O'Rourke

Updated: with pictures. And click on the picture to the right to check out the rest of the pics.

For the weekend before Thanksgiving, we took off to Garner State Park, out in central Texas. It's about 5-6 hours drive and Cheryl was working Friday, so we left Saturday morning and arrived in plenty of time to set up camp and have a look around. It was pretty overcast and damp enough that it felt like it was going to rain, but we never got anything more than some drizzle on the windshield and no rain once we got there. We brought the bikes on the bike rack, so we took a spin around our section of the park. They have some really nice cabins there. A good option if we try to bring along some of our less out-doorsey friends next time. The first night was a little cold. I think it may have gotten down to the low 40's.We had the girls in 2 layers of PJs and 2 sleeping bags each, complete with hats and socks. Some of those little bodies don't hold heat too well. Cheryl & I stayed up and played cards by the lantern. Sunday, we did some hiking in the morning and drove around the rest of the camp on our way south to Uvalde. The kids & Cheryl got a decent nap on the ride, and we stopped at Wal-Mart to pick up a few things we forgot and headed back to camp. Not much to do in Uvalde.

Sunday night was warmer, but the card-playing was interrupted by a very persistent family of skunks. I guess they either know the end-of-weekend routine,

or sensed a big dropoff in camp activity level and decided the left-over feast was on. The girls were in the tent and we were playing cards at the picnick table and heard something behind us. I shined a flashlight over at the water faucet about 10 feet away and there were 2 skunks digging the the rock basin scrounging for post-dishwashing scraps.

Cheryl flashed the light on & off at them and I grabbed an empty cardboard box and CAREFULLY made some noise to shoo them away. Most skunks I've encountered are pretty shy, but this familiy (there was one more who joined in) came back to visit us and the family in the trailer 2 sites away over and over again. We ran them off 4-5 more times in the next 90 minutes. The final straw was when we didn't hear one coming and I looked down to find one skunk between us and the car (which was only about 8 feet away). I looked at Cheryl (who still hadn't seen it yet) and said "calmly and quietly get up an walk away from the car".  So we finally packed it in and hid out in the tent for the rest of the evening.

Monday, we drove up to Lost Maples state park, where we had originally wanted to camp but they only have about 15 sites. We took a great hike among the changing leaves. It's not New England, and it was past peak color, but it was still a nice taste of home.  We went back to camp and did some fishing in the Frio River. The girls, led by Meghan "accidentally" fell in the river and swam around for about 15 minutes before we threw them in the hot shower to thaw out. Monday night was the coldest of the nights, probably getting all way down into the upper 30's. The reason it got so cold was that all the clouds finally had gone away that day, so that night, we finally got to use Allison's telescope. Would have liked to see the moon, but there wasn't much of it, and it wasn't up 'til around 1am anyway. But the stars were amazingly clear and beatiful. Cheryl said it made here 2am trip to the bathroom almost worth the frostbite.