Saturday, February 24, 2018 - Bentsen State Park (Biking & Birds); Laundry; Downloading Pictures from New Camera; Visit to Bass Pro; Cracker Barrell;

Saturday, February 24, 2018 - Bentsen State Park (Biking & Birds); Laundry; Downloading Pictures from New Camera; Visit to Bass Pro; Cracker Barrel

What a beautiful morning it was to ride our bicycles at Bentsen State Park.  It was slightly cool to start but warmed up as we rode along.  The ride today was so much easier than our last several times so we hope that means our legs are getting a little stronger.  We added just a little more distance to our route today, increasing by .4 of a mile.  It's small, but adding a little at a time is more doable for us.  We won't be able to ride tomorrow morning but hopefully we can ride most days during our last couple of weeks here.  I'd love to see us reach 6 miles or more by that time.

After the ride through the park, we returned to the ranger station, where we stopped so I could take a few pictures of the bids with my new camera.  I need to bring our tripod next time, so the camera will be more steady.  I did not realize until I was looking at the picture and editing them that I had hit video at some point, and was actually taking pictures while the video was on.  I managed to get a few pictures I will share, but I will continue to work on this and hopefully be sending you some really great pictures soon.  Take the time to enlarge them so you can see the birds in the picture.

Notice the bright orange bird at the top, left of center.  I believe it is an Altimara
Oriole.  There are also several green jays in the trees, and a woodpecker on the feeder.

A green jay and Altimara Oriole on the feeder.

Two green jays.  They are so pretty.

I believe this is a red winged blackbird and of course, a beautiful cardinal.

Another shot of the woodpecker, so you can see his red head, even though it's a little blurry.

I have no idea if these are some of the chachalacas or some other bird, but I just loved the starkness of this picture against the clouded sky.  

After having our breakfast, I drove the truck up to the park building to do a couple of loads of laundry.  All of the parking spaces were taken, so I drove back to Bentley and asked Dean to take me back up and drop me off.  

I loaded the clothes into 2 washing machines and then walked into the exercise room and pedaled the stationary bicycle for a few miles before going back to move the clothes to the dryers.  Once in the dryer I filled one with quarters 3 times and the other one 4 times. Towels are some of the hardest things to get dry, especially in these dryers.  They were still damp after 4 rounds in the dryer.  I brought them home and they are hanging on a shower curtain rod to finish drying.  I also hung up sheets - flat one on the bathroom shower rod and the fitted one in the bedroom using pant holder hangars, the one with clips on each end to hold the pants.  I just clipped sections of the sheet so it would dry finish drying quicker.  This worked great.  Wish I would have thought of it sooner.  Even though the park does not have the best laundry facility I have decided I'd rather do it here for the next two weeks than go back to the laundromat - especially after something in one of the washers got on several of our shirts last time.  I did not see the streaks until after they had dried completely.  

Dean is much better on a computer than I am, so I asked him if he could help me get my pictures downloaded to Google Photos from my new camera.  When he came to pick me up at the laundry later he was still working on it.  We did manage to figure it out and it was slow going when they started downloading.  Eventually all of the pictures were downloaded but I still need to crop them before adding them to Friday's blog.  Once it's past 6-6:30 in the morning the internet really gets bogged down.

After eating a little lunch, I fell asleep in my chair.  When I woke up Dean was outside so I got up and did a little cleaning/picking up inside.  He was in a bit of a funk today (he says he is getting hitch itch) so about 3 or so, I suggested we take a drive to the Bass Pro Shop in Harlingen for something to do.  Bass Pro Shops are always so massive looking, but we have not found one yet that compares to the "Granddaddy of them all" in Springfield, MO, only two hours from our hometown.  Still, we enjoyed just walking around looking in the various sections.  We found a couple of shirts for Dean that were on sale.  He needed a few nicer shirts since I recently removed several of his "good shirts" that were in the closet to the wear while "working outside shirts".

We enjoyed our drive to Harlingen.  Dean prefers taking the back roads even if the distance is greater.  We both enjoy driving through the country.  We took the route furthest to the south where we enjoyed seeing the vegetable fields and cows grazing in their pastures. 

I snapped a few pictures as we were leaving Bass Pro.  They do a great job of "decorating" around their stores.  I love how they brought the Texas theme in with cacti and such.

Steer, and various types of cacti for a Texas theme.

By now we were getting hungry.....again!  We were trying to decide between Applebee's and Cracker Barrel, and finally selected Cracker Barrel since it did not require leaving the immediate area.  When the hostess told us about their featured dinner (chicken, rice and mushroom gravy, with two sides) before seating us, I thought she said it was $5.99.  After going over the menu, we finally decided we'd just have the featured meal since it was such a good price.  Imagine our surprise when the ticket came and the meal was $10.39 each.  I did ask about it, and evidently I did not hear her correctly, so in the future I will double check the price before ordering.  None of the other meals we considered ordering were as much, so that added to our frustration. The worse part for me is it had a layer of cooked onions between the chicken and the gravy over the rice.  I'm not fond of onions at all and especially these - they had a really strong taste to them.  However, despite the onions, the meal wasn't too bad after I pushed most of them aside.

It was a nice drive home.  I worked on the blog for a couple of hours once we returned, however the internet (both at Val's and my Verizon hotspot) was too bogged down to load the pictures from my camera.  I'll be up early tomorrow to try again before everyone else starts connecting to the Internet.  (As you can see it worked!)