As soon as Mark connects all our utilities to the motor home, his ritual is to come inside to tune the television and boost the phone signal. Since we usually move after several days, he's well practiced at finding the maximum number of over-the-air television stations. But here at Proctor Lake, the maximum number was zero channels. We don't watch a lot of television, but it looks like we'll have to find our own entertainment. How about sitting outside on the lounger, watching the lake instead of the television?
The windy weather has kept us from getting the kayak on the water, so it was nice to have some hiking and biking possibilities to entertain us. We had a steady stream of bluebonnets along the bike route to the dam and back.
After so many blue beauties, it's nice to see the sea of pink primrose just below the dam.
It's an aromatic ride, because of the wild garlic growing here. We enjoy the delicate flowers above the ground, and that tiny bulb under the ground smells just like garlic.
But the best find on the bike ride was a massive hill of Indian paintbrush and bluebonnets.
Excuse us for posting too many pictures, but this has to be the most spectacular hill of blooms of the entire wildflower season! We have come to love the sweet spring bulb smell that comes when sitting in the middle of a massive bloom like this.
We tried taking a panorama picture to capture the size of this hill overlooking the lake. Denisa is that tiny bump on top of the hill, with the flowers stretching as far as she could see. We have wandered into another of God's wonders today!
Instead of watching television, Denisa enjoys watching butterflies.
They enjoy tasting the same blooms that we enjoy seeing.
A walk down to the bridge is like changing the channel on the television. Now our nature show is tuned to the swallows that are nesting in double-decker mud condominiums under the bridge.
A nearby mud puddle is another great place for the swallows to gather.
It's entertaining to watch as they scoop up the mud needed to put the final touches on their nests under the bridge.
On a drive down the road we catch sight of something in the grassy bar ditch. Some would think this is a road runner, but Mark points out that it is a grass walker instead.
He struck this pose right after he plucked something out of the grass.
It looks like he has snagged a bit of lunch in his beak.
That reminds us--we also need some food. So we headed to make a grocery run to our nearest town--Dublin, Texas. They celebrate their Irish roots, with green cloverleaves throughout the town. But our main interest today was the Dublin Bottling Company.
They started bottling Dr. Pepper here in 1891, and they are oldest soda bottling company in the state of Texas.
We were disappointed to find that they only have tours of the bottling plant and museum on Thursday through Sunday, and of course we weren't here those days. So the best we could do was take pictures from the big windows on the street. We found out that they haven't actually bottled anything here for the last seven years. It seems that no one is making repair parts for an 1891 bottling machine.
They do however, still make use of their special recipe to mix up their special blend of several soft drinks. This mixture is now bottled elsewhere, but still gets the special Dublin label. While we were in the visitor's center, we were lamenting the fact that even the soda shoppe was closed so we couldn't buy a sample. That's when one of the workers disappeared, then reappeared with these two bottles of ice cold Dublin drinks. He handed them to us and wouldn't even let us pay for them.
That label touts the reason that Dublin's drinks are special--they are "always made with pure cane sugar." We found that other bottled soft drinks use the cheaper high fructose corn syrup.
We had to take advantage of the photo opportunity in the park out back. Here's Denisa holding her root beer that exactly matches its giant counterpart.
A little tour of an interesting little town like Dublin, Texas, is a great substitute for watching television any day. We found that Monday afternoon isn't a great time to visit, however, since the other two museums in town are also closed that day.
Back at Lake Proctor, we see that another favorite form of entertainment must be fishing from the docks. Every morning a group of anglers met to entice the crappie that are spawning right now.
But our favorite view of the lake was the evening, when we could watch the sun setting over the lake in brilliant colors. The fiery sky even turned the lake water red.
The sun setting in the west was turning the clouds in the east into tufts of pink cotton candy. Turning to the east we see that the brilliant pink was also reflected in the lake. With color and high definition like this, we certainly haven't missed our television. But this sunset signals the end of our stay here on Lake Proctor, as we have plans for another road trip!
After leaving the Burnet Bluebonnet Festival, we moved the motor home another two hours north. But we are glad to report that we didn't leave the bluebonnets behind.
Instead, we are finding the best show of wildflowers in all of our travels at our next location.
We are now at Proctor Lake at a Corp of Engineers campground called Sowell Creek. Behind Mark, across that little neck of the lake is our motor home nestled among the trees.
Even though we thought we were here for the lake, we are finding that the thing we are most enjoying are the wildflowers.
The pictures taken throughout this blog are each unique patches of flowers that we found on our hikes and exploration around the lake.
We went on hikes on corp of engineer property, always amazed to find another view of new flowers.
Just like the last corp park, we are finding infrastructure that is no longer in use. This road was closed to vehicles, but made for an easy walking trail.
Again, we are finding picnic tables that haven't been used since this area is no longer open to vehicles. But today these tables are surrounded by bluebonnets and paintbrushes!
In this neglected area of the park, we can see the blue of the wildflowers along the shore as far as we could see.
We are finding that other things are growing along this overgrown road. The sand plums are putting on berries that will ripen to red this summer.
Likewise, the blackberries are blooming now, and this will be a delicious hike this summer.
We continue to hike and explore in different directions from our campground. Finding more and more different fields of flowers.
We just came from Burnet, the self-proclaimed bluebonnet capitol of Texas. But these might be the best bluebonnets we have seen this year.
The Indian paintbrushes are at their peak here, and we are coming to love these unique flowers.
While we usually see the fields of the signature orange flowers, we are finding them in different colors here. We found the occasional yellow paintbrush,
and sometimes we would see rosy-pink paintbrushes beside a red-orange blooming brush.
The different colors make for an amazing bouquet. We have wandered into more of God's wonders at Proctor Lake!
Back at our campground, the winds have kept us from getting our kayak out on the water. So Mark gathered firewood to take advantage of the fire ring and our covered picnic table at our shaded camp site.
A camp fire means that we had smores for dessert that evening.
As the fire burns down, the glowing embers are at their best for toasting marshmallows. Life is good at Proctor Lake!
Even though we were in Burnet, Texas, for only four days, we feel like we have experienced three different seasons. When we first rolled through town it felt like a hot summer day. Because of temperatures up to 95 degrees and winds gusting around 30 mph, we spent most of that first day inside the motor home. We felt like we got to experience Burnet in the summer, and it wasn't great. Now we understand better why they pronounce this town's name "burn it" because it's probably burning hot in the middle of the summer. Our only picture of this hot-season-day would be of the field of wildflowers at the entry of our campground.
We did some cooking and laundry, and made plans for the next couple weeks. Even when you're on perpetual vacation, we sometimes need a day inside with the air-conditioner to take care of chores.
We were glad that the next two days delivered delightful spring weather. After all, we're here to celebrate spring wildflowers! The reason we made this stop is because Burnet is the "Bluebonnet Capitol of Texas." We didn't make that up--it came straight off the chamber of commerce trailer. And we're pretty sure that Texas is the Bluebonnet Capitol of the World.
We found that Burnet hosts a Bluebonnet Festival in April, and that's why we are here! We had a beautiful spring day to celebrate the opening of the festival. The newest addition to the courthouse square is this larger-than-life-sized picture frame. It allows visitors to be framed in a portrait at the festival.
You've got to love a Texas festival that starts with the Pledge of Allegiance and a prayer! Next on the agenda was the pet parade.
Prizes were given for costumes and creativity, and it would be hard to pick a winner.
We also enjoyed the fact that the reason for the festival was not ignored. The local library hosted the wildflower exhibit, with specimens picked from the nearby fields.
We found the names of some of the flowers we have been seeing lately. This is a picture of the unusual flower we took the day before. Now we know that is antelope-horn. Not surprisingly the butterflies love it because it is a relative of the milkweed--the favorite food of the monarchs.
We will be hanging out around the courthouse square for the next several days. Besides checking out the vendor booths and the food court, we are mostly interested in the music at the Bluebonnet Festival. Our beautiful weather day has turned into a beautiful evening, and we went to the opening night street dance. We are experienced street dancers, and tonight was one of the best dancing bands ever! Gary P. Nunn is a long-time Texas country icon, and he put on a great show! We stayed through the last song of the night because we were having so much fun dancing the two-step with our Texas friends in the streets of Burnet.
The next morning we had to experience our third season, as winter seemed to arrive with vengeance. We awoke to rain and thirty mph winds and temperatures in the 40s. As it was not ideal weather for a parade, it was delayed for about an hour. Then we got a slice of dry weather for the shortened parade.
The expected school bands and the Army cavalry cancelled because of all the rain. We also found out that some of the floats literally floated away in the rain. One of our favorite grocery store chains--HEB--still participated in the parade with their souped-up grocery cart.
We had high wind advisories for the rest of the day (and night). It was hard work, but we managed to do some more dancing in the street as the afternoon's entertainment performed on the two stages in Burnet. We especially enjoyed the music of a 16-year-old Texan named Trey Gilliland. We'll be watching for him in Nashville, because he certainly seems to have the talent to make it big. We got in over four miles of walking on this wintery day, just going between the two stages of entertainment. We also watched the afternoon western gun fight.
We didn't return for the evening bands the second evening for two reasons. One reason was the $15 per person admission charge. The second reason was the blustering wind that caused the wind chill to dip into the low thirties. That's too nippy for an outdoor concert even for a couple of dedicated two-steppers like us.
It was still cold the next morning, as we bundled up for the Bluebonnet Festival church worship service. Denisa even got out her insulated underwear and gloves for the 9:00 service outdoors on the courthouse square. We're not enjoying this winter season in Burnet!
It's hard to remember back to the warm first days when we arrived in short sleeves and took this picture with the giant bluebonnets!
It feels like we have been here longer, since our four days have felt like three seasons. In spite of the changing weather, we give the Burnet Bluebonnet Festival a big thumbs up! We had to leave before the wienie dog races on the last afternoon, but it feels like we saw everything else. So now it's time for us to head on down the road for more seasons of adventure.
