A Day Around the Park

After spending most days exploring the area around hill country, we decided to spend most of the weekend at home at Lone Star Corral RV park. 

This has been our home for ten days, and they have made us feel very welcome.  The sites are good size, with room for a shed beside each RV pad.  Some of these "sheds" are very fancy, but the one beside our motorhome is of the plain variety.

We think it is interesting that this is a co-op camp from a national group called the Escapees RV Club, a group "committed to enriching the lives of Rvers."  There is a prison down the road, so a couple miles from this Escapee Park is an interesting sign with a totally different meaning of escaping.

The rail system is alive and well in western Texas, and the tracks a half mile from our park see a good amount of travel.  We hardly noticed the train whistles, however, because our time spent living at the boys' dorm trained us well for ignoring noise.

Spring Break is spread over several weeks in Texas, and this is the first weekend.  We've witnessed that the state parks were gearing up for the crowds.  We tried making some future park reservations, and found that many of the RV parks will be jammed full in many places.  So we decided that a day close to home might be good for this first weekend.

We did a few jobs around the motorhome that needed attention.  We also put our new Texas license plates on both the car and the motorhome, so we are feeling pretty Texan now.  The next thing you know we will probably start displaying one of those Texas stars that we see on every home around here. 

We walked the loop around our RV park several times to get some exercise, and got to visit with more of our neighbors.  We stopped at one RV at just the right time.  Their neighbor was delivering a loaf of hot yeast bread, and they invited us for a slice.  Knowing how much Mark loves bread, that invitation was the highlight of his month.  

One of our neighbors told us that the bike riding was pretty good on the flat roads that surround the park.  So we took off for a biking adventure to see what we could see.

We found that there are a lot of dead ends that end up at someone's front porch, and that every farm yard has at least two dogs.  The red buds are blooming here, as are the earliest wild flowers.  We saw a group of people harvesting cabbage, and saw the truck leave with a full load.  We rode all the way into D'Hanis, the nearest town, and rode up and down some of the streets there.  But the best find of the day was just a couple miles from where we had been sitting for a week.  We came upon the Saint Dominic Catholic Cemetery, and the ruins of the church beside it.

The white sign to the right of the church says, "Restoration Contemplated, Please do not remove any rocks."  The more official looking black sign explains that it was certified by the Texas Historical Commission as a Historical Cemetery on April 12, 1999.

All the people buried here were born and died in the 1800's.  Some of the old-timers lived to be 60, but there were grave markers for many children.

We couldn't translate the words from many of the grave stones, but they appeared to be German.  The next marker seemed to be a newer version of an old marker.  We appreciated being able to read the summary of someone's life that lived here so long ago.

It was a peaceful stop in the middle of an agricultural setting that made us stop and ponder what the lives of these pioneers might have been like.  The flowers must mean that they have relatives still in the area that come to decorate the graves of ancestors that probably died a hundred years before these current residents were even born.

After all the bike riding, we were hungry for a good meal.  We have certainly been eating out more than we expected since we retired.  We finally had the opportunity to fire up the new grill that we got for Christmas and cook those rib eye steaks.  Coupled with steamed broccoli, baked potatoes, yogurt and bananas, and some home-made oatmeal cake for dessert, we had a feast.  Thanks to Luke, Jordan, and Blake for the new grill!

On the last night before we left the Lone Star Corral, we were at the rec hall for the ice cream social and another game of card bingo.  Last Sunday evening, Denisa won three of the 14 games, and she had to promise to come back so she could put some of her winnings back in the card bingo pool again.  That is exactly what she intended to do--play and lose every game.  There were 32 people playing this week, and again we played 14 games.  Beating all odds, Denisa won 3 more games.  She certainly wasn't making any friends by the third win!  If we weren't planning to leave on Monday morning anyway, we might have gotten kicked out of the park.  Denisa shouldn't be bragging, but we just had to take another picture of her winnings!