... Just About a Mile from Texarkana ...

We actually did see them old cotton fields, but they weren't back home, they were in central Missouri. We however, ARE back home... in Texas! Right now we're on the eastern shore of Wright Patman Lake, near Texarkana, Texas. This part of Texas is known as the Piney Woods Region and it encompasses most of the eastern portion of the state. Weather-wise it's late Summer-like with only the earliest foliage beginning to yellow. We'll be meandering about the region until just after Election Day.

On our way here we spent a couple of days at another COE campground in Missouri. This one was at Wappapello Lake in the Mark Twain National Forest. Very nice park.

While we were there, we did a little sight-seeing at the Ozark National Scenic Riverways. According to http://www.nps.gov/ozar/index.htm

 Ozark National Scenic Riverways is the first national park area to protect a river system. The Current and Jacks Fork Rivers are two of the finest floating rivers you'll find anywhere. 

Spring-fed, cold and clear they are a delight to canoe, swim, boat or fish. Besides these two famous rivers, the park is home to hundreds of freshwater springs, caves, trails and historic sites such as Alley Mill.

The park is really big; almost 81,000 acres of forested land along 134 miles of it's two rivers. We only visited one site, Big Spring. 

Big Spring produces over 280 million gallons of water a day, enough to fill Bush Stadium (in St. Louis) in only 33 hours! This makes it one of the largest spring in the United States, and among the 10 largest in the world. 

When rainwater containing carbonic acid, (from water vapor combining with carbon dioxide in the atmosphere), percolates through the ground (from up to 41 miles away), and comes in contact with limestone deposits, it dissolves the limestone, forms caves, underground streams, and creates a calcium bicarbonate solution. When the water collects, the calcium bicarbonate in it mixes with oxygen releasing the carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere. This leaves calcium carbonate suspended in the water. This mineral suspension gives the water its milky blue hue. When the water flows out of the ground, it becomes the spring. The Current River maintains this milky blue appearance for miles.

You have to see it to believe it, but since you're not there, click on the pictures below, and BELIEVE it!

Big Spring emerging from its source underground (from opposite riverbank)

Big Spring emerging from its source underground (from above)

Big Spring becomes a mineral laden, slightly acidic river

and then heads off to become part of the Current River

Big Spring flow at 1/4 second

 We want to go back and explore the park in depth and maybe paddle both rivers. It's a must do!

Going South

We've worked our way south through Illinois, heading for warmer climes. We had to make a couple of one-night stops in order to find some warmth, but once we got to Southern Illinois, by golly we found it.

Outbuilding in Central Illinois

We spent 4 days at the South Sandusky Army Corp of Engineers (USACE, or COE) campground on their Rend Lake Project. Rend Lake is a 13 mile long by 3 mile wide 18,900 acre impoundment surrounded by 20,000 acres of land.

Just a Small Part of Rend Lake

The campgrounds are well maintained, and gorgeous, as is typical for COE managed areas. They offer a wide variety of campsites,

Nice Park-like Setting

from manicured backyard types 

Bottomland

to more rustic wooded bottomland ones.

Full Hookup Site

We spent 2 days in a full hookup spot on the eastern shore of Sandusky Cove and then moved to a electric only site on the northern shore of the same cove.

It was sunny and warm during the day and cool at night. We were at this same site (the second one),  a couple of years  ago when a tornado blew through, knocking down lots of trees. The Corp has since cut up the fallen trees, but left the wood on the ground. They're encouraging campers to gather it and burn it as firewood, and we were happy to take them up on the offer. Also, when people depart from their sites, they leave their unused firewood behind for others to gather. This worked well for us as the folks across the way from us left a lot of nice hardwood all split and ready to burn. We had a couple of campfires, but we still left quite a bit of that nice wood for the next guys.

Both of our sites were located on peninsulas, so we had a 3-sided panoramic view from the HOW. 

View From the HOW

Fall Colors at Rend Lake

The fall colors were beginning to show what God's paintbrush can do.

Our Closest Neighbors

We were one of two occupied campsites in our loop, the other being some tents way down the road. Beautiful, peaceful, quiet; what more could we have wanted ...Pelicans? 





Yep! God brought us here during the fall migration stop-over of the American White Pelican. Some of North America's largest birds, rivaled only by the California Condor, these suckers have up to 9-FOOT wingspans. While we're not strangers to these birds, they're common along the Mississippi River, and we've even seen them flying along the Kishwaukee River, we've never witnessed their cooperative hunting behavior.

Unlike Brown Pelicans which dive from the air into the water to scoop up fish in their flexible bills, American White Pelicans swim along the surface and scoop up fish as they come upon them.

When they are in a group, they team up, swim in formation to, for lack of a better word,  herd the fish.

American White Pelicans Capturing Their Prey

American White Pelicans "herding" fish

Once the Pelicans have enough fish crowded into a small space, they dip their bills into the water and scoop up their prey.

Sometimes, they kind of half-fly/ half-swim to gather even more.

Game On!

Gotcha!

AGAIN!

It's truly a remarkable behavior.

I apologize for taking so long to get this episode published. For some reason I had to keep dropping into the HTML editor to get the text and pictures to behave. It took FOREVER! I don't know why, but I think that perhaps Blogger can't handle the amount of content I post, especially the size of the pictures. I could compress them but I want you, my readers, to be able to click on a picture and get a full size quality image. I may have to go with a more robust blog provider. We'll see...

Oh man, we into it now boys...

It's October and it's been too cold for my likin' for a while now. We gotta commence ta hittin' the road and moseyin' ta somewheres warm n' dry.

Even the geese are leavin'

I lied about posting pictures and stories from prior adventures. Sorry. Summer went by way too fast. Of course it was still Winter until mid-June. 

Every year Blackhawk Valley Campground has a series of charity events, usually to help out someone in the campground community. This year's beneficiary was a gentleman who has been having dialysis three time a week for the past seven years, while he waits for a donor kidney.

This year the campground hosted several theme-basket raffles, a garage sale, a poker walk, 

a rubber duck race 

and the main event, the 10th annual Labor Day weekend auction. Penny volunteered to organize it all. She and I, her handy dandy helper, put in countless hours creating posters and signage, sending out emails, making phone calls, recruiting volunteers to help out with the events, soliciting donations from merchants in the form of gift certificates for meals, goods and services, and camping related items, and who knows what all else.

This year people donated a Blackhawks jersey,
















a Bears jersey, 






















a Bears jacket, 


some really valuable watches, a U.S. Silver Certificate and two rolls of Wheat Pennies. 









The Weber Company donated two new grills, 






































The Home Depot donated a battery powered tool combo kit, 








and another company donated a Lift Assist Recliner.

These events take a lot of effort, and we couldn't do it without the tireless help of a whole bunch of volunteers who helped out with everything 








from setting up canopies, 

tables and chairs, 

to manning the food tent during the auction, 

and hosting poker walk stops, (complete with all manner of eats and drinks for walkers to buy for additional donations), to running the garage sale. 

The people here are generous beyond measure. 

They make up and donate theme baskets of every kind imaginable, 

donate new and like new items of all kinds, 

and then, turn around and bid on the very things everyone donated. 

Even in this sucky economy, they give sacrificially of their time and resources to help a neighbor in need. I am honored and proud to be a part of this community.

Our plans for Autumn are to leave Northern Illinois next week and meander our way down to the pine county of East Texas in time to vote in the November Elections. Much is at stake in our home state and nationally. We take our privilege to vote seriously, and as John Stuart Mill once said,  "Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing."

After that it's down to the Gulf of Mexico, follow the coast to Corpus Christi, then up to Hondo for a few weeks of "HOW Improvement". Following a short stay there, we head West to Arizona for some boon-docking out in the dessert.

Stay tuned and HANG ON!