Tuesday 1-26 Where are we?

 

Where are we?

Where are we? We're not dancing in our living room. We're not working in the yard. We're at Meridian State Park. 

Meridian State Park is located a couple of miles outside of Meridian, Texas. The park is 67 miles from our house. We wonder why we never visited this park before. 

I woke up early, 7:15. While I was showering Larry went to town to pick up a few things for our trip. I did my Daily Challenges and the Event: Two game Tango Mini of 10 games (5 Pyramid and 5 Tri Peaks). It took me 1 hour, 29 minutes and 23 seconds, which put me in 16th place in my group. 

Next up was finishing loading the Minnie. We left about noon. Check in is 2:00, but if you arrive early and no one is in your spot you can check in early. It took us about an hour and a half because we had a couple of delays due to road construction. We usually don't make reservations but because of Coronavirus it is required. When we got to Meridian State Park check in was easy. Larry walked to the building but couldn't go inside, he had to do everything through a window. This was ok. Texas State Parks require a mask in all of their buildings, this includes the bathrooms which was a little bit of a surprise but it wasn't a problem.

 

Camping at Meridian State Park

After setting up we walked around the park. We walked around for 45 minutes because we wanted to locate where the hiking trails were. When Larry checked in he was given a hiking trails map and a campground map. Meridian State Park was built in the 1930's by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) and structures built by them are still in use. The map had six points of interest: 1) CCC Refectory, 2) CCC stone grill, 3) Bee Ledge a nature overlook, 4) Fern Ledge, 5) Wildflower Field and 6) CCC Bridge. The trail map is great, it shows how long each trail is and how difficult it is (easy, moderate and challenging). We hiked the Little Springs Trail, a moderate .7 mile loop. The terrain of the trail went up and down but not very steep. The trail went through trees and you had to hike over tree roots. The trail was very well maintained. We walked the main road to find another trail called Bosque, which we'll hike tomorrow. As we walked around we saw the CCC Refectory and the CCC Bridge. We had a very nice walk.

 

Hiking trail

 

CCC Bridge

 

CCC Refectory

For rest of the day we relaxed. Larry barbecued sausage patties for dinner. Then he started reading a novel on his Kindle. I finished doing my steps, which were 28,000. This put me in fourth place in my group. We had a super day.    

He also picked up a state park book, which has a list of all the state parks. The parks are divided into seven regions: Big Bend County, Gulf Coast, Hill Country, Panhandle Plains, Pinewoods, Prairies and Lakes and South Texas Plains. Each region has a section in the book and the section has all the parks in that region and a small summary of each park. The book is excellent. When we first got into camping we camped in a lot of Texas State Parks. The parks we camped in were the parks that had hiking trails because we love to hike. Some state parks are day use only.