We found these growing along the trail while out for a hike.

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Lake Catherine

The people in the campsite next to us have some sort of weird looking popup camper. I wish they would hurry up and get it leveled and set it up so I can see how it works. I've never seen anything like it before.

We're at Lake Catherine State Park in Arkansas -- sort of near Hot Springs. I absolutely love the Ouichitas in the autumn. It is much cooler than usual, maybe in the lower 40's at night, 60's during the day. The woods are still mostly green too. I was hoping we'd see the vivid oranges, reds and yellows that autumn brings, but . . . not this year.

We left Dallas about 6:00PM and got here around midnight. We set up in a campsite down by the lake at first, but when we went to pay for the site this morning, we were told that it was reserved and we'd have to move. Now we are in the woods. I think I like it better up here; at least there is no power plant in our view.

When we got up this morning, we discovered that racoons had pretty much cleaned out our ice chest. They had several packages of bacon and sausage for their nighttime feast. Although they had opened our tuperware containers, they didn't much like the rice and stuff in them. They were content to simply put a little dirt and coon spit in the cream cheese.

There are deer everywhere around here. They aren't very timid about being around people. There were several in our campsite when we pulled in and they were in no big hurry to leave. They just looked at us as if they were expecting US to leave.

Today has been a very lazy day. It didn't take us long at all to move our campsite. After that, we sat around for awhile, enjoyed Tom's campfire, explored the area for awhile, went and checked out the cabins, then took a nap.

There are three hiking trails here. Tomorrow, I hope to hike the little one. It is only a couple of miles.

Tom put our new lantern together and got it going. I got our new/old 35mm camera and got it operational with film and a battery. Poor thing has been sorely neglected since we got the digital.

Tom has made us some gourmet seafood gumbo with rice. Umm! It is nearly sunset so will probably light the lantern in awhile and sit sipping wine by the campfire until bedtime which is nearly always early while in the woods. We brought our air mattress and four sleeping bags and it is wonderfully snuggly-comfy on these cool nights.