Today was a lazy day, a welcome change after so much rushing!
We got into the Dallas hotel at about 1am, and decided to sleep in until about 11am before heading out again to the Lone Mound Ranch near Shamrock, Texas.We had found the Lone Mound Ranch on a phone application called “Hipcamp”, which is a place for campers of all types (RV’s, tents, etc.,) to book campsites, and after reading about it and the fact that they can have dinner ready and waiting for you to cook it over an open flame… we were sold! It sounded a lot better than the Walmart parking lot… at least!So… the first order of business was coffee, which meant a walk under the freeway to Starbucks at the World Trade Center in Dallas. The building is essentially a very large mall on the first few levels but the architecture and layout was pretty cool so I’m sure I’ll add a picture of that here as soon as I can. After that, we left town for Shamrock, and the ranch.
It only took a few hours, relative to some of our other drives this past week it felt downright short! We stopped at a Walmart along the way and bought some camp chairs (this wasn’t really planned) and some cooking equipment, along with vegetables and chicken for kebabs. We met the owner, Lana, at the Country Store, and picked up eight steak burgers to eat while we were at camp. They lent us a little hibachi-style stove to use… and between that and a piece of cast iron skillet we were ready to go!
We set off for Campsite #2… and settled in.The camp was perfect, a small fire pit of logs and cinder blocks surrounded by nice flat places to sit and eat/drink. Bubba began lighting the hibachi-grill while Aaron and Albert built the main campfire. Soon Bubba’s fire was roaring, and so was the main fire after a lot more work with wet wood, tiny twigs and plenty of grass. Yeah… it’s been raining here, and without real firewood it definitely took some doing but the fires did their job and we enjoyed chicken kebabs and cheeseburgers!
It was a great night.We topped off the night with some drinks around the dying campfire, and just when we were about to go to bed around 10pm… the stars came out from behind the clouds. It seemed like it was just for us. I’ll post some pictures if any came out… but it was a great experience to be somewhere so remote with no lights to interfere with the display, I think most of the stars were even shining through a few layers of clouds really… they were just that bright!
I’ll need to do some editing on that photo… but there’s the best one I captured with no tripod…
We let the fire die, then poured out the remains of the cooler ice on it to put it out completely. The sleep was rough in the RV with four grown men… but the sunrise was amazing and the bird-calls were numerous and a great way to “wake up” this morning. If you’re ever in Texas… look up Lone Mound Ranch. I can’t recommend it enough.Tomorrow it’s back to Denver. Really. We’ve got about another eight hours to go and have covered an impressive amount of ground to date. See you soon, Denver!
