One more hike at Dinosaur SP

I really enjoyed the time at Dinosaur SP. Before we moved on, I wanted to take another hike. I chose the Cedar Ridge area of the SP. I started on the outer loop, but that is over 7 miles and I did not allow enough time to do that. The good news is that there are many different routes that allow you to adjust on the fly. There are steep up-hills and down hills. Plenty of interesting rocks and birds. Here are a few shots of the hike:

Here are some prickly pear. You can see the trails are well marked.

Beautiful views from the top of Cedar Ridge:

There are some very tall limestone cliffs:

One last shot along the river:

I made it back with about a half hour to spare before sunset. I walked almost exactly 5 miles. The exercise was great. I really enjoy the ability to just go for a hike when I feel like it in the winter. 

It was time to move on. Check out future entries to see what kind of things we found to do at Inks Lake SP near Burnet, TX.

Dinosaur State Park

We left Lake Lewisville on January 3 to head down to Glen Rose, TX. It was a drive of about 90 miles. We did have to drive through the DFW Metroplex. That was not a major issue, but it was nice to think that we will not be in a major metro area for the foreseeable future. We were looking forward to spending some time with my brother Alan and his wife Denise and hoping to see their two girls, Erin and Alisha.

We set up camp at Dinosaur SP just outside of Glen Rose. We have stayed here before, but it is really nice. Here is our site:

After going to church on Sunday, we went over to Alan's. They have an awesome home in Pecan Plantation. Dinner was great and they even gave us some pecans. Much to our delight, both Erin and Alisha were there. Brian and Julie stopped by on their way back through from a couple of days at their lake house. I also got to spend some time getting to know the fifth newest member of the family, Erin's husband Tim. Impressive guy. We watched the Cowboy game. Great Result! Lions fans need to get over the pass interference "no-call". That hand fighting could be called interference on every play. That was a good no call in my opinion. My blog my opinion.

Here is Alisha with her dog Nola:

On Monday, I sent much of the day hiking. Kim did not. I found some dinosaur tracks:

I learned a lot about the history of this area. Did you know that this was once the beach of Texas?

I then hiked to the top of the Overlook. It was a great workout and I had a blast. Here are a few shots.

There was a monument dedicated to a guy that spent 30+ years of his life preserving and growing this area. Nice to be appreciated.

I then took a walk along the river. It was a beautiful windless day.

I really like reflection shots:

We had Alan and Denise out to the park last night for dinner. It was a beautiful evening, so we had a campfire. Unfortunately, Denise's 90 year old mother had a health issue yesterday, so she was worried about her. Our prayers go out to her and our hope for a speedy recovery.

It is getting cold around here, so we are moving south tomorrow. We are looking at a move of about 125 miles, but you never know. Make it a great day!

Visiting Family in Dallas Metroplex

We have spent the last few days visiting family in the area around Dallas. We drove from Russellville, AR to Durant, OK on Monday, 12/29. That is my Mom's Birthday. Happy Birthday Mom! That was a 280 mile drive. That is long for us, but we wanted to get as far south as we could and then spend some time at some land that Kim's parents own. We stayed at Platter Flats Campground on Lake Texoma. It is a COE park and with our interagency discount was only $6 per night. We had the campground all to ourselves.

We then went over to the land on Tuesday, where Kim's Dad met us to show us around. It is a really cool place with plenty of cover for wildlife. We will plan to come back here and spend more time. I did not get any great pictures (I need to do better about that). I did see something kind of neat. Check out this branch that grew back together.

We took a long walk and then I rode on Rich's 4 wheeler. It was a really fun day. Thanks Richie!

We then hooked up and moved the 90 miles down to Lake Lewisville. From there we can see both my brother in North Dallas and Kim's parents in Bedford. The National Championship playoff games are on ESPN, so I went over to their house to watch them. Thanks for staying up Phyllis. The day we arrived, I went for a long walk and took this picture from across an inlet of our campground and trailer.

We also got to spend some time with Kim's brother Rick and wife Donna and their daughter Laura. We also got an added treat of spending some time with Kim's niece Halle. Here she is with the grinch that stole Christmas:

We had a fun New Years. We had a private party for the two of us in our trailer and stayed up until after midnight. Yeah us. 

We will do some more visiting today and then move down to the south for more visiting. It is great to have the time to spend with family. It just seems so unfair that they have to get up and go to work and we don't. As I reflect back on 2014, I truly believe it was the best year of my life. I am just praying that 2015 is even better. Happy New Year to all!

 

Time to move further south

We have spent the last 9 days in Russellville, AR. We had a great time visiting our son Michael, his wife Audrey, and their two boys Connor 4 and Cameron 10 months. I am so proud of my son and his wonderful wife. They have a great family.

Michael and I worked hard on his motorcycle and finally got it working correctly. I just hope he has time to ride it and have fun. 

We had a great Christmas. We enjoyed our Christmas last year on the beach in Florida, but it is better spending time with family. We spent some great time with the kids. Connor loves to wrestle. He is all boy. 

We did get to a bowling alley. Connor loves to go bowling. 

We also loved spending time with Cameron. We both felt that we were able to gain a connection to him and hope that he will remember us the next time we get to see him. Here are a couple of good shots:

We did not spend a bunch of time in the RV park, but we really like it here. We will stay here whenever we come to visit Michael and Audrey. There are deer walking through on a regular basis.

We also see barges cruising by. They are really cool to watch. If you time it right, you can watch them come through the locks.

Here is a shot of the locks:

The best part was the bird watching. We saw flocks of White Pelicans, but I really enjoyed seeing Bald Eagles. I could not get a a good picture of one, but I saw one each day when I walked. They are so majestic to watch fly. I saw both adults and some juveniles. Here is the best I got. You will have to take my word for it.

The time has come to move further south. We are heading out tomorrow and will get down to around the Texas border. I hope we can find some warmer weather. Have a great day.

Arkansas for Christmas

We are on the road again. We are in Arkansas, camped along the Arkansas River. We get to see some beautiful birds including White Pelicans and many varieties of duck. We have not seen any barge traffic, but we have not spent much time in t he campground during the day. We spend most of our time at Michael and Audrey's. Check out this video of Cameron. He was born the last time we were visiting. He is getting sooo big. We heard some noise in the train room and I went in and caught him on video.

We left Mansfield in a thick fog. I took this one shot at the gas station in town:

The good news is that the diesel was under $3.00 per gallon. We have seen regular unleaded at under $2.00 per gallon. The prices are back up down here in Arkansas to around $3.20, but that is still much better than this summer in Colorado.

I have been working on Michael's motorcycle. I thought I had it fixed, but I had to start over yesterday and split the cases again. I ordered some more parts and tools and hopefully we will have it ready to ride this coming weekend. 

I will let you know that I am going to be posting some other stuff in my blog for some of my motorcycle racer friends in the coming days. You can disregard those posts. I am writing some helpful stuff to educate some of the more serious racers on how to develop income from social media for continuing their racing careers. 

We are not sure when we will leave Arkansas and head to Oklahoma. It will depend on how the motorcycle repair goes and what the weather is doing. In the meantime we are really enjoying some time with the grandkids.  

Time to go.

It has been over a month since my last entry in this blog. So much has happened. It is difficult to remember when I don't write every few days, but I need a break from the blog and I don't feel that much of it would be of interest to all of my readers.

The big thing going on was the Ozark 100 Miler. That is an off-road motorcycle race that was held at the ranch where we stay. This year was big for all of the people involved because we went out and attracted some top national riders. We had a writer come to the event from a national motorcycle publication. You can see the story here: http://www.cyclenews.com/619/27317/Racing-Article/Steward-Baylor-Tops-Seventh-Annual-Kenda-Ozark-100.aspx

I spent the weeks leading up to the event riding around on a tractor, mowing:

This was the main pit area for the event. We had over 500 people through the gate.

The weekend before the event, 2012 National Enduro Champion, Steward Baylor came in to do a riding school. You can see his trailer and then mine in the background of this photo. It was great hanging out with the champ and hearing the inside scoop on all that I have read about. He is a really nice guy and only 20 years old. 

One of the coolest things about this event is that the last 25 miles are run over extremely difficult terrain at night. The guys have lights on their bikes, but some sections are lit up to allow the spectators to see better. Here is one of those areas:

Here is the final podium for the winners. The guy standing in front is the promoter, my friend Spud. This is the guy that my son Scott works for. Scott was also very involved in putting this event on.

Stu Baylor won, he is from South Carolina, Ian Blythe was second, he is from Colorado. And Nick Farranger was third, he is from Ohio. It was really a dream come true to have this event at our ranch.

Just before the race, we tried to have Thanksgiving at the lodge. It got kind of crazy and I don't think it worked out very well. We will have to rethink that in the future. We did get some good pictures. This is Kim's mom with three great grand kids. (Connor, William and Cameron)

Here is 4 generations:

Here are Connor and William. They are going to be great buddies for many years.

We made a trip to Silver Dollar City this past Saturday. It was very crowded but we still had a good time. Here is a shot of William and Isabella.

We are just about ready to head south. We have been having good weather and we have had a number of things to do before we left. It looks like we will spend Christmas in Arkansas with my son, Michael and his wife Audrey. I could use some more grandpa time with Connor and Cameron. Cameron is getting so big. 

I will start posting more often. We are headed to Texas, but that is about as specific as we are at this point. 

It is too cold for us.

I know I have not posted in a while. Our lives are not very interesting while we are at the ranch in Missouri and I don't take many pictures. Blogs are not interesting without pictures. This entry is not interesting.

We have spent the last week hanging out with our 5 grand kids. Our Daughter and new husband went on a honeymoon cruise and we stayed at their place and made sure the kids got to all of their activities. I equate that experience to jumping on a very fast moving merry go round. We hung on for 7 days. We could not wait to jump off when they got back. We love the time with the kids, but we do not have the energy to sustain that for long.

I ended the week by taking William to a off road motorcycle race. We had a good time and I did a little riding also. Here I am coming out of a rocky creek

You will see in this next photo, that carnage follows me everywhere I go. 

I did not knock him down, really I didn't. 

Special thanks to my good friend Bob for watching William, while I was riding. William keeps talking about Bob.

As for most of us, it has turned very cold this week. the bad news is that it will stay cold for another week...at least. I have been asked, how do you keep the trailer from freezing up in cold weather? Well we have a procedure that we follow in those situations. Here is our plan:

1. Go South as quickly as possible. 

2. If #1 is not possible, disconnect the water hose and fill the tank. 

3. Our rig was built in Canada and was designed to handle the cold. We have a heated underbelly and tanks. We turn on the heat and run the fan full time to keep the warm air circulating in the basement and in the tanks. We seem to be able to handle it down to at least 10 degrees. We will get tested this weekend, we are expecting lows in the teens. \

4. Refer back to #1 and get moving. 

We are hoping that the temps return to normal soon. That would be 60 in the day and 40 at night. We are now thinking that we will leave some time in December and head to Texas. That is about as far as the plan has gone at this point, but as you know, planning is not our forte. 

I will try to remember to take more pictures and post more. Have a great week and stay warm.