Vacation 2019 - Week One Post script - Surprises from John's camera

I remembered last night that I still had not looked at John's pictures from our vacation. They are well worth the look! He definitely gets the prize for the most varied wildlife (and the most turtles)!

 Turtle crossing the road near our campsite. 

I was about to pass the next picture by because I thought it was the same as one I included in my last post. Then I spotted a second turtle poking his head up out of the water near the one on the stump.

A closer look.

Raccoon trapped in a dumpster. Rangers said they would put a branch in to help it climb out.

Coon Creek Lake, the smallest of the three lakes at RCSP.

Looking down on Lake Wayne Wallace from the Mountain trail.

John saw lots of spiders when he was out walking at night. He said it was particularly creepy to shine his light into the woods and see millions of tiny spider's eyes shining back at him.

This spiders was in our RV one night. It looks like the one that I saw in my bedroom when I got up in the night to use the toilet. At least I thought it was in the night. The time on this photo says this was taken at 8:30 a.m. so maybe it was later than I realized. Anyway it looked the same as this one. I decided to let John be the hero and woke him up. I do remember now that he got his camera and took a picture before dealing with it. I guess he wanted a trophy :-). 

A much more appealing critter!

Picnicking at Lake Carlton

Our first picnic at Lake Carlton was actually dessert--mandarins and chocolate! 

I know I also had a picture from here in my last post, but like I said I really like this place! It's one of my "happy places." I get into vacation mode faster here than most places. 

It wasn't always that way. I remember one of our first vacations at RCSP sitting on a blanket and feeling distracted and tense. I was worrying about my job or something else back home and not getting much good from being on vacation. Finally by God's grace and sheer determination I got control of my thoughts and kicked worry out of my mind and focused on the beauty around me. And the result was bliss! For a little while I was in a timeless vacation zone of peace and rest. It was like the still waters and green pastures of Psalm 23. 

Naturally after a while the ground felt hard and I had to get up and do other things. But I have carried that experience with me ever since. Being there again brings back some of those feelings. Even just memories from there can do it. (Of course wherever I am if I trust God and reject worry I can feel peace!)

It also helps that we have layers of happy memories from our other times there. That's one of the advantages of returning to a place several times for vacations. Over time happy memories have accumulated. So even though there are less happy times, the happy memories outweigh the bad.

When I wondered what kind of bird this was and John said "it's Bird #5." 

I thought it was a wren but after looking at my Merlin bird ID app just now I think it might be a young male Eastern Bluebird. The blue color is more apparent in the next photos.

After it flew from the disc golf basket to a park bench John got the next pictures

Vacation 2019 - Week One - Robbers Cave State Park

As I stretched out my post breakfast cup of tea and cajoled myself to start writing I googled “reluctant writer.” I thought it might help generate some sort of motivation while at the same time procrastinating just a little bit longer.

I am not alone, I discovered, there were lots of articles advising school teachers on how to get their “reluctant writer” elementary students to do their writing assignments. I guess I’m sort of like a beleaguered teacher trying to cajole her recalcitrant elementary-student self to do what I know she really does want to do--deep down.

One article advised having the students start by drawing pictures and talking about them.

Oh, I thought, that’s like me sharing my vacation pictures and telling you about them. I can do that 😊.

The first week of vacation was at our old favorite, Robbers Cave State Park (RCSP), near the town of Wilburton in Southeastern Oklahoma.

It was our fifth time at RCSP, the last time was in 2014, before we had our RV. I was thrilled to be going there again. I was looking forward to seeing and doing all of my favorite things.

The first day, after getting the RV parked, leveled and connecting to the water and electric we went for a drive through the park in our little Honda tow car. It was nice to see that things were mostly how I remembered them.

Unfortunately, the rest of the week filled up fast with other not so fun things. Between lots of heavy rain and plumbing and electrical problems in the RV and a minor injury to my right elbow we only managed one hiking expedition together and no canoeing. I think John fit another hiking trip in by himself. We also had a few picnics.

I still got quite a few photos, though:

Morning sun on RV site across from ours before neighbors arrived

Site 31 -- The trees were pretty but spider-y! Three spiders came in the RV.

John out for a stroll. Yes it really is Oklahoma!

Picnic at Lake Carlton--I love this place, especially when it's not crowded.

I played around with my camera's art mode to try and capture the colors better. It did something interesting with the center and background too. It wasn't too far from reality.

American beauty berry bush

 --
When squatting down for the wildflowers got painful I went looking for something at eye level and found this little pine cone wedged in this tree's bark. 

Fungi. I love the detail!

Very tiny Fungi. Tiny white things are often difficult to photograph well and this was no exception. My long-suffering husband let me drag him back to look for this again so I could have another try! He is worth more than any fungi! :-)

Foot bridge over Lake Carlton.

View of Lake Carlton from the foot bridge

Water lilies from bridge

Gazebo at Lake Carlton. Looking from the other side of the foot bridge.

An actual lily on the water lilies!

There weren't many flowers on the water lilies but there was a very patient turtle.

And we took lots of pictures of him:

I was excited to get such a clear photo of the detail on his head. 

Almost lost and forgotten

I just found this gorgeous picture in John's sd card from his phone that he took on 11th of June this year.

I wondered where he took it so I looked on my calendar to see if we were on a trip. But there was no mention of one. It was taken at 5:31 pm on a weekday. So he was likely walking home from work.

I also looked in my journal to see if it would show where we might have been. It didn't mention us being away. But it did have an entry from that morning about the gifts of God from Genesis 1 & 2 that I was thankful for and one of the first was flowers. I thought that was a fun little coincidence.

I am supposed to be finishing my blog post about our first week of vacation but I wanted to post this photo now before it gets lost and forgotten again.

Revisiting Monet at last!

Before our recent vacation that I hope to write about soon, we did manage to go to see the rest of the Monet exhibit at the Kimbell Art Museum that I wrote about in "Monet in his 70's". This time I took my good camera.

Despite not really caring about going himself, my loving husband drove us all the way to Fort Worth during rush hour one Friday evening so I could see it before it moved on.

It was great to be able to see my favorites again. It was also nice to not feel pressure to look at everything else or listen to the audio commentary headphones. I like to learn the history but it does distract a little from the experience of just enjoying the paintings. We also, of course, looked at the paintings at the end that we missed when we had to leave early the other time.

There were so many people there that we had to keep moving to not hold others up. So I kept looping around in the sections where I had especial favorites.

My favorite paintings were from the period of 1914-17. The placard said that between 1911 when his wife Alice died and the death of his son Jean in 1914 he seldom painted.

Then in the spring of 1914, he embarked on a new series of water-lily paintings. "These works represented a bold departure, marked by gestural brushwork and increasingly larger formats. They are the work of an artist filled with joyful energy, rapidly improvising the image on the canvas as a record of his sensations before the motif."

He wrote to a friend, "[I am] in a high fever of working, and so absorbed, so tired at day's end, I don't have the strength to write... I know it's bad, but work above all. I am overjoyed to be back at it."

This was the first in the series from that time period. It is also my favorite.

close up of the bottom half.  

The vivid exuberant brush strokes inspire and delight me.

He seems to have thrown off the weight of grief and depression. He won't let it hold him back any longer. I don't know if he was a perfectionist. But he certainly seems to be less fussed about the classic ideal of the perfectly realistic painting and is embracing an expressionist style.

I too want to throw off the weight of perfectionism that holds me back.

Another from that time period

The ones we saw from the end of his life were different again. His vision was getting very bad. Although I didn't like some of them as well, especially the ones that lacked definition, I found it moving that he kept painting despite his challenges.

This is one I did like despite it not being very realistic. It is one of the four of his house and garden that a placard said were some of his last and "most daring" paintings.  

People watching was fun too. From the guy who sat on a little stool and tried his hand at painting a copy of one of Monet's water lily paintings to the many who took selfies with their friends and family, it was a real interactive experience. I think Monet would have been pleased.

I had to get in on the fun too :-)

Water Lilies in honor of Monet at the Kimbell

Someone at the Kimbell had the cute idea of floating silk water lilies in the fountain near where the Monet exhibit is. No doubt in honor of his famous water lilies paintings in the exhibit.

I was trying not to be perfectionistic when I wrote my last blog post about our trip to the Kimbell to see the "Monet: The Late Years" exhibit that I wrote about in my last blog post ("Monet at 70"). So, I posted it quickly after writing it. Then later I wished I had put this photo with it.

Then I went back and forth. Was it too late to add it to that post I wondered? Should I make a new post instead? Is it good enough? Selfies are never very flattering and this one certainly lives up to that expectation!

So, obviously, I was still being a perfectionist despite all my intentions not to be.

Then I remembered our own water lily photos I wanted to share.  We saw these while canoeing a couple of years ago at Bonham Lake State Park here in Texas. There were no blooms on them, but I was fascinated by how whatever water got on top of each lily pad formed into a giant shiny jewel-like blob.

The blue and white stripes on the right corner is the side of our inflatable canoe.

Another view of the silk water lilies at the Kimbell. 

Now that I am feeling better, I hope to go back to see the rest of the Monet exhibit that I missed out on when I suddenly got sick last time. I also want to revisit the paintings I especially liked and maybe get some photos this time.

Monet in his 70s

Yesterday, we went to see an art exhibit of Claude Monet’s later years at the Kimbell in Fort Worth, TX.

I wasn’t able to see all of it because I suddenly got sick and needed to go home. But what I did see was really gorgeous.

I was especially moved and inspired by the first part when his style changed. It was following the loss of his second wife and son. And at the start of WWI. He was in his early 70s by then.

The audio commentator said he had “a renewed passion to paint.” His style became “almost expressionist.”

His bold brush strokes and vivid colors gave me the feeling he was almost desperate to get his ideas down quickly, like he knew life was short and there was no time to waste.

Did the chicken design the egg?

This morning on CBS This Morning one of the news anchors referred to something as having been “designed by nature.”

So when they say something was “designed by nature” which part of nature did it? Which thing designed both itself and all the rest? Or did different parts design other parts? The birds designed the bees, maybe. A spider designed the flies.  And did the chicken design the egg, or was it the egg that designed the chicken? I guess whichever one came first designed the other one.

“Intelligent design” is always ridiculed in the liberal media. But in recent years I’ve noticed an increasing use of the word “design” when they talk about the natural world. They never include the word “intelligent” however.

The word “design” implies a designer. It takes planning and thought and problem-solving skills to design something. All of that requires intelligence.