Vacation Highlights: Part 1 Mineral Wells State Park

I thought I would take a little break from blogging about landscaping to write about some high-lights of our 2021 vacation. 

We camped in our motorhome in four state parks over three weeks. There is a lot I could say about each one but I want to try and just hit some of the main events and high-lights.

The first several days we stayed at Mineral Wells State Park (MWSP).  

Our first morning, while eating breakfast I glanced up from reading and looked out the window and was rewarded with this sight of a deer also eating just across from our motorhome: 

I watched it for a few minutes and snapped several photos. Then it crossed the road toward me. It got quite close to our motorhome before disappearing into the woods.

It was a lovely way to start, or maybe I should say restart, our vacation.

It felt like a reassurance that despite difficulties it was a good thing that we had come on this trip and now it was time to hit the reset button and enjoy the time away.

From the start this trip felt fraught with problems and potential problems. 

Although I wanted the time away, I was worried about my Mom. It was the first time we would be that far away since she had moved to the new assisted living home early this year. And then shortly before we were to leave she started having a couple of worrying symptoms. We scrambled to try to find solutions and were in contact with her doctor. He seemed to think it would be ok for us to go ahead with our travel plans. 

We were also unsure of our motorhome. A few months before this the anti-sway system air bags went flat and we couldn't find anyone to replace them. We assumed it was more of a comfort issue and thought it would be safe to drive, but opted to only go a relatively short distance just in case.  

And then the day before we were set to leave John discovered that one of the inside back tires on the motorhome was flat. It was a new tire so he hoped that it was just a matter of the valve not being tightened all the way. The shop that replaced them all a few months before had left a couple of the valves loose at the time so when he went to get it from them a couple of the other tires were flat and had to be re-inflated before he could even drive it away. They made a couple of other mistakes too so we were hoping this was also due to their carelessness. Anyway John pumped it up and checked it the next morning and it was still holding air. So we thought it was fixed and set off as planned. 

We didn't hear a peep out of the tire pressure gauge monitoring system the whole way to Mineral Wells so we thought the tire was fine. After getting the motorhome set up John went on a hike and I stayed behind to get settled and rest up from the trip. A few minutes after he left the tire pressure monitoring system started beeping. I didn't remember how to make it stop and couldn't reach him on his cell phone. The beeping drove me outside after a few minutes. Eventually I was able to reach him and find out how to turn it off. 

When he got back from his hike he checked the tire and it was completely flat. He usually turns off the tire pressure monitor when we arrive and set up at our destination but for some reason he didn't this time. It turned out for the best so we could know that there was a problem before we got ready to leave for the next state park at the end of the week. Since it was Sunday when we arrived he waited until the next day and called a tire place in Mineral Wells. (It's called Double H Tire. We highly recommend them. They did a great job for us.) 

 (316 E Hubbard St, Mineral Wells, TX 76067)  

John thought it was interesting timing and that maybe it was God's way of making sure we went on the trip.

A couple days before we left home I made the bad decision to wear some "cute" shoes that were not broken in yet and they ended up scraping layers of skin off the backs of my heels. I was shocked at how quickly it happened and how long they took to heal. Even with "mole skin" and Band-Aids and ointment and proper hiking socks with liners I was not able to hike or even walk much for several days. 

But we did go canoeing. 

Don't worry, the trailer and truck in the center of the photo are not sinking. They are on the road that is on the other side of the dam.  

One of two small islands.

The second and larger island has what looks like the remnants of a fireplace and chimney from an old house.

We saw an otter on a rock in that little indented place in the middle but it dived below the surface just before I took a picture. We circled the island again in hopes of seeing it again but it wasn't interested in being seen!

Turtle on a rock. We were so far away I could barely see it but I somehow managed to get this shot by zooming way in and almost blindly pointing it in that direction and hoping I would get something.

Going out we had a fare amount of wind but coming back it dropped and there was barely a ripple.