Almost time to leave Lake Texana again

There have been lots of improvements at Lake Texana. Best of all – we got about 3 feet of our water level back. Here is a picture of the cove that I had previously shown as completely dried up.

With the water our wildlife has come out to play (and eat the green foliage). Here is one of our larger bucks.

We have a new Nature Center and we saved some of the murals from the old center to put around a storage area and hide the wheels on the new center – I did the work. Here are some pictures of the murals at the new nature center.

The old nature center was torn down except for the porch which the Director hopes to keep as a porch for a rental cabin (our first). Here are the pictures of the old nature center’s demise, starting with a view showing the murals removed and ending up with the final demolition.

I did some of the work of decorating the new nature center – hanging the taxidermy next to the mural that is being done by the same artist that did the old center. He will return and fill out the mural to work in the taxidermy better. Here is the work in progress.

We also put in a bird viewing area and trail in the woods behind the center. I helped with blazing the trail and irrigating the pond and birdbath in the bird area.

Before I leave, next week, I hope to get the new information kiosks installed at the 4 host sites. Then I will be off on my October adventures – mostly RV rallies in Texas.

The other day I had one of those small world experiences. I was geocaching in Victoria and when I looked up from my computer, logging in a find in an RV park, there out the window was my good friend, Frank Williams. We spent over an hour sharing what we had been up to and agreed to meet again next week at Rainbow’s End in Livingston. I will even be staying on his lot there and we will go to at least one of the rallies together.

Well, I guess that’s all for this blog – I’ll share again in a couple of weeks.

Back home in Ganado TX

I am back at Lake Texana State Park and back in the ABVM parish in Ganado. I was welcomed home by three of the guys with whom I went on the ACTS retreat. I will spend a month here working at the park helping to set up the new Nature Center. The Labor Day weekend was very busy but the rest of the time has been pretty quiet. My first days off I went to a geocaching meeting in Houston and also visited the Ingurgios. Victor seems to be recovering from his hip surgery just fine. After supper I went to Sara and Matt Spinks to visit. Sara is my granddaughter – David’s daughter. I had never met their family. They have three great dogs – 2 terriers and a black lab. Of course, I was using my new geocaching program to cache along the way! After spending the night at Hotel WalMart, I geocached my way back to Lake Texana via Galveston Island State Park, Mud Island, Freeport, Brazoria, West Columbia, and Bay City. The program is great and I have learned to use my Nuvi to geocache. The project for this weekend is removing two outside walls on the old nature center that are painted with murals and taking the walls to the new nature center where they will be used to fence in a storage area and decorate the back of the building. The man who painted the murals is making new murals on the inside of the building and we are helping him by fitting in some of the taxidermy from the old center. There will be visiting dignitaries from TPWD on the 22nd, so we are all going to have to work hard to finish our part of the move! Monday and Tuesday will be days off again and I will head west geocaching.