Category Archives: Reviews

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!

 

Best of February 2017

28 Tuesday Feb 2017

Posted by in Reviews, Travel

≈ 4 Comments

sunset at Lake Medina

My site at Lake Medina at sunset

Unlike last month, the moment I’m in is not the best moment of the month. Purely practically, that’s because I’m doing laundry and let’s face it, laundry is not intrinsically a peak moment. Not that it won’t be very nice to have clean clothes and sheets — laundry nights are pretty much my favorite nights of the month, because I really do like having clean sheets — but still… it’s laundry. Not fascinating. shrug

So February included one lovely day in Alabama, several days in Mississippi, two different state parks in Louisiana, and five different locations in Texas — Galveston, Matagorda Bay, Goose Island, Choke Canyon, and Lake Medina.

Lake Medina, where I am right now, is, I think, the most unexpectedly nice spot. I came here out of expedience: it’s a Thousand Trails campground so an easy and inexpensive few days while I figured out my next few weeks. But the campground is big and empty. I had my choice of spots when I arrived, including some with full hookups, including sewer, conveniently close to the laundry room. Of course, I chose the one down by the water, no full hook-up, and not at all close to the laundry room, and it’s been lovely. People have been very friendly, as they often seem to be at the Thousand Trails campgrounds, but it’s also a beautiful place. I suspect I would like it much less if it were more crowded, but I have appreciated it very much like this.

I’ve liked everywhere else, too, though. Not so much my day flailing around Corpus Christi, I suppose, but Choke Canyon was lovely. Not the best place of the month, though. No, I think that was Matagorda Bay. Also somewhat unexpected! Matagorda was where I had to pull out my gloom ammunition (gluten-free brownies) because it was so rainy.

But it’s the only place we’ve been where Z was allowed off-leash on the beach. At other places I’ve thought, “If I weren’t so rule abiding…” In Dauphin Island, we were alone on the beach most mornings. Would it have mattered if I let Zelda run? But rules are rules, and I tend to obey them, so she’s only gotten to roam at Matagorda Bay. She loved it and so did I. We walked for miles every morning and would have walked longer if I hadn’t felt guilty about poor B waiting for his breakfast back in the van.

Other highlights: Wading on the beach in Galveston, after getting my shoes covered in mud. The incredible sunrises in Mississippi–the sky there was so colorful, the water so still. And on Goose Island, a fishing boat came in with fish and with it, an entire flock of pelicans.

a flock of pelicans in flight

A flight of pelicans should have some special name, I think, but I don’t know what it would be. 

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

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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!

Sam Houston Jones State Park, LA

09 Thursday Feb 2017

Posted by in Campground, Travel

≈ 5 Comments

swamp sunrise

Yesterday was the first day in a long while where I wrote no words for no reason. I wasn’t traveling, I wasn’t busy with other things, I had plenty of time to write… I just didn’t. I didn’t have the imagination. I stared at my files and no words showed up.

I went to bed feeling bleak and annoyed with myself and woke up feeling miserably sick. So I’m guessing that’s why there were no words yesterday and it might mean no words today, either. I gave Zelda the shortest walk she’s had in a while, then came back and crawled back under the covers.

But I’m leaving this park tomorrow, and I promised myself I’d blog about every new place I stay, so… Sam Houston Jones State Park. I have a nice tucked-away spot with a view of forest out of one window, but the park itself feels much bigger and more urban than most of the places I’ve stayed recently.

Bigger is accurate, I think, but the urban is just that it’s near a highway. Instead of birds and bugs and strange animals, there’s a lot of traffic noise. Well, and also there are a lot of picnic tables and a commensurate amount of litter. And maybe a lot of traffic? This morning, when I was trying to go back to sleep, I was looking out the wrong window–not the forested window–and I watched a long string of cars passing by, probably at least a dozen of them. For a Thursday morning in midwinter, that’s a lot of cars to be driving past a campground in a state park.

My first afternoon here, I watched two big cats — house cats, not wild, but I’d guess feral — stalking through the forest out my window. They feel like the definition of the place: feral, not wild. Example: this morning’s walk, admittedly short, included an encounter with a half-dressed guy staggering along the trail. Not staggering in the “I’m an injured hiker” sort of way, but staggering in the “drunk guy, sleeping it off in the woods” sort of way. Hmm, so maybe that adds to the urban feel, too? I didn’t cut my walk short because of him, but it definitely lowers my enthusiasm for random strolls through deserted trails in the semi-dark. On the other hand, swamp sunrise, quite pretty. And I saw an armadillo trundling through the woods yesterday and armadillos are always cool.

I’m hoping my current state of misery is a gluten-reaction — I didn’t read a label a few days ago and it contained some modified food starch, so it could be — but of course it feels like I’ve got the flu. Blah. It’s quite sad how desperately I wish I was back in my house, in my comfortable bed, with my freezer full of homemade chicken stock and my electric tea kettle on the counter. And my fenced backyard, so the dogs could go out without me needing to drag myself out with them. If wishes were horses, I’d have a full stable today.

But tomorrow, Texas.

Tickfaw State Park, Louisiana

06 Monday Feb 2017

Posted by in Campground, Travel

≈ 10 Comments

Cypress swamp

This is the mist about half an hour later (and lighter) than when I decided, nope, not getting on that path.

I woke up early this morning, maybe because I was hearing a weird noise—like a far-distant telephone dial, the old-fashioned rotary kind—but probably just because I went to bed really early last night. It was 5AM or so and I spent the next half hour trying to track down the noise: moving around the van, opening windows to see if it was louder outside, turning off circuits from the circuit breaker, running the water, going outside and turning the water off… every new attempt punctuated by five minutes or so of trying to go back to sleep.

Finally I gave up and got up. The first thing I do every morning is walk Zelda but it was still full dark outside, so instead I made myself coffee and breakfast (honey Greek yogurt with blueberries and granola, yum.) Zelda is generally not patient if I try to do much before her walk—she knows how the morning is supposed to go—but it was early enough and dark enough that she opened her eyes and watched me but didn’t bother to start moving until I started getting dressed.

When we started walking, it was a little after six. Sunrise was at six-forty, so it was still dark, but getting lighter. I walked a short way down the road, then turned back and got my flashlight, that’s how dark it was. We wandered along the road, down a short path to the deserted nature center—closed today, alas, or I would be headed back there—through the parking lot, down another road, and right to the edge of a boardwalk path into the park.

And there I stopped.

I’m in Tickfaw State Park in Lousiana. I got here yesterday afternoon, with time to do a bunch of housebound stuff (vanbound?), but not enough time to explore the park in daylight. So there I was, approximately 6:20 AM, about to head into the park in semi-darkness. Except…

It was a grey and foggy morning. Mist was everywhere and it was doing that thing where even though it’s not raining, the mist condenses on the tree leaves and then drips, so it sounded like there were tiny random footsteps happening all around me. They weren’t footsteps, of course, they were just drops of water hitting the ground. I’m a rational person, I know that’s what that sound was. Not footsteps, just water drops.

But there were birds, too, loads of them, making loads of noise.

And to the right of the boardwalk, in the woods, there was a rustling. And then a sound like a coughing bark. Not a bark, not a cough, but something in between. It’s not a sound that a squirrel makes, not one of their chitters or squeaks. It’s a bigger sound than that. But it’s not a rumble or a growl, either.

I told myself that it was perfectly safe. I didn’t know what was making that sound, but I was going to get on the boardwalk, not walk into the woods.

Except these weren’t exactly woods. I’m in a cypress swamp. The trees are probably beautiful in summer, but it’s the middle of winter, so right now they’re trunks of mostly bare gray branches, scattered dead leaves hanging from them. Occasional scrub pines provide a bit of color, but the ground is dark and muddy, covered with leaves or swampy water. For whatever reason, it reminds me of the landscape from Stranger Things.

I heard the sound again. Does Louisiana have bears? Probably. No reason why they wouldn’t have bears, plus the trash receptacles are bear-proof and why would you have bear-proof trash cans if you didn’t have bears? But, middle of winter, bears ought to be asleep. Hibernating, right? And there’s no way that noise was big enough to be a bear.

Unless it was a small bear.

Zelda was tugging at the leash. She was quite eager to go walk along that boardwalk and sniff interesting smells.

I was not so sure.

And then, from the left side, I heard a howl. A real, true, actual howl. Like a wolf howling at the moon howl. Like a werewolf howl.

I was sure it was a coyote, equally sure it was far away. And I was totally positive that the little footstep sounds I heard all around me were just water drips from the trees created by the mist, and whatever the thing coughing at me from the trees to the right was (probably a raccoon, right?), it was definitely not a monster from a shadow realm going to eat us both alive.

But I was not getting on that boardwalk, just not.

So Zelda and I walked back along the road and deeper into the park. I saw an owl fly across the road, and then fly from tree to tree until it disappeared into the swamp. I saw two snowy white egrets lift into the air, so beautiful and so ungainly. An entire flock of some much smaller bird flew so close overhead that I literally heard their wings beating.

The noise here is just incredible. Alexa does a forest sounds meditation that I’ve always thought was unrealistic because it’s such steady noise, but this is the forest that meditation belongs to, because the birds and the bugs are a constant background harmony, even now, sitting in Serenity on the computer.

And the park basically belongs right now to me and the birds. The campground has spots for thirty RVs; I believe there might be two other campers here. It is peaceful, serene, beautiful… and also isolated and honestly, seriously spooky.

In a mostly fun way.