I'm so thankful for Thanksgiving week! We almost didn't get a chance to enjoy this trip - as RDB was bringing the camper back from having it serviced (repacked the bearings, work on the water leaks... again) the front quarter panel finally ripped. I say finally - because we knew there was a crack in it and have been waiting on the part to come in from the manufacturer. Sadly, the part didn't come in before the wind caught it and tore it further. Thankfully, RDB was able to bandaid it in such a way that we could still travel out for this week.
We left out Wednesday afternoon, making our way to Possum Kingdom State Park for the holiday weekend. We planned out route to take us past the Buccees in Temple so we could stop for fuel and barbecue brisket for dinner. Y'all - it was a madhouse!! Like, it's busy enough on a regular weekend, but the day before a holiday was just craziness! Trying to get two pumps at the same time (for the length of our rig) was a challenge. I jumped out of the truck and grabbed my orange road flag to secure one when a car drove away and (thank goodness for the kindness of strangers) the other car in the lane waited until RDB was in position behind him before he drove away. Next time? I'm grabbing my reflective, collapsable cones to hold the spot.
We arrived to the park late Wednesday night and set up, ready for our own personal Thanksgiving in the park the next morning.
Keeping in theme with gratitude and and giving, I made up thank you gift bags of chocolate for the rangers in the parks we'll visit over this trip. They were so well received last year, I couldn't help but do it again!
We started the day off with celebratory mimosas, fixed a fav appetizer of deviled eggs, and I took on the challenge of fixing a full Thanksgiving dinner. I wrote a post about the adventures of cooking this in our camper, you can read that here. It was really enjoyable, both to cook and to eat in the afternoon. We shared a few thoughts on what we were thankful for this year (we do this ever night before we go to bed, too, but this made the day that much more special).
Yea, there was a nap in there somewhere. RDB was sneaky and grabbed a few pictures of me as Sleeping Beauty.
Friday morning Big Bro D and his fiancee, A, (from here on called D&A on the blog), drove up to spend the weekend with us, bringing his boat along so we could enjoy Possum Kingdom Lake. And enjoy we did! As soon as they got her, we took the boat over to the ramp and launched.
There's a rock formation and cove along the edge of the lake called Hell's Gate. Big Bro knew about it from his lake map atlas, I knew about it from the Geocaching app (there's a cache on Devil's Island that can only be accessed by boat... or by someone willing to cliff dive and swim over, if you're brave enough!). We puttered around checking out the rock ledges and the amazing homes all along the shoreline.
Couldn't be out on a beautiful lake in a beautiful boat and not to a bit of fishing. I was loving the 22* halo that surrounded the late afternoon sun while everyone set up poles to fish. Too bad the fish didn't cooperate!
As the sun started to set, we took both vehicles and the boat into the neighboring town to refuel, and had dinner out at a local Mexican place.
Saturday morning we woke to rain. And Saturday afternoon it continued to rain. And Saturday evening, guess what? More rain. "This rain really puts a damper on things," Big Bro said at one point. We smoked steaks for lunch and I made a new roasted veggie side dish, and enjoyed the cupcakes and pumpkin pie we brought from home and enjoyed afternoon Bloody Marias (I forgot to bring the vodka, but had plenty of tequila!).
We watched our favorite movie (yes, again, for the 14th time! D&A hadn't seen it before!) and then put in Dr Strange We played several rounds of Yatzhee (Big Bro won those) and Rumicub (I was champ) and RDB kicked all our butts on MarioKart It's pretty nice to have the space in the camper to spread out and watch movies when the weather doesn't cooperate.
 |
| She makes the drinks a bit, um, dicey. ;-) |
Sunday morning the weather cleared and we were back on the boat again, trolling for fish and hanging out having a great time..
D&A had a long drive home, so after a lunch of leftover smoked steak and eggs with toast, they packed up and headed out. It was so great to have them stay for the weekend - plenty of room in the camper for all their stuff, and a comfortable night's sleep, so he said.
RDB and I slowly packed up camp - stopping for a few to set up our camp chairs, share a Grandma Beer, and enjoy the view from the back of our site. We could easily come back to this campground and stay for a week - between the water activities, the geocaching (which we didn't have a chance to do) and the nearby town (I saw a county courthouse, didn't have a chance to get pictures) there would be plenty here to keep us for a week.
And besides, you just can't beat that view.
We were at Possum Kingdom State Park, Spanish Oaks loop, Site #10 50a/W (the pad is skinny, but 70' long, so plenty of space for us and the truck.) We reserved Site #10 for Big Bro's boat and truck - at only 38' it was a tight fit, but it was really nice to have it right across the way and within sight the whole time. BTW - the flies here were ridiculous, I'm sitting at the kitchen table in the camper one day after that park and I've been killing flies that stowed away in our camper all morning - rather annoying! (One literally just mocked me by landing on my laptop screen just now)
For more camping pics, go here.
No comments:
Post a Comment