Adventurenet.net

Monday December 4, 7:42 am.

The weather in central Texas is still decent (mid 50s [13 C]) and so it is still a good time to visit the State Parks and add another stamp to my State Park Passport.

When I checked in at this park the ranger asked me if I wanted red ink or black ink. I chose the red, but then flipped through my previous entries to see what colors of stamps I already had in there.

While flipping through the ranger got a kick out of my notes for one park just saying “Birds!”

The hike through Bastrop State Park was the largest part of this day, but I am now realizing that I did not take many pictures during this adventure. I will need to be better about this.

I have a cheap smart watch because I am adverse to subscription plans. I haven’t put a lot of thought into it as I have only recently begun to go on these outdoor hikes, but when I initially set up the watch I set a high goal of 8,000 steps.

Okay, I don’t know if that’s actually a high goal or not, but I’m a work-from-home vendor worker, so it’s a lot for me.

On Sunday due in part to this hike I ended up more than doubling this number with 16,563. My wife accrued 15,810 which means that I probably step better than her. Or that my watch is more generous about steps as she went on a jog later that evening and should probably have more steps than me. One of those.

Just noting that my watch has already given me 36 steps for today and I have not yet gotten out of bed.

It is a cheap watch. (I spent $60 on it).

We wanted to have a nice picnic during our trip so I packed up some Capri Sun drinks and some sandwiches.

Sort of.

I didn’t do a good job of preplanning this visit, in fact I didn’t know which state park we were going to until about thirty minutes before we left and part of this bad planning led to the food situation.

I figured we’d make a quick run to the grocery store, return home, make some sandwiches and then head out, but instead we made the sandwich innards (Big Franks mushed up with mayonnaise) and put them into a tupperware with the plan of grabbing bread along the way.

I nearly forgot to buy the bread and I purchased the only loaf at a gas station.

Note, next time bring a spoon or something, or even better: make the sandwiches a day in advance.

The food was delicious, but I used the lid of the tupperware to scoop out the sandwich guts onto the bread.

I may have spilled onto myself several times and covered the bit that dropped onto the ground with my foot so that my wife Lauri would not see it.

They have a cool event hall here called “Refectory.”

I added it to Google Maps (I love to get points for adding stuff to Google Maps).

$300 to rent this place out.

Neat.

Oh, and the gazeebo by where we ate the sandwiches. The scenic overlook.

So after the hike we decided to check out a nearby bookstore that has a cool book fireplace (a fireplace surrounded by books, not a fireplace for burning books).

It is a lovely book store.

After books one does need coffee, though.

At the local coffee shop Lauri & I took turns reading off survival card trivia to each other and this card was one that we found interesting and would like to test sometime.

And with all of our new found caffeine energy we needed to go for a walk in this picturesque town of Bastrop.

We chose to follow the path down to the river.

There were a couple of boats that zoomed past at one point as well as a new cat friend.

There were some bowls filled with cat food and water nearby and this crochety old man accepted some pets and scratches from us.

The cat food was near these spooky abandoned stairs. 👻

There was a nice sitting area down here by the water.

Where we took silly pictures.

It also had caterpillars.

It was a lovely day on Sunday.

I was also able to ship out a few postcards, including two new ones. One to my buddy Jeffrey Fay who is about to retire & move to The Philippines & one to my co-worker Leo who lives in The Philippines.

On Saturday we played cards & Jackbox with friends.

It was a good weekend.

Penny says “I DO WHAT I WANT!”

Edit: I am told I did not disguise the food spills well enough and that they were seen.