A Trip Down Memory Lane at Abilene State Park

 After two days at Copper Breaks State Park, we headed another 2.5 hours south. This drive had two stops. One in Knox City to get our annual motor home inspection. Texas residents like us must have their vehicles safety inspected every year before they can renew their registration. So every year as we head south, we must find an inspection center that has room for a sizable motorhome and its towed vehicle to park. The motor home passed the inspection, and we checked that job off our list of things to do! Our second stop was in the city of Abilene to do some major grocery shopping. Our pantry and refrigerator are bare after being away for so long. We had a long list of things to buy! We finally arrived at our next camping destination at Abilene State Park.

Exactly seven years ago, we took off on this full-time traveling journey, and Abilene State Park was the very first place that we camped. In fact, the site in the picture below was the first campsite of this adventure. We figured that out from looking at those first blog pictures. So we took this picture of site 58, looking across the road at our current campsite. Seven years ago we didn't keep track of our specific campsite numbers. Now Mark has a detailed spread sheet of all our campsites, including their cost, any discounts, the number of days we stayed, types of utility hook-ups, cell phone signal (with and without our booster), number of over-the-air television channels, and the site number where we camped. We were rookies seven years ago, but we are obviously seasoned professional travelers now.

This was a little trip down memory lane, as we remembered those first days of full-time RVing for us. This is a CCC camp, filled with nice rock work built in the 1930s. Seven years ago we took a picture of this rock and wood tower beside the swimming pool area inside the park. Today we took a similar picture just for old time's sake.

Just like seven years ago, we rode our bikes all over the park's trails and roads. We wore out those old bikes, and we both have new ones since then.

This time, Mark started his AllTrails app and kept track of where we had ridden in the park. That kept us from back-tracking, and also shows the different connector trails and roads available. At the end of the day's ride, we knew that we had ridden 5.6 miles. Seven years ago we didn't know about AllTrails and the great resource it is for full-time travelers.

Seven years ago, we drove one mile outside of the park to do some hiking at Abilene Lake. Then we were surprised to see the entire lake bed dry, and we actually walked across the dry ground where the lake was supposed to be. This year the lake area is closed for water fowl hunting. But we drove into the entrance to see that the lake has recovered and now actually has a surprising amount of water.

The campgrounds are almost empty of campers this time of year. But they are quite full of birds. We had a big flock of white-winged dove that congregated in the trees around us.

They are puffed up in the cold this week, and Denisa loved taking pictures of them.

Some times she enjoys the background as much as the bird. These old trees are covered with colorful lichen, and interesting twigs.

We've seen several of the birds enjoying the tasty nuts from the pecan harvest in the park. The nuts are small, but the meat inside is tasty. The dove land on the road, where passing cars have cracked open the nuts making them easier to eat.

We also watched as blue jays used their beaks to drill open the pecans. The picture below isn't great of either bird, but it shows that we had a colorful bird display when the blue jay and red cardinal were hanging out in the same tree.

Denisa followed the hammering sounds we could hear from our site to find this woodpecker working on a nearby tree. Yep, Denisa is easily entertained when she goes into state park mode.

She also took a picture of this squirrel doing a tight-rope act out on the flimsiest twigs on the end of the branch. We have seen a tremendous change in weather during our stay at Abilene State Park. It was a balmy 70 degrees when we arrived, and we had a low temperature of 12 degrees the morning we left.

We had only planned to stay two days at Abilene State Park. But when an Arctic cold front ushered into Texas, we decided to stay an extra day. That's mainly because the forecast called for snow further south at our next destination, while it stayed clear here in Abilene. So we had more time for Denisa to take more bird pictures. We have a better camera than we had seven years ago. So it's easier to get pictures of tiny birds like this chickadee,

and this dainty Titmouse.

A lot has changed in the last seven years. We have different bikes, different camera, different pickup, different computers, different apps. But some things are the same. We still are traveling in the same motor home, enjoying wandering God's wonders like we have done for the past seven years.