Balmorhea, Texas

Thursday, June 11, 2009
So today is my first time to write but it’s the second day of our trip. I haven’t camped since I was a little kid at Garner State Park in the same tent that we are using for our California adventure. The tent has been camping as many times as me so we are clearly fresh novices to this experience. So far no rips, tears, or scrapes so we’re off to a good start! Yesterday we landed in Balmorhea at the state park and found a cute little campsite with a mysterious smell. Later that night, after a wonderful day of exploring the man-made nautral springs, mountains, wildlife and sunset we retired to the campsite for some homemade campfire cookin. All of the sudden a man on a truck drove up to our site and jumped out pointing. I became nervous at once because I thought he was the park ranger there to confiscate our glass bottle beverages that we enjoyed with dinner. As he rambled on quickly I discovered that he was excited about the bats that lived in the roof of our canopy where we were eating!! Alas, the smell had been discovered! It was the bat guano. We made small talk with the man and after he left we sat under the stars and admired the night sky. Phil took amazing pictures as usual, and I thoroughly enjoyed watching him take them throughout the day. He is very meticulous and passionate about photography and it’s interesting to watch him at work. Clearly, when rolling through the footage we took it’s obvious what few pictures I took ha! What a wonderful first night. This morning we woke up and went swimming in the natural pool with minnows and catfish. Phil was very brave and jumped right in while I slowly checked out the temperature of the water with my toes. Then I jumped in when I figured the minnows thought I had become a permanent fixture on the stair steps and began nibbling at my legs. You can snorkel there so Phil was all excited and wants to stop by again on our way home and use his snorkel gear. It was a really cool place!