On
a day like today. We’d close the door and turn on the air
conditioning. It’s 85 degrees outside. But after a few cooler days
it would feel like sacrilege to reject such a nice temperature, so the door
stayed open and the air conditioning off no matter how hot it got in the
house. Another front pushing through tonight, so it will be a few days
before we see temperatures in the 80s again.
Judy
read an article that if your kids are smart, that probably came from the mom,
because certain genes related to brain development are on the X chromosome, and
females have two X chromosomes for every one that men have because they’re
XY. Two to one. Women rule.
Our
kids are smart, so you know I imagine that came from me. Now I’m going to
have to go read my own articles until I find one that will restore my damaged
ego.
I
read this sign to say: No smoking, but pets are allowed.
Or
maybe it means leave your smoking dog outside…
We
listened.
Perfect
weather while we were there at Brazos Bend.
Then
the arctic front happened. Now we’re happily home.
I
remember learning a term in Business Law class. Attractive
Nuisance. The term describes a dangerous situation that might be
attractive to someone who has not yet developed the judgement to resist the
attraction. If that person is then injured, the property owner might be
held liable. If a construction site digs a hole, leaves it unfenced and
unguarded, and kids come play in it and get hurt, the construction company
could be at fault. Like when I was a kid and a crew demolished a
two-story house, first starting with some excavation that left the house still
intact, but tilting at a crazy angle, then went home for the weekend. It
was an awesome haunted house kind of experience, running all through it bumping
into walls, feeling the floor shudder. Nobody got hurt, so the attractive
nuisance statute was not triggered, if it even existed back then.
Walking
through the forest, that recollection came back to me for no reason at all…
Also,
I don’t know if the rule only applies to children.
We
need some civilization. Or something close to it. We headed off to
a KOA campground in Texarkana for some reliable wifi and laundry.
That
was the plan for Wednesday anyway, but it’s not really nice here. Right
by the road, there is a lot of traffic noise. There are washing machines
that take quarters, but no change machine and the office couldn’t help.
There is high-speed wifi, but the office doesn’t know the code today. Not
a place we want to stand outside cooking Thanksgiving dinner in the cold.
We spent the night and left. The weather map said go south.
Tonight, Thursday, we’re at Brazos Bend State Park, one of our favorite places
on the planet.
Got
a very nice site.
And
a very nice Thanksgiving dinner.
Judy
has a more elaborate one planned. We’ll do the full camping Thanksgiving
dinner, on another day soon, TBA.
Now
that we have the van all fitted out so we can travel comfortably indefinitely,
it’s time to test the theory. We can drive, sleep, eat, and work.
We
don’t know where we’re going. We don’t know how long we’ll be gone.
This is not a vacation; it’s just living in different places for a while.
Cooler
weather would be good, so we’ll head north to begin with. In fact, we
have a three-day plan to get north and east of Houston. After that, we
don’t need a plan. We know, Thanksgiving is coming right up. What
if we’re not home for Thanksgiving. Well, there’s always a reason for
postponing, so we’re going to just go and do whatever happens on Thanksgiving
while we’re out, if we’re still out. Maybe we’ll end up at some local
café with a Thanksgiving dinner special. Or maybe a Cracker Barrel at 3pm.
😊
First
night out, straight north. Choke Canyon State Park, about a three-hour
drive from home.
It’s
not very busy here midweek.
Here
is a picture of the tree we saw a bobcat in 15 years ago.
We’ve
checked it every visit since.
…that
we could camp in the van on the way home.
Friday
night, Bastrop State Park. Tall pines. Loblolly Pines in fact.
Saturday
night, Goose Island State Park. Coastal scrub.
,
with Live Oaks as the largest trees.
Evening
light.
Friday.
The same drive back to Austin, but this time both of us in one car, the
Mazda. We were at Sportsmobile to pick up the van by 2:00.
First
look:
Yeah.
That will work.
Wide
open storage underneath.
A
purple prickly pear
Usually,
they’re green.
The
same desert. Is the purple one just a green one that’s under stress?
No.
Different species. Most prickly pears are green, but there are a few
purple prickly pears spread about the Sonoran and Chihuahuan deserts.
What
an amazing thing, what birds do.
They
match their behavior to the ebb and flow of the seasons. They winter
where it’s safe and warm and there is adequate food. Something triggers
when it’s time to head north to breeding grounds with adequate habitat and
abundant food for raising families. Every different kind of bird has its
own set of needs, so the perfect places to be, at the perfect times of year,
are a little different for each one. Plenty of overlap, but nature
provides a little differently for each, and that has all been worked out by
repetition over time, hardwired into their DNA, and it all fits together.
That
got me to thinking about people. We know something of the original native
North Americans on this continent. Not all of the many tribes migrated
with the seasons, but some certainly did, following that ebb and flow of the
seasons and food sources. A learned migration passed down from generation
to generation, but the result is the same, a seasonal migration.
And
on a grander scale, human history is a history of migration. The source
of all of us likely originated in Africa, living in nomadic bands, following
seasonal food and water. Once these early modern humans started migrating
out of Africa, there were multiple waves, over thousands of years, a most
profound migration, resulting in human habitation in every ecological niche on
the planet. For essentially the entirety of our human existence, people
moved freely, a natural flow in response to the availability of food, shelter,
comfort, and their own space. Specific migration routes are not hardwired
in, but the lust to wander might be. But today, in the last 200 years,
the blink of an eye in evolutionary time, now things are different. We
have Nations. Boundaries. Borders. National interests to
protect.
Two
opposing imperatives. Protect our borders and our national interests in
resistance to the natural human flow toward more opportunity. One is
conceptual. One is instinctual. Borders are recent. Migration
is ancient. An unavoidable clash.
Gone
by eight…..thirty. Close enough. Coffee at home in to-go
cups. By 9:00 we’ve stopped at Tex Best for breakfast tacos and we’re
driving north, me in the lead in the Mazda, Judy on the digital hook right
behind me. If she sets the adaptive cruise control for a little faster
than I’m going, she stays perfectly distanced right behind me however I
go. A two-car virtual highway train.
It's
225 miles from home to the center of San Antonio. We blow past that and
drive through heavy Friday traffic up Interstate 35 to Austin, another 100
miles. We make Sportsmobile by a little after two. That’s our
target for the day, drop off the van at Sportsmobile for some work. In
keeping with our minimalist approach to camping in the van, we’re not doing
much, but to start with, we’re going to improve the couch/bed. The one we
got in Colorado in 2024 wasn’t exactly the right couch/bed, but it was the one
we could get on our schedule to do what we wanted to do, so it served its
purpose. Now we’re going to pull that one out and get the right one put
in. The old couch/bed is an off-the-shelf model that will fit many
different vehicles. It’s cluttered underneath with support structure that
should be open storage. The comfort isn’t quite right either. The
new one should be more comfortable and easier to work. We won’t need the
McKee 2x4 lever to manage it anymore. It will be custom built to fit our
space.
The
second thing we’re doing is improving the floor. The original floor had
railings to attach all the passenger seats to. When all the seats and
railings came out, that left the floor a little spongy. With all the room
we have to walk around in there, balance could be a little tricky. The
original floor will come out, additional sound insulation and a solid floor
will go in.
The
third thing. Air conditioning. When we got the van, we knew we
didn’t need air conditioning, because we were going to wander with the seasons;
go where the weather suits our clothes. What that logic missed was the
fact that to get to where we mean to be, it takes three days to drive out of
Texas, and Texas is almost always hot. We found ourselves looking for
pet-friendly hotel rooms in cities instead of the state parks and forests where
we would rather be, because it was too hot to sleep outside. An air
conditioner for when we’re plugged into shore power at night will greatly
expand our weather window for camping.
We
had to wait months for our turn to get the work we want from
Sportsmobile. But now the van is there for them to start on it first
thing on Monday. With that taken care of, we drove the hundred miles back
to San Antonio and spent the night at the San Antonio/Alamo KOA in a camping
cabin.
After
a long day driving we didn’t set an alarm, we just closed up the cabin and were
asleep by ten. When we woke up, it was still ten o’clock, but on the next
day. We slept 12 Hours! Guess we needed some catch-up. We had
the camping coffee box with us, so a leisurely 2-hour coffee in our camping
chairs, in the front yard and we were out of there by noon checkout.
After
a 450 mile drive the day before, the 225 mile drive home from San Antonio today
was cake. The time flew by and we were home by five and floating in the
pool by dark.
And
that’s the news from Lake Wobegon, otherwise known as Way South Texas.
This
is what the male looks like.
This
is what the female looks like.
Can’t
tell them apart.
The
bird at the top is the male.
The
bird at the bottom is the female.
They
could be mistaken for different birds.
Usually
they’re at the waterline foraging, but here they are on a post.
Willets
are conspicuous, and a coastal thing, except when they go inland to breed on
the prairie in the summer.
