LEAVING THE KNOWN

This is one of the four Armadillos we spotted while on our bike ride yesterday.  I don't know if they are deaf or just really have no fear of what other animals (us) are near them.  We approached these little armored mammals, not rodents, and they kept rooting under the leaf cover looking for a meal of grubs and bugs.  The only time they fled, and that was a slow pace, was when we walked directly toward them.

Texas is sliced into five sections, North, South, East, West and Central, all, except the East is fenced. Texans love their fences.  I guess this is a memorial to all those fences as there is really no purpose for this fence.  Some mysteries are best left unsolved.

Flood gauges abound in the lower wash plains.  The washes are so plentiful that bridging or laying culverts would be cost prohibitive.  The decision whether or not to cross during flood stage is left to the individual....which isn't always a good thing.  Between October 17 & 31 of 1998 22 inches of rain fell in central TX with 31 drownings reported due to attempted fords during high water.

Tarantula Hawk Wasp

I didn't know we were in Tarantula country already.  Always new things to learn when we leave the shelter of our familiar surroundings.

PRETTIEST PARK I'VE EVER SEEN IN ABILENE

ABILENE STATE PARK

                                 

About 15 miles south of Abilene, TX. this park is still green.  The affects of the drought and wildfires have spared the area and all is lush and vibrant. 

RED OAK

We had no sooner pulled into our camping site when five of the local deer herd sauntered in looking for handouts.  They're really quite tame and I wouldn't doubt that the maintenance folks here have them all named.

(Blogspost editing is not cooperating this morning so you'll have to look at it

un-centered.)

BIRDS AND BUGS

The sneezy-snot cold bug came and tapped me on the shoulder yesterday.  Instead of bike riding in gale force winds I scouted the area for tiny wildlife.

Goodbye Possum Kingdom, moving southwest.

American Goldfinch

Southern Mockingbird

Brown and White Speckled Butterfly

Dogface Butterfly

Lyside Sulphur Butterfly

White Winged Dove

DON'T DRINK THE WATER

Another day at Possum Kingdom State Park, Caddo, TX.  Hopefully the winds will let off and we'll be able to take a serious bike ride.

After Jackie and I had both drank the water I called up to the registration office and asked them about the warning on the water spigot. “Oh,” The official voice on the other end of the line says, “You got the trots?” “No Hershey squirts here, thank you,” I offered, “Just wondered what kind of unfriendly bugs are swimming in your water” “Ain’t no bugs in our water, it’s salt that closed us down. Didn’t fit the TCEQ‘s, (Texas Commission on Environmental Quality) guidelines. Just too much salt.” I erased the notion that we might have to be airlifted to the nearest hospital, have our stomachs pumped and injected with intravenous antibiotics.

Sure sign of White Tailed Deer.

The winds blew hard all day, dropping the temps into the low 50's and rocking the rig during the particularly strong gusts.  Cold air is blowing inside under our slide-out so I guess we'll need to fabricate some sort of snap-on cover to save our toes from frostbite on the upcoming cold desert nights.

IMAGINED OR REAL

Nestled in the foothills of the Palo Pinto mountains, some 100 miles by the crow, from Dallas, TX. rests the Possum Kingdom State Park and lake. The lake/reservoir was created with the aid of the Civilian Conservation Corps in the early 40’s by damming the Brazos River. Even though it is a LONG and difficult reach to the park, traveling the rolling hills and many narrow back roads, it’s filled with holiday weekend campers many of which are of Indian (India) decent.

Jackie did the “check-in” here at the park and while registering was asked, after we had chosen our camp site, “Are the foreigners still down there?” The check-in person, and the camp staff in general, seem to be somewhat uneasy with the recent ethnic diversity of their guests. Well, after all, this is Texas back country and all things new and different are looked upon with suspicion. I guess it is difficult not to automatically profile when we are bombarded with political candidates warning us of Muslims wanting to cleanse the earth of non-Muslims.

I doubt if any of our neighbors here at Possum Kingdom have bombs in their picnic baskets or have placed IED’s (Improvised Explosive Device) along the roadside….but we’ll remain ever-vigilant.

I’ll get out after breakfast and see if I can get a few pictures of Possum Kingdom. We were told that Feral Pigs/Wild Boars are a big nuisance around here and can be dangerous. Being illusive and camera shy, (the pigs) I doubt that they’ll be posing for any pictures….Maybe I’ll be able to capture a scat-pic, eh?

Before the April wildfires around Posium Kingdom Lake, TX. that destroyed over 7,500 acres and leveled 25 homes.

Today, after the fire.

The charred remains

of once lush vegetation.

Great Blue Heron crusing the lake's edge looking for lunch.

Blackened Red Cedar

New lake vegetation and ash edged leaf.

Devastation

The recovery will be slow if the drought isn't soon broken.

BICYCLE FRIENDLY WICHITA FALLS, TX.

About the size of a pencil eraser this flower and leaf, I think, is of the mint family.

Wichita River Falls in Wichita Falls, TX just  a stone's throw from our camp site.

The most attractive part of Wichita Falls, for me, would be  the hundreds of miles of bike trails.  They are mostly paved and designed to travel through the city parks and follow the river for several miles.  Jackie stopped along this bike trail to suck-up the energy from one of the many pagodas.

IT AIN'T BOONDOCKING

Antifreeze was flushed from the waterlines and linen spread on the bed.  It's official, the rig is our home.  We're not quite boondocking, still tethered to electricity and water, within the sounds of city and highway, but it is warmer here in Wichita Falls, TX. and I'm wearing sandals.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

OKLAHOMA CITY

One Timothy McVeigh eye for that of 168.  He thought himself as a hero of the oppressed and the freedom fighter.  Forever, the lives of multiple thousands changed the day he lit the fuse and ran.  Though violence in any form is never the answer, I'm glad the gene pool has been rid of this coward.

NO BLUE ROADS TODAY

Darn it, we're on this trek to escape the cold, and one sure way to do that is to go south as fast as possible.  Impatience and a lust for warmer weather drew the short straw so we did the cut and run, rolled onto Kansas-35 Toll Road road and flew right into the waiting arms of a rain and ice storm.

It surely has to get better than this.    

Perry, Oklahoma

THE BEST OF TIMES, THE WORST OF TIMES

50 miles north west of Kansas City, MO.

It was the best of times when the daughter of Atchison, Missouri, Amelia Earhart, in January 1935 became the first person to fly solo across the Pacific from Honolulu to Oakland, California. The worst of times was in 1937 when she disappeared attempting her around the world solo flight….until….the Great Missouri River floods of 2011.

The fields of Atchison lie fallow this year. Small lakes and pools ripple on the farm lands where corn stubble should be signaling a bountiful harvest. Big green John Deer tractors sit idle in the water soaked barns and the bible belt prays for better times to come.

Trivia: 1854. Senator David Rice Atchison, for which the city is named, became President of the U.S. for a day when Zachary Taylor refused to take the Oath of Office.

We bedded in Topeka, KS. last night, still racing south, trying to outrun Mother Nature's, deep-dipping into the heartland, cold front.

IN THE HEARTLAND

With the Turkey weekend approaching, I surely thought the price of gas would have gone up instead of down.

Osceola, Iowa, just south of Des Moines where the land has flattened to rolling hills and the dairy industry has caved to beef.  Good people hereabouts, friendly but guarded when hearing Eastern accents.

That big blue trough of cold air is still heavy on our heals.  We'll probably foresake the scenic blueroads and slide onto Interstate-35 for a quick decent south.  Maybe we can outrun the cold.

Jackie's Mother called them "Angle Slides."

THE SMELL OF MONEY ~ Cedar Rapids, IA

We left Sauk Prairie, WI and headed southwest toward Prairie du Chien, WI following the Old River Road along the Wisconsin River. Name origin For Prairie du Chien derives from the French, named after “Dog,” a Sauk Indian chief, referring to the gopher. I knew that little tidbit would trouble you all day without knowing, "the rest of the story."

Crossing the Mississippi River at Prairie du Chien and meandering across the farming country roads to Cedar River, IA., where we saw a lot of grazing Holstein cattle and of gathering of field-dried cornstalks into large round bundles. The once mainly discarded stalks are now harvested for feed and bedding.

When the wind is right, which it usually is, a person needs a strong nose, better yet, nose plugs, to withstand the pungent odors that waft from the industry smokestacks here in Cedar Rapids, IA. 

Upon checking into our room both Jackie and I thought possibly the bathroom gas trap wasn't doing it's job.  I called the reception desk and was told that the locals have a name for the non-aromatic delights, "CEDAR RAPIDS, THE CITY OF FIVE SMELLS"

Quaker Oats~General Mills~Archer Daniels Midland Co.~Cargill corn milling~Weyerhaeuser

And then when I went to Perkins to pick up dinner I talked with the manager about the odoriferous events my nose was detecting and told him about the "five smells," he said, "You can add one more to the list of five, "Municipal Sewer" it often misfires and the odors waft up through the street grates.

Heading up-wind, down south, see you tomorrow.

FINALLY~~ON THE ROAD

Morning sunrise for opening day of White Tail Deer rifle hunting season. 

We got the rig loaded yesterday morning, the 17th of Nov., and were headed down the road for our first night's stay-over in Sauk Prairie, WI., on the Wisconsin River.  It's only a couple of hundred miles south from Iron River but is warmer already....No frost here last night and the temp is a balmy 35F just before sunrise.   

No sirens or honking horns, just the fairly steady hum of traffic and busy noises of a small town preparing of the day. 

Half a cc of prevention is worth a liter of cure.

Old Glory flapping in the Sauk Prairie morning breeze.

Still life

Rude awakening

Hope the train engineer wasn't powering up with Red Bull when he came to the end of those tracks.