3-21-08: On Beyond Austin

Dawdled around the hostel doing Internet and laundry and breakfast. I felt lazy so I asked for another night but they were booked up. So I did my errands and got a little tour of Austin. It could be anywhere in the US. Little Texas stigma visible. Tee shirts and bumper stickers demand: “Keep Austin Weird.” The Whole Foods store was as big as Walmart. Huge and jammed with stylish graceful people. We are out of the desert now. Lots of water here.

So I head east again. The first spot of green on the map—Davy Crockett National Forest as target. But the GPS has no knowledge of the new freeways and toll roads and sends me too far north and then by two lane blacktop across rolling green pasturelands and running rivers. Historical markers every couple of miles and almost that many churches. There is a wide shoulder and the convention is to pull onto it when someone starts riding your bumper though we are all rolling at the posted 70 or better.

I pull into a “recreation area” in the National Forest and, sure enough, there is my campground in a loblolly pine forest with blooming dogwood trees and little Ratcliff Lake. My new tent replacing the cheesy one I bought about a week ago seems small but better. REI has a nice replacement policy so it is worth trying.

Rice and beans as night falls and the frogs start peeping. Starlight, full moon rising, fireflies, and—oh baby! This computer is attracting a lot of mosquitoes. I’m out of here and into the tent.