Crochet Me Crazy

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving! We had plans to leave the Wednesday before Thanksgiving to go camping. I found out that my mother had fallen down getting in the tub. Her plans were to travel with my brother to visit his family in Louisiana for Thanksgiving but since he had fallen she wouldn't be able to make the trip. I found out she would be spending the Thanksgiving Holiday alone so we decided to postpone leaving on our trip so my mother wouldn't be alone. We spend Thanksgiving Day at her house and left for our trip on Friday.

Our first destination was Garner State Park on the beautiful Frio River. This area is one of the most beautiful areas of Texas I have seen. We got in after dark on the Friday after Thanksgiving. The park was full and we settled into the best site we could see in the dark and had a time getting the RV into it because of the tight squeeze. A few onlookers came to give us a hand....something that happens a lot when you look like you're having the least bit of trouble. Sometimes it becomes the "too many cooks in the kitchen" scenario but one man was really helpful since Jeff couldn't see a thing in the dark. Also, some well meaning helpers don't realize that Jeff is not just trying to get into the spot, but we are trying to get it in with out branches scratching up the top and side of our RV...also you have to get it in knowing how much room you have for your slides to come out too. Anyway...we pulled into that spot and slept the night and then scouted out for a more desirable site in the morning and promptly moved the rig. We got the spot two spaces down from the site we camped in two years ago in our pop up which was our first trip to Garner. The river is just behind the sites and your can hear the flow of it and see it from your picnic table. I thought this was the perfect site but I didn't realize people would be walking right through our camp site to hike down the to the river. There are plenty of other places to get down to the river that are not in our campsite so I was amazed at how rude people were! One group of girls literally walked right between our pic nic table and our camp fire while we were gathered around the fire! In the years we've been camping, we've always taught our kids not to walk through peoples sites to get to the bathroom, etc... or anywhere so I was pretty amazed! We are also the kind of campers that like to find a seclude spot where we have some privacy...one reason I like to camp is for the solitute and to get away from people~ Oh well! Despite that, we still had a good time...once the weekend was over we were pretty much the only people left in the park so it was great. We surprised the kids with an early Christmas present....a telescope! We figured it was a great time to get it out since there isn't the light pollution you have in the cities. We hiked up to a cave and then climbed on up a mountain know as Old Baldy mountain which is a VERY tough climb! I remember it being really hard two years ago but it was worse for me this time....these extra pounds I'm lugging around aren't doing me any good at all! We made it to the top and the views are amazing! We spent some time driving around the area.

We left Garner on Tuesday and headed toward Inks Lake State Park. We had our pick of sites since it was during the week. There was the cold front headed our way too....we were heading toward one of the coldest places in our forecast! We got a site right by the Lake and spent the first day hiking the trails. There are huge granite hills here with quartz in them. Michael is especially fascinated with this place and has bee wanting to come camping here for a long time. I felt the cold front when it hit....I was sitting outside the RV and one second it was balmy and then suddenly a big wind came rushing up and the temperature plummeted...all within seconds. I went to tell the family and we started getting stuff put up so it didn't blow away! The wind blew so hard yesterday it was hard to do much of anything. We couldn't even really have a camp fire. We drove out to a place called Eagle's Canyon but the trails were closed and we didn't really get to see anything so we drove down the road to where we had a seen an Eagle's nest along the highway and a place where people would pull over hoping to catch a glimpse. We waited for about 20 minutes before we finally saw the male and the female bird on the nest. Then the male Eagle flew away in search of food. We waited 20 more minutes or so before we caught another glimpse of him. The rest of the evening the kids played around the camp site and had their own little pic nic together and went fishing and played in a litte "hide out" they had made in the woods. My kids always get along with each other so much better when we are off camping than they do at home! That's always nice!

On Saturday the day before we left we took a boat tour on Lake Buchanon called the Vanishing Texas River Tour. The Lake was so low though, the boat wasn't able to make its usually tour of the Canyon of the Eagles. The boat landed at a little island and there was a rock skipping contest --- Alison won the Junior division because she was the only participant and my hubby, Jeff, was the champion in the adult contest!!! It was just a fun little thing but Jeff really did kick butt against all those other men!! LOL They both got souveniers from the gift shop for winning. After that we walked around the dry areas of the lake and found a few interesting old bottles. (I like old bottles) We left with our goodies and then went on a tour of the Longhorn Caverns.

We had a really nice trip and a great time...I wasn't even ready to come home...but I never am!

Things went pretty much downhill from there though....we had a rough trip home....

I'm a little tired to post anymore tonight though...I will post about the rest of the trip tomorrow, I hope!