Volunteering

Today was my second day on the job as a natural resource volunteer for the COE at Saylorville Lake.  Enjoying working in the outdoors again.

Des Moines

We spent Friday night in Eagle Ridge campground near Eagleville, MO.  Saturday we drove to Des Moines and settled into our campsite at Saylorville Lake.

Nevada, MO

We are staying at the Osage Prairie Campground in Nevada, MO tonight.  We stayed at the last campground for an extra night.  We are scheduled to arrive in Des Moines on Sat or Sun.  I have a volunteer position at Saylorville Lake for the next month where we will have a free campsite.

Van Buren, AR

Arrived in Van Buren, AR this afternoon.  Staying at Park Ridge campground on a river near the highway.  We may stay a extra day to check out the local attractions.  Drove through some beautiful country today.

Texarkana, Texas

We were finally able to catch the cats Saturday morning, but we decided to wait until Sunday to leave to give us a little down time and not have to rush around on Saturday.  The park owner let us stay a few extra days for free because we were getting rid of his cat problem.  Here are the mom and four kittens that we were trying to catch.

This is our friend Tom who stayed at the camp.

Mom fed the last of the cookies to the deer

This is the most agressive one.  Mom called him Piglet.

Sunday afternoon we loaded up and moved to Texarkana, Tx on the border between Texas and Arkansas.   We are parked in a nice campground here next to an RV dealer.  There is a small lake here in the campground.  We drove into town last night and looked around.

 

We decided to stay an extra night, so we had lunch today at a little diner in a town called Redwater about 3 miles from camp.  The food was great!

Then we drove into Texarkana and did some shopping.  Now we are just relaxing and looking forward to heading farther north tomorrow.

Delayed Departure

We were supposed to head north today, but we have taken on the task of capturing a mother cat and her four kittens who are living somewhere up under our motorhome.  We were able to capture the mom and two of the kittens today, so we hope that the other two will be hungry enough to come out tomorrow.  They will be going to a no kill shelter in Nacogdoches when we get them.  So we are still in Nacogdoches.  There was a baby sitka deer born here yesterday, but we haven't seen it yet.  I hope that it doesn't get up under the motorhome too.

Busy Weekend

I spotted this fox the other day in a field across the road from the camp.

Mom has been feeding her herd of deer.

 

This week has been a busy one for Camp Tonkawa.  A camping club arrived early in the week with about 8 or 10 rvs.  It was interesting to visit with a few of them, they were all from the same town here in Texas.  They would get together in the evenings for pot luck dinners.  On Thursday, a group of mule teams started arriving.  They had about 10 campsites also.  They did trail rides during the day.  A couple of them were even from Iowa.  They invited us up to the shelter house Friday night for some country music.  They were practicing that night for a benefit concert on Saturday night.  Most of the camping club left on Friday, but some stayed until today.  This is a picture of the band playing Friday night.

On saturday, we drove over to Grapeland, TX.  Bill Amundson caught a ride up from where he is living now down here and we met him over there at a bluegrass music event at a campground called Salmon Lake.  We had lunch in town with him and the friends that he rode with and then went out to the campground and listened to 5 different bands play in a competition.

After the compitition, Bill's friends and some others sat down in one of the old buildings there and had a jam session.  Lots of good music!

 

 It was quite an interesting campground with a lot of old buildings.  Some were even rented as cabins.

We really enjoyed the day, it was a beautiful drive over and back and we had a good visit with an old friend.

Today, the church that we go to here was having a multicultural festival, so we had lunch there after Mass.  Now we are back home and the campground is almost empty again and we are enjoying the quiet.