Glub, Glub, Glub!

We woke up to more rain. Then we got an email message from Recreation.gov. It was a cancellation of our stay June 8-10 at Taylor Ferry COE campground. Guess what? It's underwater too. But the email doesn't indicate any reason for the cancellation....so I called, just to be sure. We hustled again and came up with Plan B. Now we have a reservation at Arrowhead Lake State Park for those two nights.

I called ahead to Babler State Park near St. Louis. We'll be staying there for Romney's June Fling. The woman who answered the phone assured me that the campground is on high ground and in no danger of flooding. Read more!

Underwater!

We got a call this morning at 8:30 a.m. from Lake Park in Lewisville. That's where we were supposed to move today, but it turns out that the five inches of rain that fell last night flooded the campground. It took us some time to regroup and come up with a plan.

We called a few campgrounds and checked out some online. Any near Dallas and near water had the same story. Either they were flooded or they were under a flood watch and not taking reservations.

We ended up deciding to stay in Lion's RV Park in Tyler, where we've been for the last month, for an extra three days. On Monday we'll move to Bluebonnet Ridge RV Park in Terrell. Why Monday? This weekend is Canton First Monday Trade Days, so all the RV sites in shouting distance to this huge flea market are already full. Terrell is about 60 miles from DFW, but on Tuesday morning, Google Maps estimates that it may take up to two hours to get to our dental appointments in Grapevine, near the airport.

We made the most of our extra day in the area by going to the state park to hike. We asked at the gate if anyone ha reported problems on any of the trails and were told no problems. So we headed out on Loop D. It's a challenging trail, and we did run into some wet areas, but we managed just fine until about .2 mile before the end of the loop. We were able to get past the first downed tree pretty easily.

The next was a bit more challenge, but the third was just impassible. We tried our best to skirt it, but the tree, the dense growth around it, and the widening stream running athwart the trail stopped us. We turned around and retraced our steps until we reached the junction with the C Loop, which we were able to take out to the road. We walked a short distance down the road to our truck and heaved a sigh of relief.

We've been thinking that hiking on the uneven trails and dodging the ad hoc streams cutting through the trails as well as other obstacles was good for us because it will improve our balance. Our brains need lots of practice to stay sharp. So this roadblock is actually good for us. It will train us to be more resilient. We pencil in our plans for travel, but always remember: plans are written in Jello! Read more!

Memorial Day Adventures

The state park has eight trails called out on its trail map. Over the last three weeks, we've hiked all but one of them at least once, and most of them several times. Today we hiked the final trail on the list, Whispering Pines.

Here's the waterfall the CCC built.

The trail crosses a small stream and traverses a couple of ravines. We've had most of the trails to ourselves, but today we encountered a couple and their young son who said they had managed to get "lost." They had started out on one trail and ended up on another. They seemed to be having fun.

We went over to Dick and Carol's for a holiday dinner. Robert and Debbie and the kids arrived just as we were pulling up. It's been a while since we've had a chance to visit with Robert, and Debbie says life has been very hectic with the school year ending. Robby actually had a school field day today, even though it's a holiday. He attends a charter school which probably needs to make up for some bad weather days.

We had a delicious dinner. Carol had prepared salmon, lasagna, broccoli with cheese sauce (to entice the kids....), and spinach salad. We slaved over a hot stove. Oh, wait. Actually we picked up a veggie tray at Brookshire's as our contribution. Debbie is on a Paleo diet, and salmon and raw veggies are definitely on her list.Carol had made granola bars and special chocolate chip cookies sweetened with dates and bananas, plus she had a bowl of fruit. It was all good.

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Brotherly love 8-)

Robert helping to clean up after dinner

After the Friths left, we were finishing our laundry when the weather took a sharp turn for the worse. Smith County was one of those under a flash flood warning and a tornado warning. Severe thunderstorms with hail and high winds were in the area.

A severe thunderstorm deluged Tyler, leading to rivers of water raging down Eagle St. Our truck was parked at the curb in front of the house, and it soon managed to trap several bags of trash and a couple of trash cans and even a microwave that had washed down the street! Once the storm abated, we packed up and went grocery shopping on the way home. It was a bit after eight o'clock when we were driving north toward our RV park. The western sky was a vivid orange red. All the rain created an unusual red sky.

We made it home safely, and our home was still here (not blown away or hit by lightning). We did hear later on the news that some of the neighboring communities had been hit quite hard. Again, we were lucky to dodge the worst of the storms. Read more!

East Texas Memorial Day Weekend

The campgrounds at the state park are full this weekend. A sign at the entrance declares "No vacancies without a reservation." We came upon this truck when we were walking through the Big Pine camping loop. Maybe it epitomizes the East Texas zeitgeist?

We've had a cute fledgling hopping around outside around our picnic table. Mom and dad have been keeping tabs on their errant offspring. We guess it fell out of its nest a bit prematurely during a recent storm. This afternoon it finally managed to get up in our tree--not by flying, but by fluttering its wings and climbing the bark. We hope it will be okay. It's certainly got spirit. At one point it hopped up our steps and seemed to be trying to get in the door where I was standing.

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More Rain

It rained steadily all morning again, so this afternoon we expected to find water on the old road in the state park. That's where we've been walking when the trails have been too muddy to manage. We did find running streams cutting through the roadway again. We also found something we didn't expect:



A large tree had fallen across the road. It definitely wasn't there yesterday. Fortunately we were able to walk under the fallen tree after deciding that it was probably stable for now. Read more!

Happy Birthday, Ken!

Today was Ken's 70th birthday! We went to the state park as usual to hike. Today we chose the D Loop, described as "challenging." It winds and switchbacks up and downhill through some interesting terrain.

D-Loop Trail Access Map

In the parking area we saw this U-Haul truck, chock full of signs and equipment for the endurance races scheduled for Saturday. It's very convenient for us that the workers are out busily clearing and marking the trails, which made it very easy to follow our route for today. The truck features graphics about the "Reptile Ritual"--in which thousands of red-sided garter snakes come together in giant mating balls. Live and learn.

Near the end of our hike, we came upon these two very nice benches commemorating some avid hikers.

The weather was very nice for our hike, but later in the afternoon a thunderstorm rolled in--and out--keeping East Texas green!

Ken's daughter, Rebecca, called from California to wish him a happy birthday. His son, Jeff, called from a bit farther away. He and Sabrina are in Maui, celebrating a belated honeymoon. Read more!

Evening Light

We went to the state park today to hike the B Loop, which is just over 3 miles. Most of it was easily passable, but a few sections are still pretty wet.

This afternoon we managed to replace the self-contained electrical outlet over the sink. It was quite an accomplishment and lots of hard work. We would never have been able to do it if we hadn't found a couple of clues on Google.

We spent some time watching a YouTube video on repairing your RV multiplex system. That gave us some clues about the organization of our wiring. However, we weren't able to isolate the problem with the DS exterior lights, which turn on and off entirely on their own. We will tackle that another day.

After supper this evening we strolled around the park a bit enjoying the lovely evening light. Ken took some photos. We noticed the beginnings of a rainbow in the sky, although it was not raining here.

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Stormy Weather and Healthy Eating

Yesterday was Mother's Day and a generally nice day until the storms began. We've been seeing forecasts of thunderstorms for the last week and even had a few brief storms. Last night was something an order of magnitude more severe and scary.

Our phones startled us with repeated emergency alerts about large hail, damaging winds of 70 mpg, likely tree damage, mobile home damage, and tornado warnings--all in Smith County, which is where Tyler is located. Lightning flashed all around us, and torrential downpours dumped a lot of water in very little time.

The park we are staying at does not have a storm shelter. In fact, it doesn't have any concrete buildings to shelter in, but we felt we needed to get out of our fifth wheel, so we went over to the community building. It's a metal building and so not much protection, but at least it has no trees around to fall on us.

We sat and read and watched the storms on our phones. A tornado touched down in Van, TX, which is only 22 miles west of us, and people were killed and injured. Eventually we dozed off, and around 1:00 a.m. we noticed a lull and decided to go to bed. We didn't need our flashlights to make our way home, because the lightning was still continuous.

We were lucky to have escaped injury in this terrible storm which caused so much destruction. Dick and Carol were returning from a family wedding in Seattle. Their flight into Dallas was much delayed, and they ended up getting a ride with a fellow passenger back to Tyler. Along the way they saw terrifying funnel clouds, but they also arrived home safely.

Today the weather was fine again, though mostly cloudy. We were even able to do our walking in the state park, although we had to dodge some streams of muddy water along the way.

I went with Carol this evening to the EatHealthyTyler vegan meeting. It was at the Natural Grocery, which has a community room in front of the store. The registered dietitian who runs the group has an assistant. Altogether there were about a dozen people attending, including one man.  Carol said that there were usually more.

People sat their dishes on the counter along with the recipes (sometimes with copies). We all ate and then voted on our favorites. A really delicious kale salad won.

There was no formal program this evening, but we had an interesting discussion of the benefits of a vegan diet and especially Dr. Joel Fuhrman's diet advice.

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The "Big Sit!"

We went to the state park this morning to do our regular hiking, but first we stopped by to visit the "Big Sit!" It is part of the Great Texas Birding Classic, The competition requires the team of bird watchers to record all the bird species they see or identify by sound from within a 17' diameter circle. Participants can come and go, and the park invited visitors to stop by.

We were amazed by the number of species they had identified. While we were there they spotted--and identified--birds flying high overhead that I could barely even see!
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More Hiking

Today we returned to Tyler State Park to hike. This time we chose the A Loop. It's 2.53 miles long and is described as "moderate." We found the trail easy going, with only moderate elevation gains.

We wanted to extend out hike a bit, so when we finished the A Loop, we went on to walk the Blackjack Nature Trail, which is only .35 miles long and traverses a grassy savannah. Although listed as a nature trail, it has no interpretive signage except the trailhead sign.

We took our umbrellas along, just in case, but fortunately we were home when the sky opened up for a short but heavy downpour. Read more!

Tyler State Park Trails

This morning on our way to Dick and Carol's we stopped at the state park to hike the Lakeshore Trail again. That takes about 45 minutes, so we stopped again on our way home this evening to get some more walking in. This time we hiked part of the B Loop Trail.  It starts off rather tamely.

As we walked we found roots and rocks in the trail, which made us glad we had our hiking sticks. We were also challenged by the hilly terrain. We'll go back tomorrow and hike the entire three miles of the B Loop while we still can. The weather forecast calls for lots of rain through this weekend starting tomorrow afternoon and evening.

We sorted out the cables connecting the Hurzeler computer to various peripherals, labeled them, and unhooked the CPU. The hard drive is severely compromised. Carol too the computer in to a local repair shop which is trying today to clone the hard drive. We'll find out in the morning if that worked (crossing our fingers). Read more!

Happy Birthdays

Today is Rebecca's 39th birthday. Ken called to wish her a happy birthday and reported that she seemed in good spirits and was planning to go hiking with Catt later. She was feeling sad about losing both her grandmother and her mother recently. This is her first birthday without them, and next Sunday will be her first Mother's Day after the loss. My mom passed away on May 5, 2007. It's hard to believe it's been eight years.

Ed came to pick up the boys. We had a pancake brunch before they left. We had fun with Sam and Jesse, but we also know why young people have children. It's hard for us to keep up with them.

We went over to Dick and Carol's and went out to Oliveto Italian Bistro to celebrate Carol's birthday, which was last Wednesday. The service was good, and the food was excellent. Carol had her favorite cedar plank salmon, and Dick had salmon pasta. We shared the rosemary chicken breast with jalapeno risotto and steamed broccoli. Then all of us shared the bread pudding with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and dulce de leche sauce.

Afterward we went to see Ida, one of the featured movies at the Kilgore Film Festival. It won an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, 2015. Dick went with us because of course it was subtitled, but it turned out to have very little dialogue anyhow. Most of the thoughts and emotions of the characters were only implied in their expressions.

On the way home we stopped at Best Buy so Carol could buy a portable hard drive to back up their computer, which is threatening hard drive failure. We were able to get Windows Backup started, so we're hoping that with complete without incident so at least they won't lose all their photos and documents. Read more!

Another Zoo Visit

We met Carol with her grandson Robby at the Caldwell Zoo in Tyler this morning. Sam and Robby were instant fast friends. Everyone had fun, especially feeding the parakeets with seed sticks.

We had a picnic lunch at the zoo and then went over to Dick and Carol's so the boys could play together.

This afternoon we went back to the lake so the boys could play at the beach. This time there were crowds of kids in the water. Sam had fun using a noodle an swimming just at the edge of the deeper water and retrieving the ball I threw out to him. Jesse contented himself with playing in the shallows with the water frisbee and the other ball. Both boys played in the sand and blew bubbles and water through the noodle.

Tonight we watched My Neighbor Totoro, one of the DVDs the boys brought along. Chris and Anara called. They were walking through Laurelhurst Park, which made them think of us. I think Chris probably gave Totoro to the boys, since it's written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki, one of Chris's favorite directors of Japanese anime. Read more!

Water Play!

Julie dropped Sam and Jesse off this afternoon for some quality time with Grandma Lee and Grandpa Ken. She was taking Cate to Fort Worth for the PSIA competition tomorrow. Cate will be competing in the spelling bee.

We took the boys to Tyler State Park to play at the beach. We walked the Lakeshore Trail this morning and saw some kids having fun in the water, so we figured it was warm enough--at least for kids! We had a ball playing ball in the shallow water which has risen over the beach.

After a bit some boys decided to join the fun. They played "Monkey in the Middle" with Sam. It's a game of keep away that I've usually called "pickle." It takes lots of energy, as the monkey runs back and forth and jumps for the ball.

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