Category Archives: Campground

Lake Catherine Redux

22 Wednesday Mar 2017

Posted by in Campground, Reviews

≈ 8 Comments

sunrise on Lake CatherineSomehow four days have gone by and I have to leave Lake Catherine today.

I would rather not.

I would like to move in here, to sit in my campsite and listen to the kids playing (so many kids! so much laughter!), to wander around the park and hike on its trails and kayak on its lake for, I don’t know, forever? I guess I’d get bored eventually. But I haven’t even done the hard hikes yet! And I only kayaked once!

I’m not sure how the past three days passed so quickly. They were the kind of days where one moment flows seamlessly into the next, where you never think, “What should I do now?” because there always feels like an obvious next thing to do.

Obvious next things included some cooking: granola (made, for future reference, with oats, pecans, pine nuts, chopped dates, dried cranberries, dried blueberries, coconut oil, maple syrup, honey, and cinnamon); a mushroom and asparagus omelette with hollandaise sauce; a spicy veggie hash topped with a fried egg; grilled chicken breast marinated in yogurt and herbs on mixed greens; and chicken salad with veggies and lime. Also a delicious cantaloupe with prosciutto one day; strawberries and yogurt with my granola every morning; baby carrots and celery with avocado ranch dressing for snacks… yes, I ate well. I mostly do, anyway, but… well, once before I questioned whether I am happy when I am cooking creatively or whether I cook creatively when I’m happy. I don’t know the chicken-and-egg relationship of those two things, but the happiness/food circle was definitely in full flow.

Another obvious next thing was some cleaning. The pollen here is so incredible that everything gets coated with a sheen of yellow powder in about two hours, so I’ve been steadily dusting. But also I desperately need to do laundry, so I took the opportunity of having an almost empty clothes cupboard to clean it out and re-organize. I was grateful to find no sign of mice. Less grateful when I did the same thing to the top drawers in the bathroom and kitchen because there was plenty of evidence of mice in them, grr… I also washed the incredibly dirty van, most of it with just a jug of water, no soap, and a dishcloth that is likely to never be clean again, but all the windows with Windex. Plus swept and washed dishes, rearranged the dog’s beds, changed the sheets… the usual sort of cleaning stuff.

Lots of walks, mostly with Zelda. Mostly just meandering around the campground, but we hiked on the shortest trail — 2 miles — on Sunday and it was terrific. It was hilly and narrow, running along a stream, with occasional bits steep enough or slippery enough that I regretted wearing sandals instead of sneakers or my hiking boots. About halfway through, Zelda was done, so I had to persuade her along for awhile, by walking out to the end of her leash, then crouching until she came to me, rubbing her ears and telling her how good she was, then doing the same thing all over again. I should probably not have made that our third walk of the day.

Eventually, the path led to a small waterfall with lots of kids playing. Zelda walked in the water for a while and perked right up. At the end of the trail there was a bridge that reminded me of nothing so much as the one on Tom Sawyer’s island, wobbly and shaky and so, so fun. In fact, this park in general reminds me of Tom Sawyer’s island. There are packs of kids running around everywhere — also biking, skateboarding, scootering — and it sure seems like they’re making friends with other campers, not just hanging out with people they know. They’re really cute. One of my neighbors has that perfect kid laugh, an uninhibited gurgle of joy. I love the sound of it.

And today I kayaked. I should have tried sooner, but I wasn’t sure about the walk to the water. The kayak is something like 35 pounds and unwieldy. My site is far enough away that I wasn’t sure I’d be able to get it to the water’s edge — well, and more to the point, it would be annoying to get there and then be too tired to have fun on the water. Plus, then there’s the getting back to the camper part. But I should not have so underestimated myself. Not only did I make it to the water, no problem, I had fun kayaking.

I brought Zelda with me, and made her wear her life jacket. I wish I’d been willing to risk my phone to take a picture of her because she was adorable. She was not sure about the kayak for a while, but eventually she settled into hanging over the side, her front paws in the water, and let me paddle. It was gloriously beautiful. At one point, a butterfly fluttered by — yellow and black, not one that I recognized at all — and I thought, “I am on a lake. In Arkansas. Kayaking. With butterflies.” Which sure seems like stating the obvious, except — I’m in Arkansas! I feel like I should be pinching myself regularly. Not that Arkansas was some dream destination of mine, but maybe it should have been. It’s lovely. I think it’s more that I can’t believe this is my life right now.

Possibly one of my very favorite things about Arkansas is that a great many small boys, ranging from reasonably little — 4? — to reasonably big — 12?, inform me that they like my dog. They’ll be walking by or riding their bikes and they don’t say hi or anything, they just call out, “I like your dog!” After the fourth or fifth time, I finally settled on my response, which is to call back, “Thank you, I do, too!” But it is so endearing. I’ve had some nice conversations with the ones moving more slowly, about spring break and fishing and their own dogs, and that’s been fun, too.

So yeah, I like it here. But off I go, because a) I have to be back in Florida in ten days and b) I have a reservation tonight at Crater of Diamonds which sounds so incredibly cool and c) my time is up and the campground is full.

But it is with a definite sigh of regret. Two thumbs up for Lake Catherine State Park. Oh, but their showers — you get no control over water temp or pressure! You push a button and the water flows for a minute or two. Hot and hard, so I’m not complaining, but I definitely wasted my first minute or two trying to figure out how to make it not quite so hot. Doesn’t change my two thumbs up at all — this place is paradise (a perception helped by the absolutely fantastic weather of the last few days) — but it definitely struck me as notable!

Lake Catherine State Park, Arkansas

19 Sunday Mar 2017

Posted by in Campground, Grace, Randomness, Serenity, Travel

≈ 3 Comments

I’m sitting outside, computer in my lap, both dogs roaming around in the piles of dead leaves around me. The sun is shining, there’s a cool breeze off the lake blowing wisps of hair into my face, the birds are incredibly noisy, and I am feeling supremely content. The only improvement in my mood would be if I could write myself through this stupid scene in Grace. Actually, the major improvement in my mood would be if I could finish Grace and move to some other project, but enough said about that.

Yesterday, I left Oklahoma reasonably early and took the scenic drive to Arkansas. The first part was by far the most exciting: the road that my GPS took me down—well, up, really—was a logging road. Dirt and gravel, narrow and steep. It was ten minutes of thinking, “Oh, shit, what happens if I run into someone else on this road?” And then I did run into someone else, two someone elses, in fact!

Fortunately, I was on the side that could tuck into the hill, so I pulled over as far as I could without winding up crunched and they passed by on the scarier side, waving at me as they did. But the adrenaline and the excitement and the… the sheer FUN of the uncertainty was great. I was so worried that the road was going to come to an abrupt end and I would have to figure out how to turn around or how to back all the way down. Backing all the way down would have been disastrous. And then when it let me out onto this itty-bitty two-lane road, which turned out to be the scenic highway, I was so pleased. I stopped at a bunch of scenic vistas and took pictures of clouds. Look, more clouds!

Clouds on the Talimena scenic highwayI had just enough glimpses beyond the clouds that it was obvious that it was a really, really pretty road. In better weather. Someday, I will try again.

Arkansas, meanwhile, has been delightful. I emerged from the clouds into sunshine and spring, just as I’d hoped. For a lot of the drive, the woods alongside the road were simultaneously autumn and spring — lots of trees that hadn’t lost their orange and red leaves from fall yet, interspersed with pink plum trees. (I think plum trees.) But very lovely.

Because I needed dog food, I wound up coming all the way down to Hot Springs, and then beyond to Lake Catherine State Park. (Zelda will consistently eat Fresh Pet and their website lets me know where I can find it locally, but it’s not always available within a 50 mile range. I couldn’t find it in Oklahoma or my first stop in Arkansas, Mena, so I kept driving until I did.) The park had one campsite available, because of a cancellation, and it was available for four days, so I took it. And here I sit, ridiculously cheerful.

It’s the sun, I think. Well, and also, the campground is packed with happy families having fun camping, which is enjoyable to listen to. There’s water (surprise, a lake at the Lake Catherine park!), and trails, and people with boats, and kids on bikes and skateboards and it feels like… Spring? Vacation? Joy. It feels like joy.

Last night, I sat in Serenity watching other people’s flickering campfires and smelling wood smoke and appreciating the bare branches of trees against the dark sky with its sprinkling of stars. This morning, the sunrise was golden-orange against the same dark branches. I couldn’t find gluten-free granola in any of my most recent stores, so I’m baking some of my own and the van smells delicious, of coconut oil and baked oats and cinnamon. I’ve got a Verizon signal, but no T-mobile, so my internet is very limited, but I will still be able to talk to R today. The previous campers left behind a rawhide chew, so Z is having a very good time burying it in the leaves, then moving it to another spot and burying it again. All these little random pieces, they add up to happiness.

And now I have to open up Grace and ruin my mood. *sigh. But I’m going to give it one hour, timed, and then I’m going to do other things: a hike, maybe; dragging out the kayak, maybe; making myself some delicious lunch, maybe. Maybe all three!

Sanders Cove

15 Wednesday Mar 2017

Posted by in Campground, Personal, R, Travel

≈ 6 Comments

On Sunday, I was chatting with R and he asked me how I was doing. For some reason, maybe because it was R, maybe because he sounded genuinely interested, maybe just because of the space I was in, I opened my mouth to answer, “Great,” and instead, “I’m really getting tired of camping,” slipped out.

There was a pause. And then he said, ever so politely, “How unfortunate.”

I laughed.

Yes, it is unfortunate to get tired of camping when one lives in a camper. I wrote to a friend recently that I’m one of those sensible campers who, when it gets too uncomfortable, says, “Okay, it’s time to go home now.” Ah, yes, home. That would be right where I am, right? Which at the time was a crowded campground in the dreary rain.

Fortunately, yesterday I left said campground and headed north. I was a little worried about the drive: I’ve been aiming for two hours between destinations but yesterday was five. I shouldn’t have worried. Five hours is actually better than two, I think, because somewhere past two hours but before three, I hit the fun driving zone where being on the road started to feel like an adventure again. I was driving through cute little Texas towns — Athens, Paris — and along roads with real ranches. Also roadkill galore — dead deer, skunks, armadillos. Younger R used to get upset about the roadkill in Florida, but northern Texas has Florida beat by a mile. Or maybe their vultures aren’t as efficient. And so many places with lawn statues for sale! Bugs on bicycles, giant dinosaurs, all kinds of fun stuff. I drove through a town called Canton that obviously has an incredible flea market (on the first weekend of the month), with probably a mile of road that felt like an event waiting to happen. A ghost flea market.

In Paris, I stopped for groceries.  Google let me know that I had a choice between two local stores or Walmart, so of course I went to one of the local stores. Wrong choice, I guess, but at least I didn’t need much. The dog food was $16.99 (instead of the $12.99 I usually pay); the only granola that was gluten-free was actually Chex Mix; and I should have read the label on the yogurt before I bought it because I took one bite this morning, and only then discovered that the second ingredient is sugar. Oh, well. They did have these mega packs of meat that I wavered over for a while: $19.95 for four or five packages of different things — pork, chicken, ground beef. If I had a bigger freezer, I might have gone for it. Generally speaking, though, it was not a grocery store conducive to the shopping habits of a single person on a restrictive diet. I bought myself some spice gum drops as a consolation prize and even they were a disappointment. (I can’t remember if I mentioned this before but HEB, another local Texas store, has the best spice gumdrops I have ever tested. They might have spoiled me for all other versions.) It was still fun, though. In the past month, I’ve been to Trader Joe’s, CostCo, and Walmart, because they had things that I needed/wanted. But they’re all alike. Trader Joe’s in Texas might as well be Trader Joe’s in Florida or in California. Wandering around someplace different was good for me.

Post grocery store, I continued north to my campground. It’s my first Army Corps of Engineers campground and what a pleasant surprise. I’m not particularly good at researching my campground destinations. It takes a ton of time, it uses up my precious internet data at an appalling rate, and I haven’t figured out my priorities yet. Does a good view beat a level spot? Sometimes. Is proximity to the showers good or bad? It depends. Most everything feels like “it depends” to me, except space between campers (the more the better) and access to nature. I would never have figured out how nice this campground was from the internet because one of its advantages is that it’s really hilly. The sites are terraced up the hill, so that they all get a wonderful view of the lake. And it’s still winter here! Unlike southern Texas, the trees are mostly bare, with the occasional exception of a white flowering tree that might be a sweet olive. I can’t say for sure, because I haven’t gotten close enough to smell them and it is so cold — 37 degrees when I was walking Zelda this morning — that the smell isn’t carrying on the breeze. Or maybe I’m just too congested to tell.

But my window looks directly west, over the lake. Last night, my neighbors down the hill from me were sitting out around their table, chatting with one another. I felt sort of silly as I kept opening the window to take picture after picture of the scene behind them, because they were looking toward me. But I also wanted to call down to them, “turn around, turn around, look at what’s behind you.” It was the most beautiful sunset I’ve seen in weeks.

sunset at Sanders Cove in Texas

No filter, no enhancement. It was really that beautiful.

Last night, I left all the windows in the van uncovered. In most campgrounds, it feels… vulnerable, I guess, to be sitting in the camper with the darkness all around me. When it gets dark, I put the covers over the windshield and front windows, close the blinds on the kitchen window, pull down the shades over the side windows, hang up a magnetic curtain over the sliding door window, and pull the shower curtain in the back. It’s part of the evening routine, usually done before washing all the dishes and taking the trash out. But I didn’t bother last night. Instead I went to sleep looking at the stars in the black sky, between the bare branches of trees.

So this morning — ridiculously early — I woke up when it got light. Not light because of the sunrise, light because of the full moon. Zelda thought it was probably time to get up and it took me a while to convince her that no, we were not going outside in the not-quite-freezing cold to walk. I wanted to say “walk in the dark” but it really wasn’t dark. The light wasn’t warm, it was a cool blue light, but it was definitely bright enough that we could have wandered around the campground without worrying about tripping or running into things.

When we finally did get up, at sunrise instead of moonrise, the moon was still in the sky. So were huge flocks of birds. I have no idea what the birds were, but hundreds of them flew overhead, close enough that I could hear the beating of their wings, like taffeta rustling. They were sort of quacky birds, not cheeping or trilling, but I don’t think they were ducks. As I’m writing, another huge flock is floating down the river. They’re white — sea gulls, maybe? Geese? I’m going to have to try to get a closer look, because I really can’t tell. They’re just white dots drifting along the blue water. The flock this morning was the typical dark spots against the sky, definitely not geese because they were much too small.

Between the sunset, the stars, the moon, the birds, the water — well, and most likely, the fact that it did not rain yesterday and might not today either! — I am, at least for today, no longer tired of camping.

Lake Conroe, Willis, Texas

12 Sunday Mar 2017

Posted by in Boring, Campground, Travel

≈ 4 Comments

Lake Conroe

iPhoto wanted to enhance this photo by making the sky blue: it wasn’t. Just shades of gray.

If I had six kids, some tents, bikes, a boat, some fishing gear, coolers of food and a barbecue grill, I would really like this campground. Actually, maybe even just the boat would do it: I bet it would be fun to motor around the lake for a while, despite the rain and chilly air. (I wanted to say that it was cold — it was in the 40s this morning — but for people still having real winter, 47 probably does not feel cold. It did to me.)

That said, I strongly suspect that five years from now, if someone were to ask me whether I’d stayed here, I will not be able to pull up a single memory of the place. There are basketball courts with basketballs, tennis courts, shuffleboard courts, ping-pong tables, a fitness room, a swimming pool… but walking the dog feels like walking through, at best, a tiny home community. At worst, a reasonably nice trailer park. People are friendly, as they always seem to be at Thousand Trails campgrounds, but admiring the scenery while I walk the dog is mostly a matter of considering what lawn ornaments I like best; pink flamingos, garden gnomes, or other. One house had the exact same rabbit my mom used to have as a planter on the kitchen counter, so it’s pretty much won the contest for now, but I’ve got another day here, so I might find still find some competition. Hmm, that makes me want to go back out with the camera and take some photos of lawn ornaments to put at the top of this post. But it’s cold and wet and I have a dog sleeping at my feet, so that’s not going to happen.

I would love to understand why it’s so easy for me to walk miles on a beach where the scenery is technically pretty much all the same — endless ocean, endless sand, occasional birds — and so hard to do the same in a neighborhood. I was hitting a daily 10K steps in Galveston, and walked at least 2 miles before breakfast every morning, but this morning I walked less than a mile and it felt like plenty. I don’t want to break my streak, so I’m going to be aiming for another 2.5 miles today but it feels like a chore instead of pleasure. The rain, of course, doesn’t help — beach rain is exhilarating but neighborhood rain is just tedious.

I’m hitting the point where I have to start planning my trip home to Florida. It’s strange that it feels so much like a “have to,” though. I’m going home for two main reasons: to be with family on my 50th birthday and to go to Universal with my niece and brother. I’m also looking forward to having dinner with my writing group and seeing my friend C. So this is not a “have to” sort of event. Good things will be happening in Florida in April. Good things will be happening in May, too, and also June, and also July, so I think that my “have to” feeling is mostly that my time no longer feels so flexible. And I’m going to have to make some decisions: a few long driving days interspersed with no movement days or many short driving days. What I really want to do is spend a few weeks wandering around Oklahoma and then the same in Arkansas, but I’m not going to have the time for that. No regrets, though — my extra beach days in Galveston were absolutely worth it to me. The weather was typical of this Texas adventure — rain, rain, more rain — but I would live in that campground if I could.

I just looked at the clock and argh, how have I wasted so much time this morning? Ans: daylight savings time, of course. Time to get to work…

Brazos Bend

04 Saturday Mar 2017

Posted by in Bartleby, Campground, RV, Travel

≈ 7 Comments

I spent one night at Brazos Bend. I’m starting to believe that one night is not enough for any park, but it’s especially not enough for one as big as Brazos Bend. So many trails there! So many things to see! An observatory and a windmill and multiple lakes. I’m not even sure what I might have missed. Well, except for the alligators–based on the warnings, I should definitely have seen some alligator activity there, but our one morning there was cold so there was no sign of them. I don’t actually mind that, ha.

We did see vultures. Lots and lots of vultures. Zelda and I actually startled about a dozen of them while we were out walking. They’d been hidden in the brush and I hadn’t noticed them, but we were so close that the sound of their wings beating the air as they leaped into flight was incredibly loud, like a motor suddenly starting right next to you. I ducked, heart abruptly racing. Zelda was totally nonchalant, of course, but vultures are quite big when you’re only a few feet away from them.

The above plants were really loud, too. The wind blowing through them was a steady rustle, like… I don’t know what. Maybe I don’t have a comparison. They sort of sounded papery, but loud papery–like dozens of people all reading newspapers at once, making no other sounds, no clearing of breath or shifting weight, just shuffling their papers around. I’m not musical enough to be sure, but I bet there’s some musical instrument that could replicate the sound. It was so loud and steady that I’m fairly sure I’d never heard anything like it before, though.

Traveling like this is really making me feel incredibly ignorant. About so many things! Musical instruments at the moment, but birds, of course. Plant life. I have no idea what the above plants are, or the names of any of the wildflowers I’ve been admiring. The stars are an almost complete mystery, after I’ve found Orion’s Belt and hunted for the Little Dipper.

Then there’s geography. Having moved on from Brazos Bend (and back to Matagorda Bay), I’m currently sitting on the banks of the Colorado River. In Texas. This was completely mystifying to me until I finally googled and discovered that Texas’ Colorado River is not the same river as the Colorado River that runs through the Grand Canyon. (And, random new fact, Colorado means “red” in Spanish. I had no idea.)

And the proper way to murder mice. At this point, I’ve captured and released one, killed another, and spent about $45 in anti-mice devices. I have ultrasonic repellers plugged into three different outlets, traps baited with “mouse attractor” in two locations, peppermint oil sprayed along the floor, dryer sheets in the drawers, and the whole van smells like Christmas from the FreshCab mouse repellent in the kitchen. Seriously, I feel like I should be putting up lights and baking cookies. Meanwhile, there were still little mouse droppings on the kitchen counter this morning, so my unwelcome guests have not been sufficiently repelled yet. I haven’t braced myself to do the glue traps yet. They seem so unkind. But that’s next, I guess.

I’m a carnivore, so I really shouldn’t feel guilty about killing mice. I eat cows and pigs and chickens and fish, the death of a mouse should be trivial. But I really hate this. It makes me simultaneously sad and jumpy, paranoid that every sound is a mouse getting near my bed and that every sniffle is the first symptom of a mouse-born virus.

And Bartleby is so allergic to springtime that he is chewing himself raw, which is frustrating both of us. Me, as I try to stop him from chewing, and him, as he tries to soothe his own itching. That reminds me, though, that I have anti-itch shampoo for him–new goal for today, give the dog a bath!

 

Lake Medina

26 Sunday Feb 2017

Posted by in Campground, Travel, Vanlife

≈ 5 Comments

deer at Lake MedinaI’m thinking of trying to find a telephoto lens for my phone. I seem to be taking a lot of pictures where the thing I wanted a picture of is just a dark blur in the distance, mostly of birds, of course. When I was at Dauphin Island, another visitor to the bird sanctuary pointed out a peregrine falcon to me. I have now learned enough to know how cool that was — they’re rare — but in my photo, the falcon is just a brown blur at the top of a tree, not discernible as a bird.

This morning, Zelda and I set off on our walk. We’re at Lake Medina, at a Thousand Trails campground, and I was headed up through the campground. There’s a nature trail that I was headed to, but I wasn’t sure how far away it was. But we were barely down our own block when I spotted a deer. I gasped, holding my breath with delight and surprise. And then I fumbled for my phone — fumbled, because Zelda was very interested and tugging at her leash — but before I could get it out, the deer bounded away.

I sighed with disappointment, but then shrugged, resigned. It’s not like the picture would have turned out, anyway. The deer would have been a brown blur against trees. Zooming just makes it blurry. I kept walking. And then gasped again. Two deer! So cool!! And then I opened my eyes a lot wider — way, way more than two deer. There were six. No, eight. No, ten.

I’d never seen so many deer in one place (outside of a zoo) in my life. So I took some pictures of blurry brown spots and we kept walking. More deer. More walking. More deer. More walking. More deer! At one point, I could see fifteen of them, all females of different sizes. At another point, I could see three males, all with small antlers. Zelda and I wandered for a couple of miles, up to the top of the campground and back down again. We never did go on the nature trail, but then, the nature was right there, so we didn’t really need it.

I’m parked by the side of the lake and the view in front of me is dusty ochre rocks and scrub for probably five hundred feet, then blue lake, then in the distance low dark green hills. The day is gray and cool, possibly going up to 68, pretty clearly so overcast that the sun is not going to shine. And my weather app just let me know that it’s raining within ten miles of me. Not a surprise. I have to say, Texas is really just a lot wetter than I ever imagined it would be. Of course, if I wanted sun and heat, I could have stayed home in Florida, so that’s not complaining, it’s just… noticing.

Yesterday I broke my fiction-writing streak. For 12 weeks, I managed to write 1000 words a day, six days a week. 74 days total of writing. But this week I missed two days. And on a third day, I really didn’t make 1000 — I was more like 850 when I finally gave up. There’s a part of me that wants to write 3000 words today and count them retroactively but I don’t know, it seems like lying to myself, and why bother? I’ve written 74,000 words in the past three months and I’d like to give myself credit for that, without making myself feel like a failure for not having written 76,000.

I can’t remember if I’ve written about goals vs systems here yet  — well, I know I have written about it, more than once, but I can’t remember if I’ve posted anything about it — but it feels like keeping a streak going is more of a goal than a system. In other words, a negative approach to life instead of a positive one. In my positive, system-based approach to life, the system is to write 1000 words a day and I can be successful today without caring about whether I met yesterday’s goal. That feels much healthier.

I’m still going to continue using Streaks, because tracking my activity is helping me push to do more. When I started, one of my “tasks” was to walk 3000 steps a day. That’s not a lot of steps — about a mile and a half — and I often walked twice that. But sometimes I walked less, too. Since I started using Streaks, 83 days ago, I’ve walked at least 3000 steps every day, gradually upping the task to 4K, then 5K, and now 6K. This past week, I broke 10,000 (4.3 miles) three times. I’m pleased, of course, that my streak is 83 days strong, but I’m more pleased that I’m steadily going farther distances, and tracking lets me see that improvement. Of course, now that I’m considering this, it’s possible that my multiple long walks had something to do with the early bedtimes that interfered with my writing and that’s not a good trade-off. But whatever, I’m not giving up on Streaks. I’m just acknowledging that I broke my writing streak and I’m going to start a new one. Today.

Right now, in fact.

Choke Canyon State Park

25 Saturday Feb 2017

Posted by in Campground, Travel

≈ Comments Off on Choke Canyon State Park

Choke Canyon State Park

All the trees are gorgeously spring green.

On my day of no destination, I decided that it was time to get out of nature for a while. I looked up things to do in Corpus Christi and found a nice art museum, so after taking my time packing up and cleaning, I headed that way.

Nature had other plans.

It was 89 degrees by the time I got there. I parked the van and stared at the temperature display and thought bad words and the temperature display ticked over to 90.

90! In February! When the weather apps had promised temperatures in the 70s!

Obviously, Serenity has a generator that allows me to run the air-conditioning without being plugged into electricity, so I can keep the van cool(ish) when it’s hot. And I have a temperature monitor that uses wi-fi to send me a text message to let me know if the interior temp goes past 80. But that’s five things to rely on: the generator, the air-conditioner, the temperature monitor, the wi-fi router and my cell phone connection. If it’s hot enough that the dogs could die, I don’t rely on those things.

Which means I don’t go to art museums.

So I hung out in a parking lot for a while and thought about what to do. I’d been tentatively considering going down to Padre Island National Seashore, but I really didn’t want to go there on a February weekend. I like empty beaches, not crowded beaches. And even more, I didn’t want to go there on a really hot weekend. I would need to run the generator to keep the dogs cool, it would be loud and hot and sandy and sweaty… It just didn’t sound like fun.

So I drove around Corpus Christi for a while—some very pretty houses around the waterfront, some very run-down houses away from it—and ate some lunch and considered my options and finally I said, ugh, I hate how hot it is, I’m heading north.

North wound up being Choke Canyon State Park.

I’m in a tent site, not a camper site, so I’m basically in a parking spot, with a picnic table within hailing distance, but oh, it was so perfectly what I needed and wanted. Still hot, but spring-green everywhere, and lovely. I was the only person in the tent area when I arrived and the solitude was bliss. After dark, a bunch of other cars showed up, so it was noisier and less peaceful in the night. Lots of flashlights waving around outside which stressed Zelda out. She kept doing that low dog growl of warning and I kept telling her to go back to sleep.

But the sunrise this morning was beautiful. We had a peaceful solitary walk down a dirt path through trees. I wanted to call them woods, but honestly, the trees just feel too short to me to be woods or forest. Maybe a grove? And I definitely don’t want to call it wilderness — it’s doesn’t feel wild enough for that. Just nature, maybe. Lots of bird noises — nature really does sound like a video game, sometimes, or maybe that should be vice versa. I was seriously jolted awake when we startled some birds though — a whole flock of them shot forth from the brush right next to us, so loud that the whirr of their wings almost sounded like a motor starting up.

And I had my bird app out trying to identify the swooping predator birds. I was fairly sure they weren’t vultures — they weren’t flying together, the way vultures do, or circling, and they were a little on the small side, plus the coloring seemed wrong. The app offered northern harrier as an option, which seemed to fit best, but I’m honestly not sure. They were beautiful, though. And they flew really close to the treetops, which was cool. The trees are short, so that meant they were remarkably near to the ground for swooping predators.

Because there weren’t any camper sites available and I’m technically not supposed to be in the tent sites, I’m headed north again this morning. This time with a reservation. As it turns out, while I like serendipity and while I approve of flexibility, I also don’t want to waste my days feeling uncertain and driving around aimlessly. I will miss some things if I only stick to places that take reservations (Padre Island doesn’t, for example, it’s first-come, first-served), and I definitely don’t want to make plans too far out into the future. But knowing where I’m going to spend the night is less stressful for me. Yesterday I seriously considered staying in a Walmart parking lot — I even asked if it was okay, and was told that it was fine — but I hated the thought of waking up there and having our morning walk be around cars and blacktop. I’m so glad this morning that I moved on!

Goose Island State Park

23 Thursday Feb 2017

Posted by in Anxiety, Campground, Personal, Travel

≈ 6 Comments

sunrise on Goose Island

Not a goose, but a pelican. And that tiny little sliver of white in the sky above its head is a crescent moon.

Very, very erratic internet here. I’m using my phone as a hotspot and even that is not so solid. So this may be a short post when my frustration level gets too high.

I’m at Goose Island State Park. It’s an interesting exercise in appreciation. I’m on the bayside loop and I have a beautiful view of water and boats outside my front window–but there’s a road and another line of campers between me and the water. If I had one of the sites on the other side of the road, there would be nothing in front of me but water.

Would anything in my life be different? Nope, I would still be camped in a beautiful place on a gorgeous day with dogs that I adore in a comfy little van… and yet I feel vaguely dissatisfied, wishing I was on the other side of the road.

I’ve been feeling very unsettled in general. Which is, of course, a perfect word, because although I mean it as a synonym for something like uncertain, I am literally not settled. Constant motion, constant change. It’s unsettling. My neighbor here has been on the road for four years and she used the word “rootless”–it’s a good word, too.

But I leave here tomorrow with no destination in mind, no campsite reserved. I may wind up spending the night in a Walmart parking lot, which will be good for me. It will remind me to appreciate campsites with water views, even when they have road views, too.

Matagorda Bay Nature Park

20 Monday Feb 2017

Posted by in Campground, Zelda

≈ 4 Comments

beach sunrise through clouds

I sang while walking Zelda yesterday morning.

Yep, singing in public. Loudly, too. Except it wasn’t really public. We were on a completely deserted beach, ocean pounding away, with the sun peeking out from behind clouds, with that sort of celestial rays of light thing happening. Singing felt totally appropriate. I should probably learn either a few more songs or the actual lyrics of “Joy to the World” if I intend to continue singing while walking the dog, though, because my singing involved a fair amount of “something, something, something,” lyrics.

When I first got to this campground, on Friday, I’d been driving in the rain for a while and I was feeling… well, tired of rain. After having lived in Florida and California for most of the past 25 years, I sort of forgot that in some places rain just goes on and on and on. Not that I would have expected Texas to be one of those places, but hey, live and learn.

And the campground is very much one of the rows of RVs’ places. Nice spaces, with plenty of room between sites, concrete picnic tables at every site, and smooth large driveways, but what I can see out of my windows–front, back, both sides–is another camper. It’s not cozy. Combine that with the rain and I was less than enthusiastic.

But this is absolutely another location, location, location place. Sure, it’s a (very nice) parking lot, but it borders the southern end of the Colorado River and miles and miles of true ocean beach. Sitting in the camper is not so interesting, but walking is amazing.

There’s an incredibly long jetty made of metal grating that goes out over the water. At the end, you can feel the spray, hear the crashing waves, and look down at the water, probably at least ten feet below. It’s exhilarating in the way the ocean can be, like you’re breathing pure freedom. (Zelda, however, hated it, so I won’t be going on it again. I’m not sure whether it was the feel of the metal under her paws or the distance to the ground that she could see below her, but she was walking very, very slowly.)

The beach has lots of shells, so there’s some fun beachcombing activity, but best of all, when I asked the campground host about letting dogs off leash, she shrugged, and said, “Sure, no one cares.” Yay! Zelda had no interest in chasing sticks or running around madly, which didn’t surprise me although it made me a little sad, but she’s enjoyed the freedom to roam and I’ve enjoyed watching her.

Funnily enough, I’ve been more worried about traffic on the beach than other dogs. Cars and trucks drive on the beach here! It’s so strange to me–I have literally never been to a beach where anyone other than a ranger or lifeguard was allowed in a vehicle on the sand. Seeing people drive onto the beach with their pickup trucks and then set up for the day with chairs and blankets and fishing poles has been novel. Yesterday, one truck got really, truly stuck, however, so I’m not sure I’m going to be driving Serenity on the beach anytime soon.

Lots of people are fishing. I haven’t chatted with anyone who’s caught anything, but apparently steelhead trout, whiting, and redfish are all possibilities. And, of course, there are loads of birds. Lots of terns. The campground host gave me a nifty brochure of local birds and there are several different types of terns. I could maybe differentiate between them if I had binoculars, but I think figuring out the difference between a tern and a gull is probably sufficient for me. At least until I get binoculars or a telephoto lens for my phone.

The nature center is nice, too. It’s small, very focused on this specific area, but some fun displays for kids. Lots of hands-on stuff.

It continues to rain, though. This morning I haven’t even walked Zelda, because the rain has been so steady. But I turned the heater on in the van and I’m trying to pretend that I’m in a cozy nest, instead of feeling like I’m camping in the rain. I have/am discovering, though, the dilemma of accumulating wet things when you’re camping in the rain. There’s no way for anything to get dry, short of me finding a laundromat. And everything is starting to feel damp. I need some sunshine!

Of course, tomorrow’s weather report says sun, but I leave here tomorrow. And the campground I’m headed to, while an island, does not apparently have good beaches. So this might be my last sandy day for a while. I like sand, but wet sand is really not my favorite thing. And I feel like I’m starting to whine, so I’ll stop. Overall, though, I would come back to this campground, but I’m not actually planning on doing so. Next winter, maybe?

Galveston Island State Park

14 Tuesday Feb 2017

Posted by in Campground, Travel

≈ 4 Comments

Possibly all I need to say about Galveston Island State Park is that yesterday I went online to figure out when I could get another reservation, preferably for the beach side campsites. (I’m currently on the bay side.) March 5-10th. So I’m going to wander around Texas for a couple of weeks and then come back here. This will not be the first park that I’ve returned to, but it’s the first one that I’ve returned to that didn’t have relatives living nearby.

The park has vast expanses of blackened land, presumably recovering from a controlled burn, with wild grasses growing and not much else. It’s flat and muddy and dark. And by some standard, the weather has been terrible. I haven’t seen a sunrise since I got here because it’s been so foggy. But the fog isn’t cold, it just has a hint of ocean chill and it smells like ocean. It’s lovely. Zelda and I have gotten muddy and sandy and wet and salty. (B, not so much, because he does the finicky dog thing of, “What? You want me to walk there? On THAT? No, thank you.”) And I love it.

I could live without the tornado warnings, though. Today has been pretty much a non-stop stream of the national weather service letting me know that I’m going to die soon. Any minute now! It’s actually really impressive to be watching the ocean while a thunderstorm is going on — the waves are great, but the rumbles of thunder and lightning make them all the better. But, of course, I am hoping to avoid any actual tornados. I did unplug Serenity and move from the campsite to a parking lot, out of some notion of being ready to move should it be necessary, but I’m not sure how I would know that it was actually necessary short of seeing a forming tornado.

Back to the park: there are birds I’ve never seen before, tall and short and in-between. One was a reddish egret, which I wouldn’t know, except that I found a sign telling me so. Two yesterday were tall and pink and mysterious. I am fairly sure–after abandoning all hope of conserving my internet data to research the question–that they were not flamingos, but roseate spoonbills. If you had told me six months ago that I was going to be so interested in birds that I would be looking for an app to help me identify them, I would have looked at you sidewise, but there you go. One never knows what travel will offer.

Lunch yesterday was diced apple, celery, red onion, chopped dates, chopped pecans, finely chopped fresh cilantro, and a tablespoon of mayo, mixed up and rolled in turkey. And then wrapped in a gluten-free tortilla because the turkey wasn’t thick enough to roll properly. The tortilla was not good, but the relish-turkey combo was delicious.

And I mention it partially because I want to remember it for some future day when I need food inspiration but also because there’s a correlation for me between making weird foods & happiness, but I’m not sure which way it flows. Was I happy because I was making up a recipe or was I making up a recipe because I was happy? It’s possible that it’s one of those circular things, where feeling cheerful made me feel creative which inspired me to create something weird that was tasty and delicious which then made me happy to eat and so on.

I was also very happy with the words created yesterday. They were maybe not the greatest words ever written, but they were actual forward movement in Grace, not just revising and tweaking and being generally dissatisfied with the shape of Grace. (The book, not the character.) And since I’m hoping for some more of those today, I’d best get to it.

Happy Pan-Universal Be Who You Are Day!