as high as the heavens: Mineral Wells Part 2

On Sunday most of the other campers began clearing out. And the deer started coming closer. I got these shots with my cell phone on my way back from the camp restroom. After the first few crossed the road I thought I would be clever and take a video since I could see that more were coming. Later when i looked at the video I discovered that i must have pushed the buttons in the wrong order and ended up just getting a topsy turvy video of my shoes and the road! Meanwhile while i was trying to work the camera I missed seeing how many deer really did crossed the road in front of me!

Over the next couple of days we saw quite a few more. John got several good shots with his camera. (My camera didn't get much use this trip as it was so rainy I didn't want to take it out much.)

They even came to the sites across from us after those people left. The first time the deer came John went out with his camera. But they didn't like that and went away again. I told him not to take photos of the ones near us anymore because i wanted to be able to enjoy watching them from inside the motor home.

We even saw a set of twins. I thought we had a photo, but I guess that was after i decided i would just enjoy them and not take any more photos.

Seeing the twins reminded me of a verse from Song of Songs when the Bridegroom expresses his delight in his bride and compares her to "twin fawns of a gazelle*" I thought, my Heavenly Bridegroom takes delight in me, his bride, like I delight in seeing cute baby deer. It is hard to imagine that God thinks of me like that when he sees all my faults, but I'm part of his creation too just like the deer.

I wonder if she thought she was hiding behind the tree?

My favorite of John's deer pictures

I somehow went out for a hike without a hair band. But John came to my rescue with this luggage tag he had in his back pack. If you zoom in you can see it says, "Pack for adventure, take off with savings."

Most of the trails were closed due to heavy rains throughout the weekend. But there were a couple next to the lake that we enjoyed.

The lake wasn't harmed by all the rain! :-) We went canoeing three times.

There were a lot of snags to watch out for. The birds make good use of them.

This bird isn't walking on the water and it wasn't that shallow there so it is probably on one of the submerged snags. Our canoe did hit one once but we were going so slowly it didn't hurt it. It is an inflatable canoe so I was very watchful and a little worried but John assured me it was tough enough to handle a gentle bump as long as the object we hit wasn't too sharp.

There were other birds besides cranes! but they show up so well and hold so still that we took more photos of them.

Home sweet home away from home. One time when we were coming back to shore a couple of raccoons dashed across the opening in the reeds in front of us. As we pulled up closer to shore we saw another one about to come out so we waited and it finally got up the courage and also ran across to join its family. Then I noticed two more had crept up and were timidly peering out from the reeds. They didn't seem as brave, so we thought we would help and backed our canoe away to give them more room. But as soon as we started moving backwards they did too and dashed back the way they had come! Sigh. So much for helping!

A few minutes after arriving back from our long canoe trip Monday morning it began to rain. It rained all afternoon. Our site being next to the lake tended to get a river running through it whenever there was a lot of rain. And there was a lot. It rained in Dallas too. Our rain gauge at home showed we got six inches.