Hanging around Ft. Parker

We started the day by finishing the trail we started last night.  Drove over to where we left off and walked out the rest of the way to the boat launch.  It’s a couple miles one way from camp to the end.  That amounted to 2.5 miles today.  Skye got to splash around in the river by the boat launch.  It wasn’t being used.  

Then over to the swimming and boating area where we found Skye a good place to swim.  Again, nobody else there.  

Followed that with a drive over to the restored Fort Parker site. That was fun.  A fair sized fort with furnished living quarters all of 1836 period.  It is the site of a multi- tribe raid that captured 9 yo Cynthia Ann Parker. She eventually married the Comanche chief and had 3 children. One of those was Quannah Parker who later became a prominent Comanche chief himself.  

As I looked through a gate I saw a CAS setup next door.  Permanent facades and steel targets left out, all set up.  Turns out that the shoot the third weekend of the month, so just last weekend.  And the fort has camping too.  And theirs is flat!  We’ll have to keep all that in the trip notes for future reference.   

We stopped at Sonic for some ice cream.  They are not DQ for sure.  I’ll have to be desperate to go back.  

So tomorrow we head out east some more.  Staying at HH in Edwards LA.  That’s a bit south of Shreveport.  

Check out the leather hinges, and the manner of latching the window closed.

Interesting chimney 

Tenpetal Anemone

Old Plainsman

My new Doc McCoy Official Flower!

Spiderwort

Yaupon Holly

And the sun is setting on our time in Texas.

It’ll have been one full week.

In case you are wondering just where we are

We are the blue dot

And the Last few days in Luckenbach

Mexia, Tx @ Fort Parker State Park

 Nice easy drive for the most part.  Went way around Austin then up through  Temple & Waco before heading east to Mexia.  Ft. Parker SP is an older park that has not been “remodeled”, so the roads are old pavement, lots of trees beside the road and hindering easy maneuvers at the sites.  Sites are sloped to the front so I needed almost all of the cribbing I brought.  Our reserved site was supposedly a 40’ site but it was going to be the dickens to get into and then park the truck on the grass.  So we got them to switch us to another longer site.  Now everything fits.  Nice view of the lake, Skye will love getting in it tomorrow.  It was too late today fort her to get soaked.  We aren’t in that dry SW climate anymore.  She dried incredibly fast in AZ and NM.  It’s 61% humidity here, it was 8% where we were a few days ago.  I am not looking forward to VT humidity this summer.

After supper we went for a walk down the road toward the primitive camp an and spooked a deer which then crossed the road into bigger woods.  Back in camp after sunset a deer was behind us snorting at us.  It might be interesting here.  We are here for 2 nights before resuming the moseying eastward.

Last night I forgot to mention one interesting  shingle during the show.  One of the guys, Jake McLain, the scheduled performer, asked if there were any pickers in the audience who would like to come up and play.  Two other guys immediately offered their guitars for this one fellow from Chicago to come play.  Tim came up and played two songs that he had written.  He said he is in a band but has only been playing for 1.5 years.  He was pretty good for so little experience.  He said he was nervous but the others told him that was normal, and they had at least 20 years, or up to 50 for one guy.  We are missing the music tonight!

On the road today

Entering the park, trees!

Park office, with a bed of bluebonnet out front

It could use a bit more lift to get really level

False Garlic

Lyreleaf Sage

Callirhoe Involucrata

Daisy

Luckenbach and other towns

We wanted to look around the area a bit, so we went up to Mason, a town about 40 miles north of Fredericksburg.  Nice town, we walked around the center of the city; that was pretty easy since the downtown block is arranged around the Central Park, which has the court house in the middle of that.  We had lunch on a bench.  We didn’t see anything that we had to look any farther into, so we just went to the DQ and headed back.

On the way back we took  a slightly different route through Doss.  There we made a couple stops along the road to see some wildflowers.

Once back here the music had started so we went over to listen.  Then supper followed by the evening music.  There is almost constant live music on that little stage every day from 1-9 PM.  We have had a great time here and will be back again.

Tomorrow we head to Fort Parker State Park near Mexia TX for a couple nights.

Found this flowering Kingcup Cactus in Mason, in a pot on the street

Packers Multilobata

Texas Bluebonnet

Rough Stink Bug

This poet is Walt Perryman & his dog Daisy.

Fredericksburg and Luckenbach Texas

Last night was a lot of fun. Also, overnight was much cooler than the previous night but still did not need any heat.  Woke up to about 55° outside and 64° inside.  We have lots of propane at this rate.  

Mid morning we left to check out downtown Fredericksburg downtown old town area.  Lots of interesting stores in some old buildings.  Many 1880 era structures.  Among them was Chester Nimitz’s birthplace.  He also has a museum of the Pacific War which we wanted to visit but there just wasn’t enough time for everything.  So that’ll wait for another trip, it’s not open tomorrow.  If you’ve forgotten the name Nimitz, he became Commander of the US Pacific Fleet, following Pearl Harbor.  

This afternoon’s show was two guys playing with amplified sound.  One was scheduled and the other came to join in.  As we sat there with Skye we got acquainted with Di, the wife of Cowboy Jim, who had joined in because he wanted to pick with the lead guy, John Bardy.

This evening’s show was four musicians, two scheduled, T-Roy and Candace Miller, plus Cowboy Jim who had stayed to play some more and another guy.  That was a fine show too.  Jim and Di come down from Manitoba for up to 6 months in the winter enjoy the warmer climate and for Jim to play lots of music venues.

This guy looked out on the audience (all 6 of us) looked at me and said “doesn’t he look like Rollie Fingers?”   “Did you ever play baseball?”

Rollie Fingers, pitcher, Oakland A’s 

He grew that mustache around 1972 as part of a team promo, and kept it.

It became his trademark look.

During the evening show one of the local cats came out and surprised Skye.  

Skye really wanted to “meet” the cat.