It Was a Good Weekend For Music...

 It was a good weekend playing music with people and for people. It started out with a Children's choir rehearsal on Friday night, busking at Fae's Hideaway, a Ren Faire Pride Event Saturday and ended up playing with the children's choir for Spanish Mass at St. Patrick's Sunday morning.  

I was glad to get the invite for the Pride Event. Nice people put together a DIY day of local vendors selling arts and crafts with many people wearing costumes or sword fighting and it was the perfect thing to have a tuba player playing grooves, harmonica and didgeridoo. . 

Note that I also used my turtle shell shaker, the instrument that I am second most famous for playing. 

I got to jam on a tune with a strolling musician (i think I heard his name as Dawson, but you know the ears, tuba and big Fender amps) on uke playing a bit of harp, tuba and percussion. 

It was also the first time I opened for a harp player, Tris Day. As they say, check her out on the streaming platforms. 

Mass was good with the kids today. Great fun playing with Maria and Hugo who are the group leaders and we often have a great mix of kids singing, playing guitar, flute or Cajon drum. This photo grabbed off a video a couple of weeks ago. 

I think I might have actually grown up to be everything I wanted to be, 

Of course you have to eat and there was crawfish Saturday evening at the big Agular birthday party. 

 

Over and Over...

More proof I just keep doing the same old thing over and over. 

I loaded the canoe in the truck last night just so I wouldn't get lazy today and not go fishing. When I got up this morning I checked the fishing log and sure enough this day in 2020  I had about 20 big bream from the canoe trail area at Martin Dies Jr, State Park. I had decided on an afternoon trip so I played the tuba a bit, worked out at the water aerobics class and headed out.  

Fishing was not great today but I had fun. I caught several black bass too small for keepers, a beautiful too small crappie and a handful of bream. I think that mixed catch should count for some kind of Texas Grand Slam. 

Most of the fish were caught a trout magnet. I had picked up a thrift store tackle box for $5 that had one of these kits with jig heads, corks and tails all complete. One bass, a couple of inches shy of a keeper took an earthworm under a cork. I don't think I have caught a bass on an earth worm since childhood. 

The worms I gathered from the leaf mulch piles at home were not crowd pleasers. I caught a couple of fish on them but I did better with a yellow trout magnet fished under a cork. The lake at the State Park, B.A. Steinhagen, or what we used to call "Dam B" is a shallow body of water with lots of hydrilla, water hyacinths and giant salvina. Some of the floating mats get moved around by the wind covering favorite fishing areas and with warming water the weeds reach for the surface making it hard to fish ultra light jigs. You can paddle around tossing your bait in the holes in the vegetation but a throw an inch too far that hangs up can spook a spot where you are getting bites. 

I fished four hours and stopped for a standing break on the bank once. Back at the launch a young man paddled up in a short flat bottom boat from the opposite direction I had gone and I inquired about his luck. He said he caught 15 bass fishing since 10am but claimed he almost got too hot during those hours. I handled the heat pretty well but I note not being able to sit as long in the canoe and that will shorten my paddling career more than anything.  

There is not a size restriction on bream. In Texas you catch a bucket full and fry them up whole. They say Mississippi bluesman Howlin' Wolf could eat 50 bream at a sitting. I threw these fish back after the photo op because my baby would be all mad if she did not have 50 crunchy fried bream. 

I noted the Island trail, a good short walk for the grand kids is open but the other trail going the other direction is closed for work. I also saw plenty of the smaller green herons. I might hit Ratcliff for the next canoe adventure since it's getting hotter and the swimming area there is very handy. I've done that lake plenty of times and look forward to again.   

     

 

   

 

Rainy Day Finding Fun...

 Everyone has been craving a lake day since the great success and exhilaration of last week's tube trip (I want fried catfish!) but those pesky afternoon thunderstorms while bring much needed rain are cramping our style. This made us look around for land based fun so we visited Caddo Mounds and Mission Tejas State Park. 

This was the first time we had re visited the mounds, still sacred to the Caddo People and dating back 1,500 years since the reconstruction of the new visitors center and grass hut since a big storm wrecked the area a few years ago. I mentioned to the park ranger our visit to Poverty Point Mounds in Louisiana and he said I might have been your tour guide as I retired from there. The Poverty Point Mounds are much older and he told us that the Caddo mounds were sort of accidental as they kept building and having burials in the same spots and it elevated the terrain and the Poverty Point mounds, whose purpose is lost to prehistory were made by hunter gatherers for an unknown purpose.  

The Grass hut gives you and idea of how they lived. 

Good value for seniors and kids as we spent about $8 on admission but blew that savings in the gift shop as we bought a couple of books and kid fun items. 

Next stop, Mission Tejas just down the road had a ranger program called back yard bass. We occasionally visit here for hiking, to soak up the history of the Spanish Missions in Texas and I enjoy cane poling the small creek bass in the San Pedro. The ranger program the kids took part in was well done and you would have thought they were really catching fish. 

It was pretty close as to who the best casters were, the rangers or the kids. 

There is a pond in the park but it's pretty choked with weeds and if there was a swim area to cool off I'd probably come here for camping since the sites are recently redone but it's still a nice quiet place with a deep history. 

Ok, now the hard decisions, Mexican or Cajun tonight? 

It occurred to me as added the links about our previous trips to these spots is that I kind of keep doing the same old things over and over again. Maybe it's a quest to enjoy the spirituality of these places and the knowledge of long lost times. Might be something we need to know. 

   

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Summer Tube Season Lake Report...

I'll admit that I messed up. That's getting easier to do because at this stage of my life it daily occurs to me  that there are many times I messed up. The latest mess up occurred to kick off summer 2026 tubing season at the lake. I had a brand new tube, never used that had been purchased in the winter months at a charity auction to benefit a good cause. It was still stored in it's packing had the crew waiting  patiently to put it to good use. 

They all loaded on it including Milo, who just turned three. Following the big brothers is his main occupation. I started out slow to see how the towable performed but as you can see from the photo all were too close to the front and the tube immediately nose dived and dumped them. That was enough for Milo. He made no more attempts at water sports for the day and like many of my other failures in judgment and experience this will be a scarring memory.    

Apparently no one else noticed or got hurt physically or psychotically so they were good to go.  

I started both Ezra and Luca on the knee board from shallow water, almost on the bank and it was such a good start it had me contemplating if I could start like that instead of the belly start and crawl to kneeling which was a move Ezra soon mastered.    

I think both boys got their mother's knee boarding gene and will soon be showing some tricks. 

Water was 82 degrees which in the warm sun seemed better that the water aerobics pool has been lately.  

I might think about fishing sometime but right now being a tube boat driver seems like gainful employment.  

Outside the wake. 

After admitting all these failures and mess-ups all I really wanted to do was spend the summer at the lake with a girl.  

A tube boat driver requires an occupational stump watcher to sit up front. 

 

Holiday Weekend Driving...

 I don't know if it was the high gas prices or if maybe everyone was home on their phones but the highways and campgrounds for the most part were very manageable on our recent trip from East Texas to Indiana. Even a pass through Little Rock, Arkansas which seems to be a magnet for every big truck in the tristate area was easy. Only one campground was really packed and on out final leg home Sunday the Love's Travel Stops where I buy gas because I have the 10 cents off per gallon app had crowds but it might have just been the fast food boxes of fried chicken livers that all these in the Midwest and south serve. 

Our first stop outside Memphis was T.O. Fuller State Park. It's a famous place, built by African American CCC workers it was the first state park east of the Mississippi open to their use. The pool was our of order which is something that seems common in these older CCC built sites but there was plenty of good day use areas in addition to the camping and an Indian village, excavation and museum which we will have to check out in the future. It's usually the kind of site I like to visit but with just an overnight stay I'd have had to ride my bike 4 miles on a farm road that was pretty narrow to share with automobiles.        

The most crowded park was John J. Audubon, also a CCC built park, in Henderson, Ky where we made three nights. It was handy for visiting family in Evansville, In. and close to attractions and good restaurants. Not crowded the first couple of nights but as the weekend progressed the campers poured in and sites were close and as there were more arrivals I noticed some challenging camper back ins and there were lots of kids on scooters and bikes. I tried to capture it in these photos. 

There was the John J. Audubon Museum on the grounds which is the largest collection of his art in the world and though he was very prolific and hard working he was very much the starving artist. 

Our last camp on the way home was Willow Beach, a Corps of Engineer facility located off the old Arkansas River. Good spaced out campsites and we had one of the best. Campground was full but only a couple of groups using the beautiful day use picnic sites along the river on a holiday weekend Saturday. Guess they were on their phones or something. 

There was a good boat launch and plenty of people fishing from modest boating rigs instead of the big bass boats with not a live scope sonar in sight. There something calming about casting a spinner bait and not worrying about gas prices. Works for me every time.  

  

 

    

The Latest Road Trip...

We are back home after 1641.3 miles and 33 hours of driving that saw us, along with Cathy's brother Matt visit Evansville, Indiana and see their sister Margret, husband Kevin and daughters Grayson, graduating from high school and Addison who had a birthday. We stayed in campgrounds in Tennessee, Indiana and Arkansas. You can check the truck dashboard photo for the full statistics.  

Here's Cathy and Matt at T.O. Fuller State Park in Tennessee. All equipment performed flawlessly. I'll probably do a run down of my campground reviews later.  

Cathy, Margret and Matt. 

Margret, Addison and Kevin celebrate Grayson's graduation from Signature School in Evansville, Indiana. She will be headed off to Georgia Tech to major in bio-medical engineering. Georgia Tech is a good place to be for that degree.  

 

In the lower right of this photo made from the balcony Grayson accepts her diploma and gets a hug from her grandfather, Bob, who is the President of the Board of Directors of the school. The 80 odd graduates on stage represent 24 million dollars worth of scholarships to top colleges around the nation. Signature is a very good high school.   

Since Georgia Tech is in Atlanta and we must drive right through there to visit Morgan, Ali and the grandkids is South Carolina we might see more of Grayson in the future.  

It was a good trip and I am sure I'll write a bit more later but in the mean time I need to get ready for the next one. 

Beachfront Camping Report...

Once, in another life, I was parked beachfront in my truck just sitting on the tail gate enjoying the sun. Three girls came walking by and said hi. I was at a loss for words but quick thinking led me to ask them if they wanted to toss a frisbee. I did not have any idea what girls wanted to do but I was giving it my best shot. One of them said, "Nah man, I could never throw one of those things," and they continued on down the beach. I've never asked a girl if they wanted throw a frisbee again. I've never even asked my wife if she would throw a frisbee. She'd probably say,  "Nah man, I could never throw one of those things."

We made of first beachfront camping trip of the summer this week at our secret spot on the Brazoria County Free Beach. If you are a regular reader here you will know it's where we camp free on the beach. No hook ups but bring water, run solar on the camper and a generator as needed. It's a sweet deal. We stayed Monday till Wednesday morning, avoiding the weekend crowd and pretty much had it to ourselves. The fish left us to ourselves as well with a rough surf and wind making conditions less than ideal for the surf. By Wednesday morning the wind had subsided, the surf lay flat and the sea weed rolling ashore had diminished and green water is expected with a couple of tide changes. 

In fact browsing the fishing reports looks like they caught them off the jetty yesterday and the surf was good this morning. I had netted a few live baits and tried lures since I did not feel the percentages were going to be high for me but I'll be ready with some shrimp for bait next time. 

Water looks pretty in this photo and even though no bites I wouldn't say I had a bad time. Some one once asked Cathy if Carl had to catch fish. She said, "I don't think so. He looks at stuff, makes pictures." I like the beach and I'm glad my wife is a beach girl. 

Water looks pretty in this reflected photo off the camper glass. 

On those windy days the fire felt good sitting on the beach at night as the air cooled when the sun went down. We never used the air conditioner but on the morning we left it was warming, the wind had dropped and made it easier for the biting horse flies to torment you. If the fish are biting I have enough repellant to make that tolerable.   

If ever on Surfside beach and you see a guy that looks like he wants to throw a Frisbee by all means, stop.