Camping Pictures

This weekend we went to Cooper Lake State Park. The park is located Northeast of Sulphur Springs, Texas. The boys were reluctant to go there, but there were no other openings in any other park within 2 hours from us. It turns out that October and March are the busiest months for camping in Texas.

My job was to drive the boys. They were responsible for getting all the gear ready and planning all the meals. I was available to give advice. I did veto one selection for lunch on Saturday, and I did insist on some fruit cups in a menu heavy on protein and simple carbohydrates.

I should have brought a Dutch oven and made them biscuits....


Here is the campsite. My home away from home for two nights. I slept in the large tent on a cot.

Wider shot of the campsite. Weather was great, with temperatures in the low 80's during the day and 60's at night. Cloudless night, with the moon setting sometime around 4 in the morning. While taking some of the boys to the bathroom, I showed them the Milky Way Galaxy - the concentrated band of stars that make it, at least. We could see a lot more stars than we could back home. We saw one(1) shooting star.


Fishing. Fishing's dirty little secret is that there is a lot of time spent fishing but very little time spent actually catching fish. We talked with other fishers ("catch anything?") and enjoyed a quite Saturday morning. This pier connects two little points of land.
Here is what the above picture looks like if you turn your cell phone camera 90 degrees:
After changing into swimming trunks, we rented canoes and headed out into the lake. You can see where we went in the background of the picture below. We were told to keep close to the shore. We saw birds - don't ask me what kind - wading along the shoreline, and an occasional fish would leap out of the water to taunt us for trying to catch them.

The boys loved canoeing, taking to it like ducks to water. All they could talk about afterwards was when they could go canoeing again.

Swimming followed, with the boys pictured below inthe designated swimming area. Note the wall in the background indicates that the water level is about 4-6 feet below normal. Al Gore made it happen.

As an aside, do you think Al Gore will one day give his Nobel Prize back, especially after we enter a phase of global cooling? Perhaps he will give it back and request that it be given to Irene Sendler (actually to her estate, since she died recently).


I stayed on shore after wading in the gooey pseudo-sand that they used to make the beach. A group of Cub Scouts were nearby, trying to blow stuff up.

Speaking of blowing things up, here is our campfire ring, complete with pot for hot water, my cup of hot chocolate, and a few hot dogs awaiting delivery on a plate. Dinner Saturday night consisted of hot dogs, chili for making chili dogs, and chocolate or a fruit cup for dessert.

I took some of the chili and put it on a flour tortilla.

This picture requires some explanation, if not an apology. This is the chili for putting on the hot dogs. It actually tasted pretty good.
Now I have to read Ivanhoe to the little boys. Actually the story is now known as:

iVanhoe