Hamilton Pool Redux

Cottonwood Creek RV Park

Texas Blue Bonnets

It's been a sad a traumatic week for our traveling friends, Paul and Paula. One of their two dogs the pug, Zeva suddenly and unexpectedly became ill. They took her back and forth to the local veterinarians and then to a veterinary neurologist 52 miles away who diagnosed the small 2 year old pug with Pug Encephalitis. Against the odds they tried a medicine regime which only worked for a couple of days. Soon it became evident that they had done all that could be done for her and the best course of action was to put the dog to rest. 

Kramer and Zeva

Sheri and Les the owners of Cottonwood Creek RV Park, offered to have them bury Zeva in the "back forty". So we dug a small grave which Paul and Paula decorated with rocks. A sudden sad and tragic end for Zeva "the Diva".  Kramer will have to fill the void.
Today we tried to put the tragedy of the past few days behind us and visit one of our favorite places, Hamilton Pool Nature Preserve. It was a bit of an overcast and humid day with storms expected but it was still beautiful. This was our third visit in three years to this county park and we always enjoy it.

Paula and Paul

We had a great time at Hamilton Pool and the short hike out to the Pedernales River. We worked up an appetite and afterwards drove in to Bee Cave for an Italian lunch at Mondolo's. When we got home, we experienced a brief rain and small hail storm. At the same time, Dallas was hit with one or more tornadoes!
Things are really winding down for the summer here at the park. More guests have moved on and the place is looking pretty empty. We plan to hit the road on Easter Sunday, April 8th and head east towards Florida with a few stops along the way. In a few weeks we will have to say good-bye to Paul and Paula who will continue east with us before turning north towards Massachusetts from Florida.

Austin Capital, Friends, Cooper's BBQ, Wild Flowers and catching up...

Cottonwood Creek RV Park, Dripping Springs, TX.


We've been having an excellent time here at Cottonwood Creek RV Park in the Texas Hill Country. The overall friendly nature of the guests and the almost daily "Happy Hour" (snack times) in the park really make it easy to get to know the guests. Often we end up caravanning to group outings at local restaurants. Last week we took a trip out to Salt Lick, a local restaurant known for their BBQ. This was only a few days after having the smoked brisket that Les and Sherry cooked for everyone in the park!
We made some new friends, Jeff and Joann. Jeff is a Lt. Col. in the U.S.A.F. and B-1 pilot, call sign "Hoof". Joann is a former deputy sheriff in Montana. But aside from that, together they are a wonderful and generous couple. We plan to stay in touch with them.

Unfortunately Jeff had to get back to work after having extended their vacation for a few more days!

We took Paul and Paula on a walking tour of the Texas State Capital and the beautiful grounds.

 Of course no visit to Austin is complete without a walk along the 6th Street district.

Back at the RV park, several of us volunteered to assist Les and Sherry in grinding up cut cedar trees into mulch to use on the paths. We spent about 8 hrs. over the weekend helping out. We were rewarded with a meal and outing at a local Mexican Restaurant, Flores.

It wasn't long before it was time for our scheduled trip with nearly everyone in the park to Cooper's BBQ in Llano Tx.  I gotta tell ya we weren't feeling like eating anymore BBQ before we got to Cooper's but, after smelling and seeing the meat...it was game on! 

Paul and Paula selecting their meat from the BBQ pit.

The Happy Hour gang at Cooper's

After eating at Cooper's, we took a scenic ride home via the Willow City Loop. The wild flowers were better than we had seen the previous two years.

Along the Willow City Loop we came across this Llama(?) greeting visitors along the narrow road.

Llano River

Mix of Blue Bonnets and other wild flowers.

We have/had a lot planned to do while here in the hill country, it remains to be seen if we can do everything on our list. Time has really gone by quickly and some of our dear friends, old and new are already moving on. Soon we will be joining them on the road as we head to Florida in about 10 days.

Today, Paul and I took my truck to the Dodge dealer in Austin and killed the day getting it serviced and taking care of a recall. Not a bad day to go as it has rained repeatedly today. Speaking of rain, it has been refreshing to see and feel some real rain since leaving the desert. I hope we don't see and feel too much!

Cottonwood Creek RV Park, Dripping Springs, TX

Well we made it to Cottonwood Creek RV Park outside of Dripping Springs, TX on March 16.  Our travel day from Ozona Tx. was cloudy with some spotty precipitation. We only had about 200 miles to travel that day because we had done the bulk of the miles the day before. So, it was a comfortable ride through the Hill County.

View Larger Map

This is our 3rd stay here at Cottonwood Creek RV Park and we just love the park and the location. We paid $325 for a month plus electric. We will probably only stay for about 3 weeks. This puts us about halfway on our trip to Florida.

Since we no longer own a home, coming here every year kinda feels like home. The owners, Les and Sheri are very hospitable and they always spend time with us catching up.

Front sites 1-7

Laundry and back patio building

Paul and Paula got set up in site 16 and we took site 17. There's only about 32 sites in the park. Our sites back up to the woods which contain some beautiful walking trails. The park was full on our arrival due to the weekend.

Sites 17 and 16

We quickly got caught up with several of our friends and guests that we had met last year or even three years ago. The park doesn't have permanent residents, but it does have may guests that return every year during the winter and spring months. One cool thing about this park is that because it is small and so many folks return, we almost always have a happy hour (snack time) gathering at someone's site in the late afternoon.

The weather had been overcast and last night, March 19, we had some good rain. Cottonwood Creek began flowing from all the rain!

Lower end of Cottonwood Creek

We really like taking advantage of the walking trails in the back and get an opportunity to stretch Maggie and Rico's legs a bit!

Maggie on the walking trail looking for Rico!

This afternoon Les and Sheri are smoking brisket for the entire park. Everyone is invited and asked to bring a side dish or dessert. Les and Sheri frequently have these little BBQ gatherings and it's always tasty and fun! Les smokes the brisket for about 12-14 hours!

Les's brisket smoker doing it's thing!

It should be a good Blue Bonnet season this year as we noticed lots of the flowers on the sides of the roads ready to bloom.  We look forward to re-visiting the Hill Country and perhaps seeing some things we didn't see on the previous visits. 

Trip to the Emergency Room

June 6th, 2011, Cottonwood Creek RV Park Dripping Springs, Tx.

A deer hanging out by our rear window.

Last night I laid in bed thinking that we structured our Spring and part of the Summer to stay in Texas so that we could attend our Son-In-Laws's Navy Winging Ceremony. Now because of my fall, I thought that we may not be able to make it.
This morning, I awoke as Joyce was still sleeping. She had been insistent that this morning I was going to see a doctor. I laid still hoping to prolong the inevitable as I really didn't want to go to the hospital. Before long Joyce got up and immediately reminded me of my morning destination.
I slowly got out of bed anticipating the sharp pain that would follow when I tried to stand up just as it had felt when I went to bed the night before. Much to my surprise, I was able to stand and move, still with pain, but manageable. I was able to take a shower and even managed to get down the steps out of the bedroom. I was thinking I had a chance of convincing Joyce that we didn't really need to go to the hospital after all! She had been out walking Maggie and Rico and when she returned, I showed her the progress I had made. She wasn't going for it and said she would go get Les and Sheri to help me get in the Jeep. I convinced her that it wasn't necessary and in fact I could get down the outside steps and walk to their rig.
So, off I went with Joyce, Maggie and Rico in tow. Using my 5ft walking stick I slowly hobbled towards Les and Sheri's rig gradually slowing as the pain began to increase the further I went. However, I made it to their rig where they were having their coffee outside. Long story short, they all persuaded me to go to the hospital. Joyce went back and got the Jeep to pick me up.
We took off for St. David's Hospital in south Austin. After the 40 minute ride, I was pretty stiff and Joyce dropped me off at the emergency entrance. I hobbled in on my walking stick as Joyce parked the Jeep. The triage staff took me in right away, surprisingly ahead of others.
After being put into an ER room and putting on the obligatory drafty gown, a very amicable ER doctor came in to make an assessment. After an examination and discussion, he seemed to think I may have bruised and inflamed my sciatic nerve on my right side but, like Joyce, he wanted to rule out a fracture and ordered x-rays.
So after enduring the x-rays, the doctor came back and declared that I didn't have any fractures but would be prescribing steroids and pain killers to combat the inflammation and pain caused by the sciatic nerve. I gotta tell ya, the doctor and nurse were some of the friendliest I've ever met as a patient. The doctor was also a Gator and told us of the home he still maintains in Jacksonville which happens to be our kid's next destination after Corpus Christi.

So, after an hour and 40 minutes and $150 co-pay we were on our way. Both relieved that it went so well. We picked up my prescriptions and headed home for some more rest.
Chances are good that we will leave Thursday for  Corpus Christi a day later than originally planned.
Thanks to all of you that called, sent personal e-mails and commented.

Down for the Count

June 5, 2011, Cottonwood Creek RV Park Dripping Springs, Tx.
Yesterday, I was rearranging things in the bed of the truck and as I'm preparing to climb out of the truck bed, somehow I slipped and landed on my back in the grass. You can almost make out in the picture below that the truck is elevated about a foot in the parking pad which makes it a pretty good fall. 

The fall knocked the wind out of me and I slowly got up to try and walk off the growing pain in my back/hip. However, it was getting worse and I had to call for Joyce to help me clean up and get inside the rig. Once inside I sat down and was pretty much stuck in the chair the rest of the day. Joyce went to run an errand and do some shopping. While she was gone, I discovered that I couldn't put weight on my right side without getting excruciating pain in the right side of my back. 


After Joyce got home, I managed to painfully make my way to bed and load up on Ibuprophen. 


This morning, I felt better and was able to stand on both feet although moving my right leg was painful. I'm praying it's a muscle strain. However, this afternoon after spending the whole day in bed, it was more painful when I got up than this morning but still better than yesterday.


Joyce is insisting I go to the emergency room tomorrow. She's enlisted the help of Les and Sheri to persuade me to go.  Les and Sheri have been great and have been coming over to visit yesterday and today while I've been stuck in bed.  I hate going to hospitals and I'm praying for a miraculous cure overnight.

Just Some Goings On At Cottonwood Creek RV Park

May 24, 2011 Cottonwood Creek RV Park Dripping Springs, Tx.

Our site, 11

Wow! I don't know what else to say about the ravaging deadly storms in our nation's heartlands. Our hearts and prayers go out to everyone affected by the storms and let's not forget the flood victims. We pray our RV friends and others in the path of storms find shelter or escape altogether. As I type this tornados and storms are marching through Oklahoma and headed for Joplin Mo. again!

Here in Dripping Springs Tx (Southwest of Austin) we've avoided severe weather and continue to be in need of rain. The last few days our weather radio has gone off sometimes 3 times a day warning of severe thunderstorm watches or warnings. None of which have affected us as the storms have been staying primarily north of us. Dry conditions are forecasted for the next week as the temperature tomorrow is expected to soar to the triple digits. Oops!...the weather radio just went off again with a warning from the National Weather Service of a "severe storm watch till 4:30 am"! This just after the local Austin TV weather reported nothing in the viewing area!

You may recall from an earlier post, that here in Cottonwood Creek RV Park we've been trying to catch a destructive armadillo that is attracted at night to freshly watered sod for digging up grubs, worms and insects.  Well, after the first traps failed in our site, things have gotten a little more serious....

Joyce made four of the above wanted posters and posted them around the park (lol). The park owner, Les and I went to work constructing a better trap using 50 ft. of wire fencing, metal stakes, trip wires and a wood trap door. After fencing off the capture pen we soaked it down with lots of water to attract the 'dillo.  The first night with the new trap failed to attract Dillo.  But, his days are numbered and now I'm afraid the live trap isn't an option!

The new Armadillo trapping pen set in the wood line.

I failed to mention in previous posts about a little pot-luck Brisket BBQ get together that the park owners, Les and Sheri put together for all of us. 

Partying on the back porch!

Les got up about 3 am one morning a couple of weeks ago and started the fire in his smoker to cook the 16 lbs. of beef brisket for a good 12-14 hrs.

Les and Sheri's smoker.

This was the second time this year that we've had some of Les' smoked beef brisket and let me tell you...it's fabulous! Chances are if you spend a few months or arrive at the right time here at the park you will get an invite, as Les' cooks up the brisket a few times a year.

Rico, Maggie and Les' dog Ema helping Les with the cleanup!

Another two weeks before we will be heading for Corpus Christi. We had so much fun with our last kayak adventure, we plan to get another trip in before we leave. 

I'm still staying busy with mowing, trimming, cutting and grinding up tree limbs here in the park. I could stay busy here all day everyday, but it gets so warm and muggy in the afternoon that a few hours every few days is enough for me.

This evening, while walking Maggie and Rico, we strolled by a site and I heard a woman call out my name. After introductions, it turns out she and her husband knew us from our blog and in fact, it was our blog that helped them to decide to stay here at Cottonwood Creek RV Park. It was nice to meet them! 

Armadillo problems and working on the rig

May 10, 2011 Cottonwood Creek RV Park, Dripping Springs, Texas.

Site 11

This will be a second attempt at this post. Apparently the original post on this date was lost after Google Blogger did some maintenance and a software glitch occurred. That glitch dropped this original post. From Blogger:  Here’s what happened: during scheduled maintenance work Wednesday night, we experienced some data corruption that impacted Blogger’s behavior. Since then, bloggers and readers may have experienced a variety of anomalies including intermittent outages, disappearing posts, and arriving at unintended blogs or error pages. A small subset of Blogger users (we estimate 0.16%) may have encountered additional problems specific to their accounts. Yesterday we returned Blogger to a pre-maintenance state and placed the service in read-only mode while we worked on restoring all content: that’s why you haven’t been able to publish.  We rolled back to a version of Blogger as of Wednesday May 11th, so your posts since then were temporarily removed. Those are the posts that we’re in the progress of restoring.

So stay with me as I try to remember and type what I wrote the first time:

We are still outside Dripping Springs until June 6th when we will return to Naval Air Station Corpus Christi for our Son-In-Laws' Navy "Winging" Ceremony. Shortly after that we will be making a fast exodus North to cooler climates. For now we planning to return to Colorado and possibly travel to Wyoming and Utah over the remaining months before the onset of winter. 

In the meantime, we are enjoying the company of our hosts, the owners of the park, Les and Sheri. There are only about 6 rigs that have been here as long or longer than us here in the park. We've become friendly with all of them. 

Living in a RV really makes one want to spend more time outside. So much so, that it's easy to get to meet your neighbors. We've sure met a lot of wonderful folks that RV. Weekends around here are interesting as it brings in the "Weekend Rv'ers" and a chance to meet more interesting folks.

Earlier in the week, I had noticed large brown paper wasps entering the exterior vents of or refrigerator. I tore out the nest however days later I discovered the wasps were back at work building another nest.  So, I bought some 1/4" hardwire screen at the Home Depot in Dripping Springs. 

I cut the hardwire and folded it in half, fitting it to the vents. Hopefully this will keep the wasps and other insects out of the vents. Our furnace and water heater vents were already covered with wasp screens.

Exterior Refrigerator vents

It has been exceptionally dry. All of Texas is in a drought stage. There is previously installed sod outside the door of our RV. We've been trying to keep it watered. However, whenever we water, the damp ground attracts an Armadillo over night that digs up the sod in search of worms and insects. 
Subsequently, Les and I devised a trap using information from the internet. We used 10" wide boards to funnel the armadillo into a live trap. Unfortunately the first attempts didn't work as the armadillo never entered the live trap although there were signs he visited the sod. 
Our next attempt was to build a trap door on the right side of the funneling area. In the picture below the trap door had been tripped when the armadillo entered. Apparently he lingered for a while again tearing up the sod before we assumed he just climbed out. Again avoiding the live trap! Les and I will have to work on building a better mouse...er 'dillo trap! I should mention that the 'dillo gets around as he has torn up other freshly watered (damp) areas in the park.

Tripped Armadillo Trap

At the time of the original post, we had not had any rain. However, our weather radio was going off the next two days as we had severe storms threatening. From those storms we got about an inch of rain. With the rain and damp ground, attracting the 'dillo to our trap has become impossible. But its time is coming!

The rain was just wonderful and much appreciated. It was enough to wash down the rig and knock the dust down at the same time infusing some green into the landscape.

Austin Town Lake Hike and Bike Trail and riding in the City.

May 4, 2011, Cottonwood Creek RV Park, Dripping Springs, Tx.
Today the weather cooperated and we had time to fit into our busy schedules another trip to Austin (lol). This time to ride our bikes on the Town Lake Hike and Bike Trail (TLHBT). 
I took the hitch off the front of our fifth wheel and put it on the back of the Jeep to load the bikes. Yesterday I made sure we had all our gear together so we could get an early start...early for us! We got on the road about 9:40. We've had unusual weather and it was in the upper 40's overnight but warming to the mid 70's.  Excellent weather for a bike ride.
We drove the 30 plus miles to Austin and then parked in Zilker Park.  Once again, under the Mopac (Tx Hwy 1).  As you may recall we visited Zilker Park to check it out on April 26th, 2011. 
Today we took off riding the bikes on the South side of Lady Bird Lake on the TLHBT heading east.

We started down the hard packed dirt trail.

The trail was very busy with pedestrians and joggers but I managed to get some photos without folks in them. Skinny tire bikes would find the sandy sections a bit sketchy.

Joyce at one of many scenic vistas along the trail.

Austin Skyline across Lady Bird Lake.

We discovered several of these pianos throughout the trails.

We never learned the significance of the pianos. Some were actually playable.

Barton Springs Pool

 Barton Springs Pool is a section of the lake/river that is fenced off for swimming.

One of several bridges.

Lotsa folks were out on the water.

Stevie Ray Vaughn Memorial on the trail.

Skyline from Pfluger Pedestrian/ Bike Bridge.

Lamar Blvd. Bridge

Pfluger Bridge

Another piano in the courtyard of the bridge catwalk.

The original Whole Foods Market?

Bike route map and parking.

Lance Armstrong Bikeway.

Joyce traveling down the Lance Armstrong Bikeway.

We rode into downtown for lunch on Music Row (6th Street). We ate at an overpriced little pub and had just an average meal. Afterwords we rode to Mellow Johnny's again in search of the Lance Armstrong Bikeway. The staff was kind enough to give us directions. Once on the bikeway we headed in the direction of the Jeep and ended up back on the TLHBT on the north side of Lady Bird Lake and followed that to Mopac which took us back to our Jeep.

We had a great time and couldn't have planned for better weather. Austin is such a bike friendly city. It has several bike lanes throughout the city and although we rode on many of the down town streets it didn't feel risky. We wished we had more time but we had to get back to Maggie and Rico.