Friday, Saturday & Sunday, March 26-27 & 28, 2010-Stephen F. Austin SP

Not too much special to report here for the last three days. The weather has been spectacular, with cool nights and moderate temps during the day. It dips down into the upper 40's at night and into the low 70's during the days, and without a cloud in the sky, no chance of rain.

The park was absolutely full of scouts this weekend. Almost all of the tent area was taken up with several cub/boy scout groups, and there were even more in the shelter area. There were even two good sized groups in RV sites, so needless to say, the park was full. The scouts can get loud and, being kids, they like to stay up late. Most of the time, they are very well behaved, but I have heard stories of some of the things they have done here. It helps if the scoutmasters take them for hikes or play games to tire them out.

I had an interesting conversation with one of the rangers this weekend. We had a very large group in on Saturday in one of the RV sites. There were at least six cars and what seemed like 50 people in the site. I noticed them and noticed a "D" sticker on the cars, which denotes a day pass. I asked the ranger why they were not asked to go to a day-use site and he said that the park will allow this as long as an RV site is not needed for an RV. In other words, I can come in and pay a day-use fee and get to use the most expensive site in the park for nothing? When I asked him about it, he said that this is TX Parks & Wildlife policy. Hmmm. I have to think on that a little more...

We just took care of our bathrooms and sold a lot of firewood and ice. We are running dangerously low on both, and as of Sunday we are down to 5 bundles of firewood and 7 bags of ice. I know there is more firewood in the park and have been told that ice will be delivered on Monday. I hope so, because that won't last at the rates the guests here go through it. This was our last weekend here and we don't know who will be taking our spot. There aren't any host scheduled to arrive for awhile.

Two of our friends that stayed here as project volunteers left on Saturday. Jerry and Diane are from Kansas and came in back in January. Jerry is very skilled at construction projects and worked on the fences here in the park, erecting a pole fence in the day use area. He built benches our of felled trees along the paths on a couple of trails. I know he stayed very busy.

On their way out, Jerry discovered a problem with his tail lights on the trailer. He stopped here to see if I had a electricity test light, but I didn't so he stopped at A.D.'s place and used his. They had to wire in a loop to his left tail light because the factory plug-in was shorted out. All of this work apparently made one of the fuses blow, so just when they thought they had everything fixed, they found the blown fuse. It was replaced and everything is fixed now. He just has to get his new Chevrolet truck to a shop to fix the shorted-out wire.

Stella's uncle and aunt, Sonny and Irene and their daughter Carol came by on Sunday afternoon. Carol has a mail forwarding service, so we got signed up with her to take care of our mail. It was a very pleasant afternoon. I listened to Sonny talk about his life after the second World War and some of the things he did in his life.

Later in the afternoon, I was helping A.D. and Dee look for a lost cell phone in one of the empty sites when a car drove up and asked a question. It was our friends Tom and Marti Mangum, who were driving by the park and decided to drop in. We are so glad to see them and we had a nice chat outside. The wind had picked up and it was chilly, so they didn't stay long. We will see them soon at the Heartland rally in Spring. It was a nice way to end our last weekend here in this beautiful park.

So long.