Adventurenet.net

Hello from Austin Texas on the morning of October 9th.

My partner is officially in India for the next few weeks and so I am adventuring solo.

One idea I have been debating is to travel to random points of interest.
I did decide to try this on my Sunday adventure, but this did not end up being a good fit. We’ll come back to this topic.

The first adventure was an unexpected request to help with a Fight Opera promo video. I am an extra playing a student in the video and I am terrible at acting. Luckily the folks with more talent than myself took the reigns for most of the speaking parts. There is also a dance scene that I was able to escape as this touches directly on a phobia that I have.
Even though I wasn’t in this scene I was still anxious about it for two hours after I had left for the evening.

Anxiety over. Let us discuss the other fun travel topics

Here are the buddy cats I ran into as I was leaving the filming location. Delightful.

On this Saturday evening I was hoping to visit a Texas State park and possibly set up a tent so that I could travel further the next day, but this did not work out.

For one, there was a cricketpocalypse in this part of Texas.

And for two, I just couldn’t figure out the online payment system.

Also there were no campsites available.

As it turns out, these must be reserved in advance…

Way advance…

Five+ months in advance.

I wanted to see what other options I had to sneak in a bit more fun and travel, but I was sitting in my car at the entrance to a state park.
It felt weird.
Even these deer were judging me.
And so I left.

I drove to a nearby restaurant.

My options from were to get a hotel, sleep in the car or drive home.

As home was only an hour and a half away, it was the winning choice.

I enjoyed the second chicken fried steak I’ve ever eaten and then proceded home for the evening.

At home I was searched for nearby state park events and I was able to find a ranger hosted nature tour at a park an hour and a half to the West of my home.

Event time: 9am.

The plan:

Wake up around 6am.

Leave around 7am.

Arrive at 8:30.

Enjoy the tour at 9.

I did not plan the day any further under the assumption that picking another random state or national park would be a reasonable solution.

(I’m foreshadowing)

I arrived 30 minutes before the tour and I used this time to work on Wreck This Journal.

Three additional pages were completed on this day.

This page about rolling the book down a hill was a fun one.

I had help from a park ranger to find a good hill for this page.

Thank you, ranger.

Here are additional pictures from Inks Lake State Park which is a fantastic location with fantastic rangers.

The nature hike here was an absolute delight. I have always wanted to have a better understanding of how to spot poisonous plants, but being here and having in-person examples was a big help.

During this visit I loaded up on swag and purchased an offical Texas state parks pass.

I am now unstoppable.

un

stop

able

With this delightful visit complete it was time to decide where to visit next.

I could have stayed for a snake exhibit, but my hope for the day was to visit another state or national park that was further away from town.

Like any good Texan, the choice was simple.

Head West.

And West I headed, all the way to the border of Mexico to visit Amistad National Recreation Area.

Along the way I dropped off a letter at this spooky post office.

Three and a half hours, I arrived at the park’s gift ship and I purchased a national park sticker.

I bought the wrong sticker, but it is a sticker.

Oops.

Note: I have purchased the correct sticker online.

Also note: Lauri and I have decided that the best way to avoid this mistake happening again would be best to purchase all of the sticker sheets and to move them to the passport book after visiting a park. We have each purchased the wrong ticket at a location, now.

After the purchases, I spoke with the shop ranger about advice for the best location of the park to visit.

I was suggested a short nature hike.

It was delightful.

But now the bad news.

I have been a spoiled with many of my park visits.

I like to schedule my trips around events that are hosted by the park rangers and to come to this location without an event and without a boat was a disappointment.

I was not aware that the focus of this park is boating and fishing and this is my own damn fault.

Another small disappointment that added to this was that I I could not find one of the hiking trails that was listed on the map.

I enjoyed my short hike and the plant information, but I spent hours driving here for a 5 minute walk (which I stretched into 20).

It was a good mini-hike.

Here’s a bunch of pics of the cool desert plants and some bugs, too.

I also picked up a bit of trash.

The good karma helps, I’m sure.

And this was the end of the trip. I entered my home address into the map software and began the four hour trek back to my apartment

After about two hours of driving it occurred to me that maybe there would be an Atlas Obscura location along this path.

There was.

BEHOLD THE RUINS OF ST DOMINIC’S CATHOLIC CHURCH (and graveyard)!

Here are pictures of swag from the parks as well as the stamp for my state park passport.

Thank you for joining me on this weekend adventure. I plan to leave at 3am for the next Saturday adventure.

Remus says “I’d rather be sleeping.”

Note: I used the pizza emoji in the title because this is a joke that Lauri & I have that I eat a bunch of pizza when she is away… (I’m eating pizza now)