Holiday Happenings at Lake Brownwood

For the past three years, Zach. Meg and the boys have gone to Abilene State Park on the second weekend of December for Fa-La-La in the Forest. Campers are encouraged to decorate their camp spot and trailer for Christmas, Santa comes, hot cocoa and cookies are served. It is a sweet very family oriented weekend. We have gone out each year for supper and family time but this year we had planned to join them this year with our little Holly. However, the boys had a choir concert and piano recital the same weekend, so going to Abilene State Park was out. We did some research as a lot of the State parks in Texas do something during the month of December. Zach, Meg and the boys decided to go to Lake Brownwood the weekend before Christmas and invited us to join in on the fun! We all arrived on Friday, got our spots picked out, the kids were just so excited to be camping and just time to play and be outside! The camp was very quiet, we were surprised at how few people were there! We went into Brownwood Friday evening, for a burger and then back to camp to bed. The next day we had lots of fun watching the boys "decorate" the space between our two trailers. They have lots of woodland "blow-ups" so they were quite excited to get them out and light strung. It was cute and they were so cute about it! The Parks had a decorating contest, so of course they were sure hoping to win. They didn't but it didn't make the weekend any less fun! We enjoyed eating, playing games, watching the boys play, explore and cooking out. It was so nice to rest and relax during this busy holiday season! We would really love to return to Abilene State Parks next year, but we will just have to see what the schedule looks like. Holly looked so cute all decorated up and of course we are pretty sure she was by far the cutest trailer there!

Our three boys and silly photo bomber, Bud.

Last but not least...Lost Maples here we come!

Got up, had a devotional and communion time, packed up the trailer and pulled out by 9:30ish. We enjoyed the drive, though it was drizzly most of the way. 

We arrived at Lost Maples around 10:30. Got checked in and they assigned us spot 15, which turned out to be the BEST spot in the campground to us. We couldn’t be happier. There is a nice grassy area to look out at with lots of trees and each spot has a really pretty covered picnic table on nice slabs. There are only 30 spots so its quiet and very fun! Our spot is

We set up what we could with the rain, went inside and ate left overs and then spent the rest of the day settling in. We hung our rope lights around our picnic table area. We haven’t pulled out our awning as yet as the wind is expected to be bad the next few days, so we will wait but are anxious to get it fully set up.   





We enjoyed the laid back afternoon, so restful and relaxing and not a lot of people here. We both took showers, then just read and visited the rest of the afternoon. We had Taco Soup for supper, then played domino's for the rest of the evening. It was such a good day. Went to bed with two windows open, and at first we just heard the trickling of the river then a light rain begin and it rained all night. Probably one of the best nights of rest! So peaceful.

Monday:

We had planned our first hike for today but we can tell (though we don’t have internet service here to check on weather) that this rain is here to stay for the day. The fog is very dense and it continues to rain. We decided since we couldn’t do much out, we would do some driving around today. We drove to Medina, found a great little store that had Lost Maples, Big Tooth Maples for sale. We checked into them and I think we will go back on Friday and pick out two to take home for our yard! I am very excited about that!!! Then we drove to Bandera and looked around in several antique stores and then on to Utopia where we ate at Lost Maples Café (we had read about it on Trip Advisor) and it said it had the best coconut meringue pies…and they just might be right! We had one before our meal, then had a late lunch/early supper and then got two more slices to go back to the trailer with us! YUM. This café was in the movie, “Seven days in Utopia” which now we really want to watch. 

 

We drove back to camp and were surprised to see two Casita’s have pulled in to the campground. One right beside us! Haven’t met the owners yet, but that will be fun to see who else is in love with Casitas! I spent some time reading, which was so fun as I have done none this whole trip! 

 Tuesday:

We had packed our backpack last night, so today we made up sandwiches, ate some oatmeal and headed for the first of our hikes, the west loop…which involved about 6 miles of hiking. It took us about 5 hours from start to finish and though we were both exhausted, and Larry’s feet were really bothering him, it was a fun day and we saw lots of pretty things, but nothing like normally is seen this time of the year, which makes us aware we want to return one day! We had soup and crackers and played a lot of domino's before heading to bed. Playing domino's has become such a fun way to spend the evening, lots of laughing! Pictures from the hike:

 

Hmm. Which way to go???

 Taking a little lunch break by a stream.

 The the foliage mostly was just brown but you would see little jewels here and there and I can only imagine what this place must look like if all the trees are filled like this one.

Wednesday

We work up surprisingly with very few sore parts so we ventured out after breakfast again for a 5 plus mile hike of the east trail. Much prettier trail, but a lot of really rugged ground to cover in parts as well. We were out 5 hours and had a really fun time. We were glad to be back at camp, took showers and enjoyed sitting and reading and resting before supper. We had put together a crock pot meal last night before we played domino's, so as soon as we came in today, I put it on and it cooked in about 3 hours. Very good and tasty, added the recipe to our cookbook and then we played domino's till bedtime. We were both really pooped! Slept great.

Now people, that is a big leaf!! And they are everywhere!!!

 We had service at the top of the hike, so we checked in with the family and sent out a few pictures!

 Monkey Rock

 The sign below...they ain't kidding!!!!

Thursday, Nov. 19^th

We decided to take it a little easier today. Got up, had coffee and then cooked bacon, eggs, toasts and enjoyed a late breakfast. Then we both enjoyed reading for several hours, and started packing up camp stuff so that tomorrow will be easier. Then we stopped and drove into Vanderpool to use the internet for a few minutes and checked in with the kids and communicated with John and Cheryl about meeting them tomorrow to see their house and eat lunch with them. We enjoyed another beautiful drive!  We headed back to camp. Larry washed on the Casita, I cleaned up some inside then read more. We had a relaxing day and has been good to rest before we had home tomorrow. Can’t believe our time is over but it has been a good trip and lots of fun wonderful memories. 

Friday: 
Got up, finished our packing and headed to Medina. We stopped at Love’s Tree Shop and bought two Lost Maple Bigtooth trees. We had looked at them on Monday and had talked and thought about them and decided to go back and get them for our Emma and Hudson trees. Then we drove to Kerrville to meet up with John and Cheryl Rich. We got to see their house now that its finished after a huge renovation. Cheryl fixed lunch, then we visited till time for us to leave. We then drove to Ballinger and picked up some silk flowers for Mom’s grave, stopped by and put those out and then headed home. What a wonderful trip!!!

Next stop: Garner State Park

 Friday, November 13th - Sunday, November 15th

Got up, had a cup of coffee, got ready and packed up to head out.

A Casita had pulled in last night, so as we were leaving we stopped and met them as they were outside. Such a nice couple, so easy to talk to. We are amazed at how friendly all the people who own Casita's have been. Our first stop was at New Braunfel's Camping World for a few things, then at Coopers for lunch, always so delicious and then the traffic was really bad for the next few hours. We stopped in at Home Goods, Target and Bass Pro Shop. We shouldn’t have done that, other than Larry needed to spend some time at a Starbucks to get out work schedules. The only down side of staying in State Parks, is no internet to take care of business stuff! It took way to long and so then we hit bad traffic again and it was a not fun drive to Garner. Took much longer than we had planned. We arrived at 4:30 and there was a long line to check in…insane! Finally got checked in and though we were very disappointed with the site and wished badly we could changed the sights we decided to make do with the one we got. We set up and by then it was past dark. It's getting dark early,  does “drive” us indoors earlier than we like! We played some domino.s and then called it a night.

We got up, had coffee and reading time, then took a nice hike down to the Frio. I was surprised at how many wildflowers were still in bloom...aren't we on a fall foliage trip?

Then back to camp and cooked a good yummy breakfast of toast, eggs, bacon. Yum. Then we drove around to the other part (older section of Garner) and walked around. SO wish we were staying over there as the trees are big, lots of shade and river and cliffs. We were bummed out site was so ugly. If we were staying here longer we would for sure ask for a new site. Lesson learned.

Took a picture years ago of Larry and little Zach standing inside this tree!

We drove into Uvalde for a few groceries and walked through one Antique Store before returning to camp. I decided to catch up on my journaling, Larry did some reading and fixed a battery problem we had yesterday. 

We had baked potatoes cooking in the crock pot for supper, so yummy and easy! The old part of the park brought back so many fond memories. Our first trip here was right after we had married, then the next time was when I was expecting Ashley and Zach was almost three. Such fun memorres here, wish we were staying in the older section where we could be surrounded by those sights and  sounds of those days!

This new section is really not pretty, hardly any trees!!! We packed up some of the stuff, so we will be ready to move camps tomorrow to our final stop of this trip, Lost Maples. We are not hearing good reports of the foliage. Not a good year for the amazing colors but we will venture anyway.