Heading North...What's with That??

I couldn't resist starting this post with this beautiful rose. It took a picture of it when I went in to get a blood test Thursday morning. It's my idea of what a nice fall or even winter day should include. Can you tell that I don't like cold weather?

So what am I doing heading north?

After checking the weather, I have to wonder myself ...... but I'm off to a gathering of my Pink FlaminGoes friends. And since I was already heading that way, I decided that maybe I needed to leave early because I might want to take two days to get there. And then, well Saturday there was going to be a big neighborhood garage sale where I live so that wasn't a good day to bring the RV back to the house to pack up to leave Sunday. Of course Friday wasn't much better because Friday was Halloween....shouldn't have the RV in the driveway with Trick or Treaters, right??  There was also the fact that my friend Birdie was headed south and we could get together early.

So the RV came home on Wednesday afternoon, I packed on Thursday, and I headed out Friday morning.  Sound reasoning don't you think?

Austin on a Friday morning wasn't a pleasant thought and I-35 has been under construction further north for some time so I headed up Highway 281. Once I reached Hico (pronounced high-co), I cut across country. And some people think Texas is flat.

I passed lots of RVers headed south. Winter Texans are on their way.

Birdie arrived at Holiday Park COE Campground on Thursday so she was all set up. We had reserved two sites on a loop with only one other site. The third site is out of service so it's just the two of us up on the hill overlooking the lake. Both sites were listed as being 100 feet long and mine was a pull through.  Ha, ha!  Birdie decided she had to pull in instead of back in to her site because, while she didn't mind the front wheels being elevated, the back wheels with the brakes needed to be firmly on the ground. It worked out okay because she has the hoses and the cords needed to reach the hook-ups

And.....it gave her a stellar view!

My site was more of a pull-off than a pull-through and it took considerable effort to get level since the drivers side sloped significantly downward. Four blocks under both the driver's side wheels and I was level so all was good.

And I have a nice view too.

So here we are sitting on top of the hill all by ourselves. Life is grand.

Saturday we made a trip into Benbrook to pick up a couple of items we needed and then we came back and toured the rest of the park. It's a nice park. We are happy with our sites on top of the hill but we saw lots of sites at both ends of the park that we would love too. The dogs got a long walk but whether we left our loop and went right or left, we had to climb a substantial hill to get back to our sites so today we drove down to the other part of the park and then went for a walk on flat ground.

It's a very nice park and I would definitely recommend it; however, one thing is a little creepy. There are a lot of buzzards circling lazily around in the thermals. Birdie says they are flocking to migrate but the Longdogs are definitely not going to enjoy any time in their pen here. And I keep a sharp eye on the sky when we head out to potty in the morning. We saw this buzzard as we were heading down to the other side of the park. It reminded me of an anhinga with it's wings spread out to dry and it stayed like that for quite a while.

We also saw these interesting balls which are the size of softballs. Birdie said they are bois d' arc (pronounced bodark) fruit. Some people also call them horse apples or hedge apples. They exude a sticky substance and are sometimes placed around foundations and basements as a home remedy for keeping away roaches and spiders. They are native to southern Oklahoma and northern Texas although seeing them was a first for me.

We got a surprise call around lunch time from two other women (Martha and her sister Pat) who also arrived in the area early. So they headed here to spend the night. We invited them for lunch so Birdie fixed white chicken chili and I made a batch of cornbread. The get together has begun....but tomorrow we head east about 30 miles to the actual get together site.