A camping we will go…
Flyshooter, to wage never-ending war: $3.99
Inflatable ring that was enjoyed by many at the spring fed pool: $4.97Tour fee to see the beautiful Gorman Falls: $5
Pizza buffet at Mr. Gatti’s when it rained so we couldn’t make a fire: $6.99
Seeing wildlife, making up indian names, and “roughing it” with two carloads of stuff and some wonderful friends: Priceless!
Here are some pictures to illustrate our trip!
To see the pictures full-size and leave comments on them, click on the Picasa link. To turn off my captions, click on the green thought bubble in the lower left-hand corner of the slideshow.
The camping trip has come and gone. See Lydia’s blog for more pictures and another viewpoint of what we did. We left Saturday morning and split up, girls in one car, guys in the other. We stopped for some yummy country food, complete with bbq, beer fries, and a typical country waitress. Once we saw the sign for the park we got excited. But the website for the park fails to mention that there is a 10 mile dirt road leading into the park that has a 20 mph speed limit. So that stretch took a while and made our little cars quite dusty! We got a great camping spot and set up. Dinner for the first night was hot dogs and burgers.
Cliff and I didn’t get too much sleep that night on our sinking air mattress. At about 7 am we finally chunked it outside the tent and I continued to sleep for a while, much better on the ground than a slightly aired up mattress. I went with Jon and Lydia on the Gorman Falls tour. It was perfect, not too long of a hike and an awesome spectacle. So pretty!!! Then we had lunch and decided to go swimming. We decided that if anyone doesn’t know how far something is, they tend to estimate it at “about a hundred yards” but it really means “somewhere between one and seven miles”!! We walked and got rain sprinkled and took refuge under a really cool tree with vines. Eventually we came upon a very pretty spring fed pool. Upon further examination, it was a series of spring fed pools and we scaled a few waterfalls to check out three of the pools. We lounged there a while enjoying the sun and cool clear water. Then we trekked back for hobo dinners. Yum!
Monday was more of a relaxing day around the camp. We read, ate, the guys shot flies, swang in the hammock and just generally took it easy. After lunch the rain began and Cliff and I took advantage of the need for shelter to drive down to the bathrooms. On a side note about the bathrooms, when Lydia read the word “compost toilets” from the website, I wasn’t that pumped about it. But they really weren’t that bad. The toilets went down to a big machine underground that somehow made the mess not stinky and I guess turned it into compost. It did produce a bit of a breeze though… Anywho, it kept raining so we all drove to a hill to check our cell phone messages and then decided to drive into the nearest town, which was 34 miles away. We went to Sonic and got snacks and then putzed around a book store, shoe store, and Walmart. We had seen an “italian restaurant and pizzeria” that looked good so we went back to it and checked it out. It turned out to be a bit more pricey and fancy than the basic pizza we wanted, so we went to Mr. Gatti’s instead and it was perfect. Then we headed home to see what the rain had done with our campsite.
Upon first glance, things were wet, but okay. Then we discovered that water had gotten into the bottom of our tent somehow and stuff got wet. So then we tried to figure out if we wanted to dry things out and stay the night, or just pack it up, since the weather forecast was for even more rain at night. We decided about 8:30 or so to pack up and finally got done packing our cars shock full by lantern light at about 10. We got our two way radios and headed out of the park, down that long dirt road for the last time on this camping trip. I was the deer scout, warning the car behind me everytime I saw a creature that threatened to dart in front of our brave little camping cars. We probably saw 15 deer just on the road between the park and the next big town.
One of my favorite things about the park was all the wildlife. We caught a raccoon red-handed holding up a trash can lid at night. We saw a little fawn who must have had too much red kool-aid because he was darting back and forth all around the older deer. We saw a family of javelinas and three rams ran across the road in front of us with cool curly ear-horn thingys. I also really liked the falls. They were so big and pretty with the rushing water sound. It was fun sitting around the camp chatting and floating in the pool. Sure it was hot at times and buggy at times, but we had a lot of laughs and did lots of fun things!
but he doesn’t usually come up here himself. He is a very good cat while we are gone though. He doesn’t make a mess or tear anything up. He is probably wondering where his dog is, as Gracie has been at my parents for a while and will be there until we move so she doesn’t have to keep making 4 hour car rides with us or go camping. She would be fun camping for the first few hours, as she was enjoying exploring the great out doors, but then she would be just annoying.
The school is really good. They have TAKS scores in the 90′s. In 2006, 100% of the 7th graders passed writing!! Crazy, huh? I didn’t know anyone got a 100! I really like the principal and instructional specialist, both of whom I met at my interview. The school is a little far away from our house, probably a 30 minute drive or so. But I have had it really easy in that respect this year with my 5 minute commute, so it should be okay. And I will be going against the flow of traffic, out of the city as everyone else is going into the city. The instructional specialist told me she could help me figure out some good roads to go. Its out in the pine trees! We have to be there at 7:30 (school starts at 8:15) so I will have to leave probably at 7 or so, which means getting up earlier. I might take up Lindsey’s method of doing everything the night before so I can just roll out of bed ready to go in the mornings. Now that I have gainful employment, I feel like I can really start to relax and enjoy the summer! 
