Enchanted Rock Part 2

When John returned from climbing to the top of Enchanted Rock (ER) (see my last post in case you missed it!). We hiked out to the overlook together. It was a lovely place to finished what was left of our respective lunches.

Another couple who were also picnicking there asked us to take their photo and then took this one of us.

 

  From the Overlook:

Little Rock is "shedding"

There were lots of pretty and fun things to see going to and from the Overlook as well.

It was amazing to see all the flowers growing almost literally out of granite.

I love this little flower!  Notice the  yellow pompoms on stalks in the center and how you can see some of their shadows. If I was naming it I might call it a "clown flower" :-).

I thought it was fascinating the way the white petals have a sparkly sheen to them

This rock formation looked to me like an upside down hippo. It reminded John of an armadillo!

Just after we left ER around 3:00 pm, John surprised me by suddenly pulling over. There were a lot of wildflowers so when he saw a place to pull over, he took it.

John photographing the wildflowers along the roadside.

Enchanted Rock looking like a moonscape in the back ground.

Our campsite was at Oxford Ranch Campground, in Llano, TX. The campground is about 15 minutes from ER. Llano is another 9 miles north of the campground on Hwy 16. Enchanted Rock only had tent sites. And since we have an RV we had to look elsewhere to camp. Our motor home is the one with the tow car behind it.

(One of our reflective sun shields came loose and was hanging down. The suction cups we use to attach them with sometimes come loose, especially in the wind.)

The RV next to ours looked like it had been uninhabited for some time. It was sad to see the birds tearing lots of fluffy strands off its decaying awning.  Note to self: get an awning protector for periods when our rv is not in use.

We did get more neighbors over the weekend. So there wasn’t as much wide open space after that.
Most fellow RVers are reasonably friendly, at least they'll wave or say “hi”, but none of our neighbors on this trip were. It was strange and a little discouraging, to me anyway, I don’t think John would have noticed if I hadn’t said anything. Many fellow hikers at ER were friendly though, so that helped to make up for it.

There was a lot of pretty scenery and that helped too!

This was the view behind our RV

After getting rather worn out from our hiking at ER, I wasn’t planning to go out anymore that day. But when John came back from a little wander around the campground with reports of spectacular wild flowers I couldn't resist. So, we went out for a another walk together. I took 26 photos in 15 minutes! Here are only a few of them:

Oxford Ranch appears to have been a working ranch at one time, maybe still is, at least if these old tractors parked in the background are any indication.

The nearest town to our campground was Llano TX, about nine miles away. We went shopping there a couple of times and to church Easter Sunday morning. There were lots of interesting sounding things to do in the area. And the town looked like a fun place to explore with its old buildings and picturesque square, and antique stores. But we decided to focus on exploring Enchanted Rock, and resting up between times.

We stayed for several more days and did more hiking at ER and walks around the campground and took lots more photos! :-)

The butterflies enjoyed all the flowers too. Most were too busy to photograph.

These little fern made me think of a miniature pine forest.

White poppies

Because we had full hookups, including sewer, I didn't try to use the campground’s “restroom” until our last morning there. John said the men’s room was ok, so to save space in our black tank for the next trip, I thought I would use the women’s room after John dumped our tanks. But I quickly changed my mind. The toilets were partly dismantled and from my position by the door they looked unusable—I’ll spare you the details! I didn’t want to get any closer to investigate further or stay long enough to take photos. The whole room had a semi demolished look and like someone needed to hurry up and finish the job. I was even more than usually thankful for sewer hookups and an RV with a shower and toilet. I wonder now if there was another women's room somewhere else. If so they never told us about it.

We were pleased to get away by our target of 9:00 a.m.--a first.  We wanted to avoid the heat of the day since our a/c went out on the trip down from Glen Rose. Our GPS tried to take us home to Dallas through Fredericksburg which is in the opposite direction and would have added at least another hour. We knew that going straight back up through Llano on 16 and connecting up with FM 2005 for part of the way like Google said was not a good idea because that was the way we came! Three very narrow bridges on 16 and sections of 2005 were so narrow we went off the road a little in one place. (Our GPS didn’t want us to go that way but Google thought it would be fine so we followed Google. It gave us a little more respect for our GPS.) Anyway, we dodged all that, and avoided going the long way through Fredericksburg, by going east on 71 to 281 to 220 to 67.