We made a trip to Fort Parker State Park to spend a few days hiking and biking and to look around at the small towns in the area for shopping, dinner and discovery.
This is a fairly small Park as far as the number of sites go but it has good hiking and cycling, and sits on its own good sized lake. This looks like a good fishing lake but only from a boat as the shore has a ring of tall reeds blocking access to casting from the shore. I would have brought the kayak but the water was to cold for me.
Michele and Sprocket at our site on the lake
On the far side of the lake is a 2.5 mile each way out and back trail that we biked one day and hiked one day. There is a small spring back in the woods that is in its natural state and bubbles up sparkling clear water, it looked so good but I would advise not drinking from it.
Each evening this was our view from under our awning where we spent some happy hours doing nothing.
When we travel we also like to visit small towns and look for unique shopping and dining experiences, on this trip we visited Worthham and Mexia Texas but we did little to spur the economy there.
I also spent an afternoon on the North Shore Trail at lake Grapevine. It had been several years since I had ridden this trail and I found it much improved with more of a loop route than the all single track 2-way it used to be. It is still a very challenging ride for me and I did take a spill by doing a forward somersault over the handle bars while still clipped in to the bike, nothing but my pride hurt(lucky).
Next post is about Pedernales Falls.
Dennis
On one of our longer hikes the map showed a river crossing so we packed our water shoes and Michele was a trooper and made the cold crossing twice. Sprocket however had to be carried across. I'm lucky to have a wife and partner that likes this stuff.
We saw a lot of deer and I put out a bird feeder that attracted birds, I mean lots of birds and birds I could not identify. I think I will get a bird guide to keep in the Surveyor.
We also visited The Texas Hills Vineyard for a tasting and bought some kick butt cab, that's the real name of the wine. We also drove to Wimberly and visited the famous pie shop. There was a big flea market type market that was going on and all the small land owners nearby wanted five bucks to park and no dogs so Sprocket said let's move on!
Well that's it for now Bobby will be here @9:30 and we are going sailing today, need to hurry and get a fishing pole and my ditty bag ready.
