October 1st Trip
I'm pretty proud of myself for nailing down making my car bunk stackable for travel. I knew looking at it that I probably wasn't going to be able to drive with it set up, so I'm very glad my plan to make it stow away worked out. I just probably need to take a ziptie and tie together the end of those bungie cords.
I also wanted to take Eggbug with me. Eggbug ought to see the world. And carrying the spirit of Cohost with me seems right.
Visited the Texas Forestry Museum since I was up in the Piney Woods. Part of my goal with traveling was just to get out. To do things I hadn't often done. Go somewhere new, just because.
The nice part of the museum is that since the area was all logging camps/sawmill towns/paper mill towns, most of their exhibits were directly donated. A nice way to preserve a bit of history. From tools to logbooks to test sheets of newspaper from the paper mill.
They also saved a cross-section of lumber from a tree that sprouted around 1579 and was felled in 1939. Dates through the colonization period are marked by pins set into the rings. I am kind of a sucker for visual displays of history like this.
They also moved an old firewatch tower onto the museum grounds and I thought it was too pretty not to photograph.
There are no photographs but I also visited an art museum in town. It was nice, but mostly made me think my relationship to art felt weird. Or at least out of place in the setting. Someone made these, and I respect that, although not knowing the artists made me not feel as much from the scenes of life. I usually cop out and say that the last step in making art is the viewer so maybe it is me.
They did have a nice temporary exhibit of art pieces from three generations in the same family intermingled. What they want to show in self portraits, how they display landscapes, I thought it was a very interesting room.
I've stayed at this campsite before, and this time I actually did reserve a site that has a view of the lake and isn't blocked off completely by trees. It was a nice, temperate evening. Should've started eating earlier because I'd forgotten how fast it gets dark after the summer.
I hop up from the second row behind the driver's seat and then sort of roll over onto the bed. There's enough room the squat/kneel but I am not possessed of a huge amount of grace, so I figure out new ways every time to hop up and roll over. Perhaps I should get a camping pillow at some point so I don't feel like I need to back away from the head end of the bed.
My first go around I realized that setting my glasses and phone down on a sloped surface was a little dicey so I got that little plastic tub. Very important to have something large and findable in the dark.
Insect screens over the back windows let me roll them down to let the car vent and get to ambient temperature, although I'm wondering if I should get a set of screens for the front doors as well. By about 9 or 10 PM the outside was getting to 72 F on the way to a low of about 68 F or so. But warm air trapped in the car took about another hour and a half to two hours to start getting nice. I think around midnight I turned my fan off, didn't need it any more.
Maybe I need a second fan to set up by another window and try to make cross-flow through the car. Or some kind of tarp to put over the car and try to shield it from the evening sun? Make a billows out of garbage bags to try to force cool air into the car? Many things to consider.
Woke up in the morning feeling much better. I splurged on those cushions enough for me to be able to sleep on my side and not feel the plywood, and by gum I am going to lay on my side and drift in and out of wakefulness, watching the lake slowly be illuminated. Last time, I woke up and felt off so I decided to go home right after breakfast, so that I could be home with the nauseating-grade headache hit. This time I got to stay and explore one of the park's trails. It was a quiet time, there weren't more than one or two campsites filled on each loop. The perks of being able to go in the middle of the week.