ILSP is HUGE! There were over 300 campsites, but since we were tent camping and didn't need electricity, we were on the quieter side of the park. We had a beautiful camping spot, right near the lake.
We got lucky and it was pretty quiet, since it was the beginning of the week. Across the lake from us was Camp Longhorn, a summer camp, and I was a little worried at first, since we could hear their sailing classes and campfire programs, but they settled down soon after dark. Actually, I was a little envious. They had huge slides that went down into the lake and lots of boats and cabins right on the water. It looked like so much fun!
Jed was excited that we were going to be sleeping in the tent.
He was also thrilled with the proximity of the water to the many rocks in our campsite. He made many trips down that path with rocks in hand.
There was a cool little spot to climb around on behind our picnic table. We saw lots of lizards and deer hanging out here near the water where it was quiet.
After we got camp set up and ate dinner, we decided to cool off in the lake. We waded out near the rental area and Jed was convinced we should be playing in a paddle boat. We had a great time and the water felt so nice and cool. When we decided to get out, we discovered...leeches! SICK! Thankfully, Jed didn't have any (probably because his feet never touched the bottom), so he went exploring while Dave and I picked leeches off each other. How romantic! Just as we were getting the last leech off, Jed slipped on the stairs leading down to the dock and tumbled down. He scraped his ribs up a little and did he howl! I finally got him calmed down enough so he could talk to me, and the first thing out of his mouth was "poor guy fall down." Poor guy indeed.
Once the sun set, the frogs started singing. It was fun to listen to the different frog calls...for a while. After about two hours, it got old. It was hot in our tent, even with the door and window wide open, and the full moon was shining right in the door. Jed was definitely enjoying the freedom to roll around wherever he pleased and he was having a hard time settling down to sleep. At 11:15 he rolled over and stuck his face in mine. I asked him "What's up, Jed?" and he replied "no more frog?" How I wished I could turn them off for him!
Tuesday morning, Dave and I woke up pretty early and decided to let Jed sleep. Dave went fishing while I got ready for the day. Jed slept for quite a long time after we got up and it was nice for Dave and I just to hang out and listen to the lake shore wake up.
finally got comfortable, I guess.
Jed was pretty mesmerized by the fishing pole, although he couldn't decide if it was a pole, a stick or a gun. We'll have to work on that.
After breakfast, we decided to take our canoe out for a spin.
We headed over to the lake store for some water that didn't taste like fishy swimming pool, and while we were making our way, Dave noticed a small leak. I guess that's what happens to a canoe that doesn't get used often enough. Anyway, the store thankfully had some patches that worked perfectly, but we had to wait for a little while the bottom of the canoe dried, and then while the patch dried.
Jed took the time to enjoy a sucker and rest on his pink floaty that we found abandoned at our campsite. Once the patch was dry, we re-launched the canoe and were good to go. We headed across the lake to a place called the Devil's Waterhole, where there's a cliff on one side that lots of people like to jump off. None of us were brave enough to jump, but we met a nice lady from San Antonio who was lounging on a floaty chair, and her boys were jumping off like crazy. We had a good time talking to her, watching the boys jump and playing in the water. Jed loved being in the water and is learning to keep his mouth closed while swimming. He likes to count to three and have one of us throw him in the water and he loves to practice swimming between us.
The lake gets fairly narrow around the Devil's Waterhole and then widens up into this little cove.
After our morning's swim, we canoed back across the lake to our campsite for lunch. The wind had picked up and we definitely earned our lunch! Once we had rested a bit and cleaned up, we decided to try fishing again. We didn't have much luck in our first spot, but we made a funny movie:
In case you were wondering, the movie in question is Charlotte's Web. Jed is completely obsessed with that, Winnie the Pooh and Toy Story 3. I know them all by heart.
Since we weren't successful in our first spot, we went to the fishing pier near our campsite. Dave fished while Jed and I splashed our feet in the water. Jed ended up completely soaked and was totally worn out.
Behind the pier you can see the Inks Lake dam. The lake is a naturally occurring lake, but it was reinforced with a dam by the CCC in the 1930's.
Dave tried all the lures in his tackle box (he forgot to grab the one that has the flies) but had no luck. I blame the heat and wind--no one around us was catching anything either. And truthfully, I'm not sure what we would have done if he'd caught anything. I've never dealt with crappies, sunfish or bass. We would have just put them back, I guess. Since we were skunked, we decided to cool off and go swimming again, but drive to the Devil's Waterhole instead of canoe this time. Before we even made it from our campsite to the Waterhole parking lot, Jed had fallen asleep. So we took a little drive and then came back to the campsite, where we left the car running while Jed slept and we made dinner. After dinner we did go swimming again, but it wasn't as fun as the morning's swim, because the Waterhole was a lot more crowded.
We left after about an hour, because we wanted to go a program put on by one of the rangers. While I was making our reservations online, I looked at some of the activities offered at the park and was a little sad to see that most of them were on the weekends. However, when we got there, we learned that since it was the full moon, they would be holding the "Owl Prowl" on Tuesday night. We learned about some of the owls in the area and then went on a little hike to an open area of rocks where the ranger played some owl calls and we listened to see if any answered. This wasn't really new to us, since that's what we did for work at City of Rocks, but it was fun to talk to the ranger. We also saw lots of bats out hunting and watched the moon come up and it was beautiful. Jed was so funny--he kept shouting "owl, owl!" and saying "hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo." One of the calls of the screech owl that the ranger played sounded a lot like a whinnying horse, and Jed kept saying "horse?" and looking so confused. He made so much noise that even if an owl had wanted to talk to us, it would have been scared, so I was a little embarrassed, but everyone seemed to think he was pretty cute.
Tuesday night we all slept much better, since we turned the tent to face the breeze and be away from the moon. We were all so exhausted from the day's activities that we fell asleep pretty quickly, frogs and all.
Stay tuned for all of Wednesday's fun!
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