Camping in North Central Texas

Early last week we checked the weather report and it looked like we would have a great weekend so we booked a campsite in Liberty Hill Park on Navarro Mills Lake, in North Central Texas. John managed to leave work early Friday afternoon and after a 3 hour drive, we were able setup the campsite long before dark. We had chicken fajitas for dinner and enjoyed a quiet evening with an audio book on the Kindle. This was just the calm before the storm...

Sometime around midnight, the storm rolled in and our little tent was rocking and rolling in the wind. If it hadn't been anchored to the vehicle, it would have blown across the field of Bluebonnets and Indian Paint Brushes, with us in it. The rain was blowing horizontally with such a force that the tent's rainfly/canopy was of little use and the rain water started coming in on us. Our dog, Randy, was NOT a happy camper!

The howl of the wind felt like a tornado so we decided we would be safer in our little Ford Escape. Going outside in the rain was not an option because it would have been impossible to unzip the tent, or open a car door, with the force of the wind. Fortunately for us, the tent is designed to attach to the back of the SUV and gives us full access to the cargo area. Can you picture us crawling into the Escape, over all of our gear and climbing into the front seats? It's a good thing we've now lost about 160 pounds between us, or we would have been calling the fire department with their "jaws of life" to pull us out.

The storm was over by about 3 AM. We were soggy, but OK. We went back to the tent and found a couple of inches of water on the floor and some wet bedding. The temperature was in the mid 50's and it was almost impossible to get warm again until sun up. We had several campers that were staying in motor-homes stop by to check on us Saturday morning. One of them told us she had heard on the news that the winds topped 75 mph!

We strung up some clothes line and hung up all the wet clothes and bedding to dry out. It was a gorgeous morning on the lake and after lunch we went geocaching with our geopup Randy. These are just a few of the hidden caches we found. As usual there are no pictures of me, because I'm usually the photographer.



Here's a picture of Randy, exhausted after geocaching. --->

After we got back from geocaching we made a nice salad and heated up some taco soup and tortillas for supper.

John went to put some of our gear back in the SUV and discovered we had a dead battery. Yours truly had managed to leave the key in the ignition, in the ON position, to charge the Blackberry batteries we had drained while geocaching. There really wasn't any way we could get a neighboring camper to jump start us. They were all anchored down in their motor-homes. We placed a call to AAA and they managed to send a rescue truck to us within the hour.

After our lack of sleep Friday evening, we turned in early Saturday for a great night's sleep. Sunday morning, after breakfast we saw a Bald Eagle floating on the thermals just overhead. That's the first time either one of us has seen a Bald Eagle outside of the Pacific Northwest. What a nice treat for us just before we packed up and took a leisurely drive back home.