Lake Colorado City State Park

We stayed at our last camping spot an extra day to avoid the wind, and we were rewarded with a really nice travel day to our next destination. Our three-hour drive took us through the town of Turkey, Texas. We love small-town America with the permanent turkey statue on Main Street and "Turkey" proudly emblazoned on the water tower. But this little town has another claim to fame, because this is the home town of Bob Wills. His red traveling bus is still sitting on Main, with "Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys" painted across the top.

Yesterday's winds left behind unusual clouds that were stacked in rows across the sky today. We are driving some less-traveled roads between these state parks. But we are glad to be in Texas, where even the small roads have wide shoulders. Texas gets our award for having the best roads in the country.

Texas also gets our vote for the best state park system. We are using state parks for our stops going south this winter, as we really enjoy their spacious camping sites and clean parks. Of all the states where we have traveled, Texas has some of the best and most affordable state park camping IF you purchase an annual pass. For $70 we bought the pass that gives us free admission to all 80 of the state parks. New this year, that pass also gives unlimited half-price camping for the second night at the same park. With most parks charging $17-$22 for a full-price stay, it's really a bargain for a two-night stay. We are fans of the state park pass, as we'll cover the price of the annual pass during our journey south this year.

We're taking a new route through Texas this year so we can visit new parks. We enjoyed our second state park stop at Lake Colorado City--even though we didn't get into the water. They rent kayaks during the warmer months, but they don't rent them when "it" is below the 120-rule. We had never heard of this rule. But the park ranger explained that when the sum of the water temperature plus the air temperature is less than 120 degrees, people shouldn't be kayaking. We're pretty sure that we have broken that rule many times before.

The water looked inviting, but today we are opting for our bicycles as the best way to get around this state park. We rode down every road, just to get some exercise and see everything the park has to offer. We found that most of those roads were lined with prickly pear cactus and mesquite trees!

Our best view of the lake from our camp site appropriately has cactus in the foreground.

In west Texas, we are wandering God's wonders as we find symbols of love even among these prickly pear cactus.

A ranger once told us that many animals use the cactus as a source of nutrition and moisture. If they take a nibble out of the top of a cactus pad, it will seal that spot and take on a heart-shape. We were feeling the love!

We are also seeing that some local wildlife are getting their nutrition from the balls that are covering many of the Juniper trees. We won't show a picture of the scat we see covering the trail, but we can tell that the animal's previous meal was juniper berries.

We rented a pull-through camp site, and we didn't even disconnect the car from the motor home today. We just spent one night at Lake Colorado City State Park, but it was a nice stop-over as we continue our path south.