The Garden/ The Wall/ No camper

The garden is going great guns, however we are in an extreme heat wave for this time of year, and very dry. The rain barrel is empty and the garden cries for more water.It is still yielding green beans, potato's, lettuce, spinach and squash as well as peppers. The snow peas are done in this heat and the leaf crops are now just about toast also, we love our fresh food.

This morning, Memorial day I went on a nice little run and visited the traveling wall of the Vietnam Memorial. This was a moving experience as people placed flowers with name tags and traced the names of lost loved ones. I was fortunate to be born just late enough for the draft to be over, I did have to register but there was no active draft. Today I thank all of our veterans for their sacrifices and service to allow me the freedom I have.

Saturday we went to Liberty Fest in our little town of Farmers Branch where 20 thousand people listened to a band from my youth, REO Speedwagon as we celebrated our liberty here in the USA.

As for the no camper situation, we sold the pop up and are now shopping for a nice fairly small hard sided travel trailer. We have looked at new and used ones and today we found the one we wanted and I negotiated a very nice price. This deal never happened, when I asked about the title before putting down a deposit it was signed and ready to go except the seller was not the person named on the title. You have to be very careful about these things and I demand a drivers license for proof, well they did not match and out pours a long story about his friend who signed it over to him and does not want to be involved in the transaction, nor do I. This could be the truth but I am not willing to gamble with that kind of money.

Still looking

Dennis

Fort Richardson State Park Trip

We had a full weekend at the end of April, we started by taking our Treck tandem to the German fest bicycle rally in Muenster. This is a great rally and your entry includes admission to the festival and 2 drink tickets for soft drinks or beer(Shiner Boch). We were going to ride the 65 mile route but with extreme winds and the many challenging hills we wussed out and rode the 42 miles, the upside being we got to the festival early. After the Rally we took the pop up camper to Fort Richardson State Park, we were pleasantly surprised, I thought it was just an old fort site, it is that and much more. We toured the fort that dates to the 1860's, took hikes and rode the mountain bike trail.
We stayed Sunday night and in the lower camp ground we had only one other camper in the valley. we picked a spot that backed up to a limestone bluff with this little spring fed creek gurgling right by our trailer, nice to sleep by.

We rode our bicycles on the 9 mile off road trail to Lost Creek reservoir and back for 18 miles of nice improved trail with great views and a few challenging area's. At the Lost Creek Park where the ride loops through the park and then returns we met the camp host. This guy lived in a nice motor home and said he started as a host working about 12 hours a week for a free campsite for a 3 month term. Some 2 years later he loves this place and now works part time for the park system receiving a free full hook up campsite and a small pay check for doing work he likes.

On our bicycle ride around the park at dusk we saw 24 deer like the one in this picture.

We also took Sprocket on a hike to Rumbling Springs where he drank and splashed around and seemed to have a great time, a short video follows, or is supposed to, my first try at this.

I caught bass in the quarry pond, hiked all the trails, had a great bike ride and will return again to this park less than 2 hours from home.

Who knows where we will go next.

Dennis