfast--eggs and rice--but while I was searching on the phone for a bait shop nearby, I saw mention of donuts. Ed had already mentioned that he never got donuts anymore because he didn't get hungry for breakfast, such as donuts, until around ten o'clock. And at that point, the coffee is all gone.  But it was about eight o'clock and we were about to head out for minnows, so why not?

We ended up at Shipleys on the edge of Temple. I had a Kolache but it wasn't very good. I gave some to the dogs, and they had no complaints. Note: Shipley's has a bavarian cream filled donut, Ed's favorite.

After that we puttered around getting ready. It took longer than usual, mainly because the boat had slipped a little on the trailer and a chain (I think) was hanging up the motor support rod. It took both guys and a jack to accomplish removal, but they got it out.

There were a lot of cumulonimbus clouds hanging low, with rain and threats of rain in all directions. But no lightning--we never saw a bit. Eventually we found a spot with crappie and Ed caught one. I got a small but doughty bass. I lost a lot of minnows and that's about all she wrote. There were a lot of fish, but they were small ones, and what big ones we saw weren't biting.

As we were going along a cliff face I heard that bird song agaub, a soft whistled whee-whee-wee-we getting softer at the end. And I saw the bird--wrenlike, seemed larger than a Carolina wren but it was at a bit of a distance so I couldn't judge. Very white throat. So it was almost certainly nearly ninety-percent sure a canyon wren. But I want to see it again to be sure.

We quit at about four o'clock, I think, and I returned to some very bored dogs. But I made it up with a biscuit and a couple of long walks. Mollydog is very interested in roadrunners; also vultures of which there are tons and tons here. I watched one vulture land in a tall tree and get attacked by a couple of mockingbirds--they succeeded in driving it away pretty fast.

And of course Molly loves deer. There were plenty for her. And she discovered that deer pellets taste pretty good, it seems.

Sadly, the campground was filling up with people. Almost all the empty spots that showed as reserved on the reservations page were finally filled. But there were two of what I'd considered to be prime spots with water views that were still open. Either someone was a no-show or someone canceled after I made my reservation--I would have liked one of those spots!  It became hard to go walking over to the cliff's edge--too many campsites lined the way. I finally walked back to the entrance and came down the edge beside the fence to take this picture:

 

Country music. Kids on bicycles. Mom's yelling "you better stop that or I'm going to pop you one!" And dogs everywhere. But hey--that's the weekend crowd in July at a popular lake near Temple/Killeen/Belton. And I won't even mention the light show on the side of one RV--that was plain silly.

But soon we were cozied up in our family nest, all the family we could get to, anyway, and we cared not. We were together--we were home.

Back to Belton Lake

Friday, 24 July 2020
Turkey Roost Campground, Cedar Ridge Park, Belton Lake, Texas

1. Planned distance: 200 miles
2. Map time estimate: 3:20
3. Adjusted estimate: didn't calculate
4. Actual distance: forgot to check
5. Actual time:  4:03, return trip 4:02
6. On way out, slowdown on 380. On way back, gas stop in Temple.
7. Average mph trip: unknown

It's the same lake as the last one, but this campground is nothing like the other. And it doesn't even look like the same lake. The other campground--Johnson Creek--was close to the dam. But this one is a good bit upriver and it's on Cedar Creek, a tributary to the Leon River. It's all steep, dry cliffs here, with a sharp drop off down the the creek; the ground is dry and sparsely sprinkled with scrubby oak and cedar.

The reason for this trip was that we realized we had a few weeks before the next scheduled trip in mid-August, and since we were so close to Edward, why not go spend a weekend with him? The last trip was all week days--we only saw him in the evenings. So I started looking. None of the good, lake view sites were available, but we could get a decent site tucked back into the "woods" for the weekend and then move to a lake view site for the next couple of days. So we were at site 9 for Fri-Sun nights, then site 31 for Mon-Tue.

We were completely packed and ready on the day before this trip--except for, of course, the normal departure day activities like the topping off of cat food, scooping the litter boxes, and filling the water bowls. So now I finally know what it's like to be camping while retired!  Plenty of time to prepare in advance and nothing left for the night before. It's nice. But still just as much work.

We could have gotten an earlier start if we'd pushed it, but we had no interest in tackling rush hour traffic through Dallas. We left the house at 9:38, stopped at the church parking lot to hook up the boat, and got our actual start at 9:58.

Google told us there was a ten-minute slowdown on highway 380--the best RV route going south from our house--and there was. Such a silly--just some road work or something that was causing a lane to be closed. It took us ten minutes to go two miles. But soon we were underway to accomplish a nearly picture perfect drive down to Belton.

The only little hitch was this: about two hours out, I needed to make a pit stop. We hadn't discussed one, but Ed nearly always makes a pit stop on his own after an hour or so of driving. I waited and waited and held it and held it and he didn't stop. I could have called him, of course, but I try not to do that except in emergencies. Maybe someday we'll get a pair of walkie-talkies so we can squawk at each other on the road.

I found a roadside park on the map, but when we approached it I could see that it was on the wrong side of the road and had a very challenging entrance. Shortly afterward we were on a long, straight stretch of the highway with nice wide shoulders--I goosed the gas pedal, passed the Mammoth and pulled off. And yes, I made it to the potty without losing any dignity.

We arrived at the gate at 1:55, and we were parked and hooked up by 2:23. Not bad. It was hot, of course, but very cloudy and windy. The wind--when it was blowing--was 'almost' cool. At the least one might call it 'pleasant'. But then it stopped.

The dogs got a walk down to the water, then Zack was left behind and Mollydog got to go down to the boat ramp and around. She swam out to fetch a piece of stick willingly, but when I tried it a second time, she wasn't interested. It wasn't a great walk--I found myself excessively tired and hungry, despite having a tortilla roll-up with crab salad and half a bag of cheese nips on the road. Plus jellybeans. I think driving tires me out more than I would expect.

Note to self: the following made an excellent traveling snack and was only a bit messy:

Coarsely chop 6-8 ounces of fake crab , and mix with a little mayo (I used Hellman's Lite), minced onion, lemon juice, and Old Bay Seasoning. I added a sprinkle of salt but it may not have been needed. Roll up in tortillas and cut in into appetizer sized slices. Perfect!

Birds seen: about a million black vultures; a Roadrunner; a little bird in the low scrub around the water that was probably a Bewick's wren. Oh, well--we didn't come here for the birds. But if a Golden-Cheeked Warbler were to swing through....
 

                              Vultures at sunset:


Edward joined us and we had a cozy evening with steaks, salmon, baked potato and skewers. Boring but delicious.

We were not amused

 

Southern Lady Code by Helen Ellis

Like so many books of short, funny essays I've read, this was laugh-out-loud in the first chapter and meh in the others. I don't know why, exactly. After, "If you can't say something nice, say something mean in a nice way," it went downhill. And so unmemorably that I'm having trouble remembering anything to write about here.

At the very end, she has a serious essay about a friend who's a lawyer prosecuting a very difficult murder case. That was good. But the articles on neck lifts, mammograms, and obscene twitter accounts weren't all that funny. Who can't write funny about a mammogram?  

I just don't get it. Very possibly other people find her hilarious. Try for yourself and see--but don't say I recommended it.

If a mystery is just okay, do I really need to read another?

Artifacts
by Mary Anna Evans

Great mystery plot--I didn't figure it out until the end. Interesting heroine and a fairly believable big shoot-'em-up scene at the end. (Not literally shoot-'em-up -- I think the murder weapon of choice was a garotte.)  I almost but not quite want to read a third book in her series...maybe. Oh, yeah--the historical angle was great. So yes, I do want to read a third, but only if the library has it.

The only real complaint I had was the perspective. Third person omniscient--is that a technical definition?  It's the kind where you jump from chapter to chapter into different peoples' heads, and in this case, too many different peoples', even one of the bad guys. I couldn't keep track of them all and I found it pointless and irritating.

Makes me start looking for more autobiography to read

 Bound For Glory
by Woodie Guthrie

Here's a question for you: at what point does the transcription of dialog become so difficult to read that you almost give up? And another: is it necessary? And another: is it even possible to read three hundred pages of it without going mad?

It's easy to read something like this: "I wuz born travelin'." You don't have to do a double-take, like I did on a lot of phrases, but did it add anything to the narrative?

When he's transcribing a black person's speech, maybe it's even necessary: "Some weeks it's buttah. Some weeks eggs. An' now you speaks out something' 'bout milk. Lawd God, little rattlesnakes! C'mon, I'll he'p you."

But other times, I don't get it, "I'm driver 'n d'lilvery boy."  Why wasn't it, "drivah" instead of "driver"? I've struggled with it myself, and I think the answer is clear--add in just enough colloquialisms to give the mood, but not so many as to overwhelm the reader.

Anyway, I'll shut up now. It was really good all the same--a unique voice from a unique time of history telling his life story like he remembered it. His family and their tragic split; playing war with slingshots and rocks; living in an Oklahoma oil boomtown and returning to find it busted; escaping the dust; freight trains to Cal-i-for-ni-ay where fruit spoils on the ground but you're not allowed to pick any of it. At end he started putting in snippets of songs--I wish he'd done that throughout. But I guess that didn't make sense when he wasn't a singer--for the first twenty or so years of his life he was a sign painter and a bum.

Magical and still so sad

 

Prairie Time: A Blackland Portrait

by Matt White

Phenomenal book--but of course, so sad--about the vanished prairies of north-east Texas. He goes in search of them and finds remnants of the unplowed land in railroad easements and sometimes in prairies preserved by the people who owned them. or by neglect.

When a virgin tallgrass prairie is plowed it never returns to its former plant communities. Or maybe never is too harsh a word...some restorations have come close to what we think may be the original state. Lacking fire and buffalo to regenerate the native plants, prairies were quickly grown up in cedar and scrubby hackberry or elm. I've seen that myself on the Corp of Engineers field that adjoins the Trinity River behind my house. The former owner of the nearby field kept the Corp. land mowed, but it hasn't been mowed in twenty years and the little trees are creeping in from all sides. It'll be a forest when we leave.

Our own pen area is suffering the same fate, but I'm determined to reverse it. Never, however, will I succeed in restoring it to the Blackland Prairie that it once was. We have only Johnsongrass, Bermuda and Dallis Grass imported from Asia and beyond. There are no coneflowers, sunflowers, or other native beauties to adorn the fields in summer.

The prairies he describes were dominated by Big and Little Bluestem, Indiangrass and Switchgrass. I suspect I've seen them all but I can't find them in my fields.  But he writes this,

Perhaps, then,, there was something unique about our pioneer ancestors who refused to chop down every tree, who refused to plow under every blade of grass. What impulses motivated some people to preserve the world around them in an era when doing so was terribly out of fashion? What traits did they possess that caused them to see the world as something that could be used without being completely destroyed?

It's a question, and he still seeks to answer it. But it may be unanswerable.

Leaving Belton Lake Friday (June 10)

I made myself take a bird watching walk in the morning. I'm just not and never will be a morning person. I got out of bed at 7:05 but had to take Zack for his morning constitutional first; I probably got on the road with Mollydaa and my binoculars at about 8:00.  Just at the start of the road we listened for a while to a catbird, or so I  believe. It reminded me a lot of the catbirds I heard back in Paducah. I only got the quickest glimpse of it.

Then on and up and over. There were many cardinals singing, and painted buntings, although I only saw one painted bunting for sure. At one point I heard a bird call that I didn't recognize at all--but no luck. Only a couple of calls and no bird.  

We walked down to the boat ramp, mostly in the scrub cedar and oak, but heard no more birds. On the way back I watched a Bewick's Wren for a minute or two.

And that was that. Time to pack and load up.

The drive back confirmed our belief that we have no business taking Mammoth on I-35E. Going through Temple was fine--we stopped at Buc'ees to get gas but didn't go inside. There was nothing we really needed and no reason to go inside except to finally see the insides of one--we've never actually been inside the dwelling place of the buck-toothed beaver which is taking over Texas. Most people in the parking lot were wearing their masks, and we had ours, but what was the point?  Some other time.

When leaving Buc'ees, we were supposed to head east and cross over to I-45, but Ed's phone navigation reset itself and we ended up on the shortest route. The road construction at Waco was bad but not horrid. Another round of it, probably at about West (the town) where 35-E and 35-W join up, was also bad but not horrid. But then we hit Waxahatchie and it truly sucked big time. We shan't be doing that again.

Home.

Trip Notes:
1. On Thursday it was 97 degrees and the A/C was having trouble keeping up in the hottest part of the afternoon, but it was okay by nightfall. So we can handle pretty much the worst that Texas can throw at us. (Yes, I've seen temperatures of 110 on my car thermometer but that was in a parking lot, not a campground.)
2. If we camp here again and want to park the boat in the water, remember that the westernmost sites have a gravelly bottom. However, the site farthest to the northeast, next to the tent camping area, has a gravelly/sandy bottom. It's a great spot.
3. Don't be alarmed if Zack doesn't eat on the first night. By the second day he was ravenous.
4. How did they get those pipes drilled through the mountains out to the water?
5. Is highway 171 the same as the old Meridian Highway, the one that was mislabeled by Ackley as the Chisholm trail?
6. Need to tie a red flag on the boat propeller. It sticks out past the trailer.