Tuesday December 26, 2017-Inks Lake State Park

I'll begin with the deer hunt from last week. It was the youth hunt but for me, there was something lacking. As you may know, there has been some major changes here at the state park and not for the better as far as I'm concerned. The two people that are now "running" the deer hunts are inexperienced and uninterested in the hunts and seem to be in a holding pattern until they can hire someone new to deal with the responsibilities. There was a hold on hiring some months ago when the changes were made, and now we are in dire need of some help.

The kids didn't seem as excited this year as in the past, and I don't know why. Perhaps they have sensed something? The fact that things are run so loosely by people that have little knowledge of hunting? I just don't know...

Onward through the fog of the Christmas weekend. We drove down to Blessing to visit with Stella's family this holiday season. We haven't been down here for about three years, so we made the trip. We decided not to take the trailer down but to stay in a small motel near niece Jana's house in Midfield, which is a tiny little area just outside of Blessing. The little motel, the Bay Prairie Motel and Lodge (link will take you to a short video of the motel) is a very small, family run motel that is more commonly used by hunters that come to the area. When we checked in, the man in the office told us he had a room on the front side with a queen size bed that he could put us into. Actually he could have put us into any room in the place because we were the only ones there! The bed that he thought was a queen, was actually a double bed, but it was so comfy that we decided to stay in this room. Everything else in the room worked well but it was sure hard to get used to a 32" television without HD signal. We have a 55" with Hi Def-almost Ultra Hi Def- reception, but we made do with it. We were only there for a few days, so it wasn't that bad...

We had very nice visits with the family on both Christmas Eve when, the children opened their presents and on Christmas day, which was aimed more at the adults. We played a crazy game using a huge ball of cellophane wrap and a pair of dice to win prizes. Jana and her helpers wrapped lots of different prizes. lottery scratch-off tickets, different denominations of money, coins, tiny liquor bottles and candy into an enormous ball. The prizes were donated by the people that played the game, so it wasn't real expensive to anyone. 

Someone rolled the dice, trying to roll a double, while the person to their left unrolled the ball and keeping any prizes that they uncovered. It was a very fast-paced game that must have taken an hour to wrap up, but was over in minutes. I won a $5 bill and a couple of liquor bottles, so we came out okay. It was fun and made all the kids squeal when they won a prize.

As usual on a holiday, we all overate but it was a good time with family that we don't get to see very much. There was plenty to eat Sunday night, from homemade chili and tamales to several kinds of pies and cakes. Burp!!

I've gotta talk about the weather. We left Inks on Saturday to chilly temps but beautiful blue skies. Stella and I went over to nearby Palacios, where we ate at one of our favorite restaurants, the Palacios Mexican Restaurant. When we came out, it had turned quite chilly, so we hurried back to the motel where it was nice and warm. The cold front came through Saturday night and it was cold for the rest of the weekend. We had made arrangements back at home to keep things from freezing up and turned off the water and drained the lines. We set the furnace to come on to keep thing from freezing up, but set the thermostat at 50, not the normal 70's when we are there. It apparently worked because when we returned home, everything was working fine.

There are no hunters this week but they will return the week after. 

So long.