South Llano River State Park, TX

Light rain overnight, but not much.  Nancy was talking to the couple in the class C beside us, an experienced couple from Wisconsin on their way home.  She’s trying to get parrot information on Brownsville.  This couple, however, preferred Arizona, and didn’t really know Brownsville. They were interested when Nancy mentioned that we had been into Mexico.  The wife said, “But Bob, you’d have to leave your guns at home”.  They asked what we had done with our guns; Nancy explained that we were from Canada, and had no guns.  Wife was both surprised and sceptical; “I dunno", she said, "in Arizona we had a rattlesnake come into camp; I was glad to have the guns”.  We didn’t inquire as to whether the rattlesnake was a real snake, or just desert bounder….

The Bigfoot was due for an oil change, so we got a referral from the RV park.  The initial referral was too busy, so he sent us down the block to his competitor.  We didn’t fit in his bays, but for an extra $20, he was happy to get right on it and have his man do it out front (in the rain that had resumed).  As I headed for the Accord, (the state park was first come for open sites), I heard his man say, “It’s full of bees!”  

I went back.  He had pulled the intake snorkel/air filter box open to find a couple of hundred desiccated horse flies ingested.  

"Them’s not bee’s” I told him in my best Texan, “Them’s horse flies.  I went to Thompson, in northern Manitoba, with this rig last summer”  

“Man”, he said, “that’s a lot of flies!”.

To be fair, I think I hit the worst of the flies around Grand Rapids...

Off we went to the state park, paid and signed in, picked a spot, and went back to town to fetch the Bigfoot.  We gassed both the Accord and the Bigfoot while we were in town, and headed back out to the park.  We set up on a dead-level cement pad, and had lunch as the heavens opened, and the deluge began.  As we ate in Bigfoot comfort, we watched families knock down a weeks worth of camp, tents, and tent trailers in the pouring rain.  

This park is serious about birding.  Parts of the park are only open between 10 am and 3 pm, so as not to disturb the roosting of turkeys.  There’s lots of trails for Nancy & Kirk (although Kirk was trying to get into any camper that would have him on their way back from a hike when the rains began).  There’s also a birding blind, complete with ID books.