Thursday 8/24/23 Fall Trip Begins

 

I'm so excited

Today we started our fall trip. We have not yet escaped the heat, in Hamlin it was 101 degrees.

We left the house at 7:00 am and stopped for the night in Hamlin, TX.  It was 230 miles from the house, we arrived before noon. We stopped a couple of times along the way. First stop was at 317 Donuts for breakfast. Second stop was to fill the Minnie with gas. 

Most of the drive was two lane highways, they are far less stressful than interstates. We drove through quite a few small towns passing by ranches and farms. I slept most of the way. Texas needs rain, the tanks the cattle drink from are almost dry. We drove over the long bridge at the far end of Lake Belton, we have never seen the lake this low, at this point it was almost empty, no boats can go up there. 

While we were driving by the prison in Gatesville there were prisoners removing the brush along the fence line and one lady was driving a tractor. They were being guarded by guards on horseback. We have driven by this prison many times and have never seen prisoners in the yard. I guess they were removing the brush to prevent fires.

As we drove through Comanche we saw a statue of a Native-American and a bison in front of the county courthouse, in front of a gas station we saw bison and on a hill we saw a couple of cowboys herding cattle. The statues were very  nice.

We have camped in Hamlin a few times so we knew what to expect. Hamlin is a very nice park with running water bathrooms, power and water and a ramada over the picnic tables. The first night is free and the rest of the nights are $15.00 per night. You pay for camping at the city hall. There's a school right there with a very nice track which I used to get my steps. The road into the park is gravel. It takes you to the camping area that is in a grass field. The park is well maintained. This year the grass is a little crunchy because we haven't had a lot of rain.

Camping at Hamlin City Park

In the afternoon I did the Daily Challenges of Solitaire and Mahjong. The event today was Event: Easy Street of 30 games. It took me 1 hour, 6 minutes and 2 seconds to complete, which put me in 11th place in my group. I won't be playing Angry Birds during our trip because the two games aren't loaded on the machine.

For the rest of the day I played one of the Sudoku games Loren Smith sent to me, which was Kamikaze Sudoku. Larry started a book and finished it. 

I ended up doing 18,000 steps, which put me in 5th place in my group. I walked around the park. 

As I walked I talked to a couple of the locals. It's nice to see the locals using the facility. I noticed that there was a football game going on. One of the locals, who was a mother said that the junior varsity football team was playing Stanford. Tomorrow the varsity team will play Stafford at their school. I started to talk to her because one of her dogs came behind me while I was walking and scared me. When I came around the loop her poodle came up to me to say hi but kept her distance. The owner said she wasn't too friendly but the other dog was very friendly. I had a wonderful walk.