While camping at Lake Whitney State Park, we took a 30 minute drive for a day trip to the small park of Meridian. I had already come to the conclusion that camping here wasn’t going to be necessary and possibly undesirable due to the small amount of sites available and close proximity to Highway 22. But we were anxious to check out some trails and “Lake” Meridian.

Our drive out was pretty cool as we crossed the Whitney Dam and the kids saw the Brazos River and downstream power plant. They enjoyed tracking the supply power lines and spotting distribution stations along the way. Once we arrived at the park, I was fascinated by how such a short drive west would produce such dramatically different scenery. We were in full on cedar and cactus hill country!

We arrived around 11, so we started with our packed lunch by the lake. There weren’t many people around, but we did notice we heard highway noise and 18wheelers during our lunch. The CCC constructed building that housed the bathrooms and a general recreation area was very original and had a HUGE, old wisteria growing on it!

During lunch, we spent some time selecting our hiking trail. There were more trail options at this park than Lake Whitney with the longest being a little over 2 miles. More points of interest as well. We had heat working against us that day, so we went with a 3/4 mile loop that would touch on a few note worthy sites and the rest we would be able to drive to or past. As we drove to the parking near our trail, we crossed a CCC stone and timber bridge that hadn’t needed repair since its construction in 1934! I call that decent preservation! Once parked, we crossed the road to a look out point to enjoy another view of the lake.

Our trail started out simple and somewhat “boring” for the kids. I’ve learned by now that flat gravel trails just don’t hold their attention as well as mixed up terrain does. But I do have to take a moment to commend this parks trail system as possibly one of the best I’ve been on for maintenance and organization! At every intersection along the way, there were trail name signs and the trees and signs were marked in the same color as the lines on the map. Very impressive and a first that I’ve encountered.

We found a bird blind along the way and kids thought it was interesting. After that pit stop, elevation and terrain changed slightly and the kid’s spirits picked up. They really went nuts when they spotted a cut off trail that led to a large erosion “cave”! They remembered one similar at Mother Neff State Park (visited in June 2016). Further exploration in the area revealed a dried up runoff waterfall and pool location. The kids were quite proud of their discoveries.

Once back at the car, we drove the remainder of the park and stopped at another overlook on the opposite side of the park from the previous one. The road up to that point and back is VERY narrow for a “2 way road” and trying to pass another car while navigating the side of a hill and curves would have been harrowing. Just another reason I love off season park visits. Driving past the RV sites, tent camp and primitive camp sites just further confirmed my lack of desire to ever camp here. The RV spots were in full sun and right beside the highway. The tent sites were approximately 10×10 areas set directly along side the afore mentioned park road and totally lacked privacy.

The kids wanted to try out the lake and while this park’s beach area is leashed pet friendly, Sally and I opted for a shady picnic table. The boys dove in and went to doing the usual rock throwing, leaps and hand stands while Ashlyn had…reservations.

An accumulation of sludge on the rocky bottom was not appealing to most bare feet. Except for the boys of course, haha. Weston even came to retrieve Ashlyn again and promised to hold her hand until she liked the water.

He didn’t get very far with her, LOL!

About an hour later, we called it a day and headed back for our 3rd and final night at Lake Whitney. After hearing the highway noise in Meridian all day, I mentioned to the kids that I would take boat noise over those 18 wheelers any day. I had to laugh that night, when at about midnight, we had over an hour of loud air boat noise keep us up! Teach me to watch my words.

Overall, this park is exceptional on trails and the lake provides I’m sure decent fishing and non motorized boating. I’m definitely glad we made it a day trip. The park suited us just fine for that amount of time.

-Lindsay

Anxious to kick off a hopefully adventurous fall regardless of fall baseball and competition dance team, we jumped on the first four free days the calendar allowed for some pop up camping. Even if we missed 2 ball practices to do so, haha! Initially, I wanted to take the 4 hour trip to Lake Brownwood to make a 3 night stay “worthwhile”. However, after a recent google review stated the lake was at an all time low, we opted for a more nearby 2-for-1 deal with Lake Whitney coupled with a day trip to Meridian. Knocking 2 parks off the list would make 3 nights away worthwhile, for sure. 😉

On Wednesday, 8/15, we arrived at Lake Whitney by 10 am. I had checked the campsite availability online the day before and didn’t see a need for reservations. I really prefer showing up and taking the Rangers’ recommendation on best sites to fit our needs. They’re the experts after all. Obviously, going when it isn’t busy is what makes this tactic work. And it really paid off this time! I told the headquarters Ranger that shade was our priority, next- proximity to bathhouse, and 3rd- water view/access. And she hooked us up! We ended up in a small camping loop on the far side of the park near a dog friendly swim area AND the newest bathhouse! Our site was large and completely shaded. A simple path through the brush took us out to the lake’s rocky edge. And while we were in fact the closest to the bathhouse in that loop, it was still a decent walk. So we mostly operated discretely with a “pee bucket” and drove to the facilities for number 2 and showers for the duration of our stay.

 

The camper came up and was organized pretty quickly! After lunch, it was only 12:30, so we got some nearby exploring done before swim time.

 

We absolutely LOVED our little swim area! We had it all to ourselves and EVERYONE had a ball. The wind was up and there was the most soothing waves crashing sound. I could’ve fallen asleep! But alas, 3 young kids in the water wouldn’t allow that, haha. Sally ran and splashed to her heart’s content before discovering the relaxed life under the canopy.

 

I had to force the kids out after 3 and started dinner at our campsite. I finally decided to throw some fire in with my solo camping excursions and brought along the Coleman stove for the first time. It took longer to get some good heat going in the breezy outdoors, but the final product tasted just so dang good every time! The kids and I couldn’t decide if it was cooking outdoors, eating outdoors or being just plain hungry every meal; but our rather simple meals were SO TASTY!

 

After dinner, we did a drive through of the park to check everything out before showers. There are so many campsites! Over a hundred sites, 30 some odd shelters, a cabin or 2, group sites and even a reception hall. AND an airstrip! All I could think was, “I wouldn’t want to be here when this place was full!” Showers were easy and effective enough. It took some finagling with Sally because her velcro nature doesn’t make it easy to leave her unattended unless she is kenneled. She’s a nervous chewer, lol! I’ve already begun shopping travel kennels to keep in pop up for our next trip, but for this one we just had to rotate who stood outside with her. Ashlyn and I had a pretty good system since she is mature enough to handle herself without supervision in the showers. It also helped that the facilities were empty every single time we went, to make things even more comfortable. That evening, we enjoyed some more water views and photographic opportunities and were in bed before dark and sacked out!

 

The next morning I woke up with a wicked crick in my neck and had a coffee malfunction…not a good start, but we rallied after a 15 minute run to a gas station in the town of Whitney, yes- coffee is that big of a deal, and got ready for our hike. There are only 2 one mile trails in the entire park and we were going to do one each morning. The kids picked the one with two bridges and we enjoyed a nice, wooded walk. With 2 bridges along the way, of course. We got a good look at the landscape of the official park swimming area and that only made us grateful for our quiet little corner. The rocky bottom we had was much more desirable for water clarity than the muddy/sand on this side of the park.

 

We had lunch back at camp, and then it was time for swimming again and we enjoyed another 3+ hours of water activity.

After dinner, we had a bit more energy and decided on some fishing. I kept it simple giving each child a lure of their choice and we walked to a little cove by our campsite where the kids chunked plastic for a little while.

 

Archer quickly bored and took to throwing rocks. Then peeing in the water.

 

Ashlyn was out next and just took in scenery. Weston casted and reeled until I told him it was time to call it in and hit showers.

We wanted to watch the sunset after hitting early showers. Those plans altered, however, when a stray dog showed up in our site. He was friendly enough to contain and kept away from Sally and the kids until one of the oncall Rangers I notified promptly came to retrieve him. Fortunately, the ranger recognized the dog and knew where to return him. But, by then, it was dark and we had missed our sunset on the lake. We grabbed quick showers and went to bed glad we had one more evening to catch it.

Friday morning went smoothly and my neck crick was gone, but Archer and I had to wait until 9 AM for Weston and Ashlyn to wake up! By 10 we were starting the 2nd trail and quickly realized it was out in the open prairie alongside the lake. And it was already 92 degrees out. Nope! We opted to take the opportunity for a head start on our day trip to Meridian State Park.

 

On our way out of the park to Meridian, we located the plaque about the town of Towash that had been engulfed by the lake. Ashlyn immediately brought up that she was impressed that the creation of the town began with Natives and Settlers choosing to work together. We want to do some google searching for images or possibly accounts of divers finding ruins.

It was 3:15 when we returned to camp and 101 degrees with no breeze. It was officially hot! I had run out of fuel for the stove (learning curve here, BUT I did prepare for the possibility with some no cook food options). In that heat I was perfectly happy not to cook that evening. We took early showers and were hanging out in a very cool camper by 4pm. I am quite impressed with that camper’s ability to not only cool off fast but maintain the chill! We stayed indoors playing Uno and checkers until after 7 then headed out to catch our sunset.

And it was worth the wait!

 

By that night, our campsite loop was full and about midnight we had disruptive boaters running the water along the park’s coastline for a few hours. I was grateful to be packing it in Saturday morning. It was becoming obvious the weekends carry a different atmosphere at this park. While we definitely LOVED our time there and the water and park were clean and refreshing, I don’t particularly see a “must come back” reason. But that’s only because I know I still have so many other parks with beautiful water left to explore! And I can’t wait to hit the road again and do just that!

-Lindsay

After Weston and his Lumberjack team won 1st place in 6U TTAB district tournament, it was on to the state championship tournament. This year’s location was selected for Riesel, TX. Just to the east of Waco. With a little bit of coordinating and airbnb hunting on Dad’s part, we were all set for July 16-20 to play some ball and vacation as much as possible. Here’s a day by day run down of our week.

Monday:

Nathan’s parents, the kids and I arrive in Waco a few hours before check in time for our apartment and we hit up Magnolia Market. The crowds were light compared to other times I’ve been and we were able to browse the market, eat a food truck lunch and get cupcakes fairly easy!

The Dr Pepper museum is located a block away from the Magnolia compound and we were happy to post up in their air conditioned soda shop and have a few treats. Dad met us there and with still time to kill before check in, we toured the museum. A lot had changed since the last time I had been there and I personally found the museum to be a little droll for kids. It was self guided and most of the displays were old marketing materials. There was a fun story telling robot that share how Dr Pepper came to be and the remains of neat/creepy artisan well that we found most entertaining.

Check in to our apartment went easy and we got settled in nicely. Unfortunately, and as would be for the remainder of the week, the pool was under renovation and inaccessible. The 7 of us, man I love my car, loaded up and grabbed dinner at Torchy’s Tacos before game 1 time. And let me just say Torchy’s is AWESOME! Count me in as hooked. Thank goodness Tyler has one.

Game 1 was against the Belton Rebels at 8pm and we were so grateful for a night game. The temps the entire week stayed over 100. Night time was still hot but without sunlight. Haha. This game was hard fought and we earned Tuesday night off with our win of 27-26. After the game, the sports association put on one of the biggest, brightest and elaborate fireworks display I think I’ve ever seen! Pictured is Weston on the right with 2 of his buds. 💜

Tuesday:

We woke up happy to have a whole day to ourselves and spent the majority of it at BSR Cable Park in Mexia. This place was awesome! I could see it potentially not being as family friendly on the weekends due to liberal alcohol rules on premise, but we had zero issues on our Tuesday there. Probably my least favorite part of the park is that the well water they are using is heavily dyed blue to the point of no visibility at about 6 inches. Dad and I were surprised we didn’t turn blue spending time in it. Haha Regardless of the water, we thoroughly enjoyed lazy river floats, people watching at the slides, Dad’s own ride down the slide and playing in a beach area while wakeboarders went by. We headed out after 5 hours of fun for dinner at the apartment. After dinner, wanting to make the most of our day off from ball, we went to the historic Hippodrome Theatre in downtown that has undergone renovation and watched “Hotel Transylvania 3”. The movie theatre areas are set up like a Studio Movie Grill, but the performance area was stunning.

Wednesday:

That evening we had a double header game that Nathan was coming in for the day to watch, so we kept it pretty low key that day. I met the other baseball moms at Magnolia Table at 6:15 am while Dad and the kids slept in and we enjoyed a nice break AND breakfast. 😉 The food really was good and hearty. I would qualify it worth the wait even though we managed to avoid one that early. Nathan came into town and after a restock at HEB, we relaxed and napped at the apartment until 5:00 game 2 time.

We played Riesel’s Hulksmash and took it 21-9. Dad got a good picture of Weston up to bat. We had an hour to kill until our 8:00 game and we just opted to post up in the shade in the parking lot.

Game 3 was against the Mineola Bombers that were actually from our district and this would be the 4th time we’ve played them this season. They wanted to beat us pretty bad, but fell short 23-13. Dad got some more good action pics. Weston was so out of it by this game and after it took all he had to smile for a picture. Haha

Thursday:

Nathan had to go back home Wednesday night and we woke up Thursday morning well rested. We opted for air conditioned activities and went to the Texas Ranger Museum. This one intrigued the kids a little better with its scavenger hunts and a 45 min film covering the history of the Rangers. There were a ton of artifacts with information galore. For a full experience, Ashlyn probably got the most out of it. Younger than her, would bore quickly. Weston did find a pretty cool baseball in the gift shop and I dropped the $9 to buy it 😆.

We met up with the majority of the team at a restaurant near the Silos called The Backyard Bar for lunch. We were severely underwhelmed with this place. The food was less than mediocre and the prices ridiculous. Everything was slider style and they put hamburgers on donuts. Weird. To make up for that experience, however, we found a Starry Night mural!! I was so happy!

Game 4 was at 8:00pm ( LOVE those night games) and we were up against the only other undefeated team in the tournament. And the Axtell Rangers made up work for that W. 27-26 was our final and we were set for the championship game Friday night.

Friday:

Nathan made plans to work half a day and come in for the game that night. A friend of ours looked after Skye so he could stay the night after and we all head home Saturday. Initially I wanted to daytrip to Lake Whitney State Park, but when we saw the predicted 109 😱 temps for the day, we opted indoors again. We went with the Waco Mammoth Site and really enjoyed it! The park ranger talk was very informative and held your interest. I was quite impressed with Ashlyn’s questions as well. What was most fascinating for me was they haven’t even finished surveying the area yet! There could be even more fossils below our very feet! We left there pretty hungry and hit up Torchy’s Tacos again. Yum.

Championship Game 5 was at 6:30 and we showed up to see the final 2 teams battle it out for who would play us. Either way they would be at a disadvantage having played an hour in that heat before going up against us nice and fresh to the field. Lesson: it pays to stay in the winners bracket. We ended up against the Axtell Rangers again and didn’t have to work as hard as the night before. 19-11 final and we were State Champs!

At 10:30 that night, this little stinker got “whatever he wanted” off the menu at DQ. He ordered a medium Jurassic Chomp blizzard and couldn’t finish it😊

I’m sorry I don’t have more “plays” to report in detail for y’all. Or myself for that matter. Weston was an all around good player. He played left field every inning making good stops and throws. And brought runners in with his hitting. A pop up ball was caught and that wrecked him, but many times his hits brought in the 7th runner that would wrap up the inning. It’s crazy how many details of that week are already so fuzzy. We’ve already had 2 practices for fall ball and are playing with the Lumberjacks again. He loves it, so I do too. 💜

-Lindsay

***So y’all may have noticed I changed the name of the blog! Since it’s been over a year since I posted anything to do with our little farm and have just barely managed to post our wanderings, I wanted a name to reflect that. And I love alliterations! Gregarious carries 2 definitions that apply. Outgoing/friendly and herd/flock mentality. Lol! I’m pretty happy with this name, so I think it’ll stick. On to our fun at Seaworld now.

Ever since we learned of the changes Seaworld would be making to its Orca/Killer Whale program, getting back for one more show before 2019 went to the top of the travel list. The kids and I went for a day in 2014 when Ashlyn had just turned 5, Weston was 2.5 and Archer was 6 months old. Basically, the boys were jipped on that trip. Haha

An opportunity arrived in mid April as their season was starting up again for us to go on a weekday and avoid some crowds.  While we had hoped Daddy would have made this trip, he had just started a new job and didn’t have time off yet. I spent a day deal hunting and ultimately purchased a package vacation through Seaworld that lumped my hotel and tickets together. I’m usually very skeptical of these packages, but this really was a deal and I highly recommend this route if you have a family in tow and want a comfortable hotel room. But call the vacation specialist and tell them specifically what you need. 30 minutes on the phone got me exactly what I was looking for, especially with ticketing, without overpaying by using the generic pull down bars on the website. I saved right at $200 using the package versus paying a-la-carte style and ended up in a significantly nicer hotel room than what I priced individually. And, no, Seaworld didn’t pay me to tell y’all that 😜.

So we headed out on Wednesday, April 11th and leisurely made our way to San Antonio checking into our hotel by 3. Our room was a 1 bedroom suite with a full size kitchen and queen pull out sofa in the living room. I told y’all it was freaking nice! Haha. So, of course, after unloading we hit up a HEB and stocked our kitchen.  But, I didn’t even have to cook!  The hotel provided a “grill out” dinner of hamburgers and hot dogs that night. Momma even enjoyed a free shiner bock draft beer with her meal!

Thursday morning, we were up, enjoyed a hot breakfast compliments of the hotel and waiting at the front gate of Seaworld when they opened at 9am. After they played the National Anthem, we were in and hit the ground running for I had the whole day scheduled to make as many shows as possible!

 

We learned that Seaworld will generally host 2 shows per exhibit in their park. One being an informative talk and another being more of a “show” with music and themes. So you can prioritize which show to see when based off timing and what is more appealing. For example, with the sea lions, we opted to go to the informative show first thing so that we could watch a pet show during the sea lion’s comedy themed show. We had 30 minutes to kill and there were no lines so we hopped on the Shamu Express for the kids first ride.

 

Archer absolutely hated it and couldn’t get off fast enough. Ashlyn and Weston went again in the front seat. We then were seated about 20 minutes before showtime for the Sea Lions. We soon learned that being that early for shows wasn’t going to be a big deal this day. We got first choice seating every time for the remainder of the day. The sea lions at play show was fun and informative! We learned the difference between seals and sea lions (mostly to do with ear flaps and mobility), fun facts about otters and the trainers had the animals show off their moves.

 

From there, we headed straight to another show across the park called Ocean Discovery. This one featured Pacific Dolphins, Beluga whales and Birds! It was definitely more “showy” and produced many “oohs and aahs” as dolphins leapt, beluga’s pushed trainers through water and birds did aerials above us.

It was well after lunch time after this show and we had just enough time for food before the first Killer Whale show of the day began. We picked a BBQ restaurant near the show’s auditorium so we would be right there. And, of course, I spent a stupid amount of money on very mediocre food, but whatcha gonna do? For the informative killer whale show, the kids opted for seats at the top of the clearly marked splash zone. We did get a light sprinkling towards the end, but it was worth it for the view. We learned a lot about the whale’s diets, habitats and behavior and they gave us a short bio and history on all the whales in captivity.

 

I made sure to get a shot of the kids’ faces when the whales did their first jump😍

After the show, they had a few whales still swimming about in the main pool and the kids went down to the edge for a photo op. I’m not sure if the trainer signaled that Whale or what but when he came by, he photo bombed the kids in an epic way! I especially like how Weston is just smiling all the way through it. He loves him some Orcas.

Amazingly, we had about an hour before a pet show began, so we convinced Archer to ride the Rio Loco Raft ride. It was a blast, we got soaked and Archer LOVED it!

Pets Ahoy was probably the most entertaining show of them all for both its length and sheer talent displayed by the menagerie of animals participating in it. The dogs, cats, rats, mice, birds, pigs, rabbits…I’m sure I’m forgetting some… all came from rescue and rehabilitation groups and were exceptionally trained. We laughed and cheered for it’s entirety.

On our way to the final killer whale show and the closing of the park, the kids scored a carousel ride and we did a quick walk through of the penguin exhibit.

For the One Ocean show, the kids opted out of the splash zone and we sat a few rows above it. This experience had much less talking and more music and elaborate jumps from the whales. The finale was one big splash fest where the whales went to each side of the pool and DRENCHED the splashzones with walls of water produced by their tales. Those people all went home smelling like salt water no doubt. I appreciated the kids not making us one of them.

And just like that a full 8 hours in the park came to an end. We made dinner in the hotel room and called it an early night. The next morning at breakfast we talked about how we couldn’t believe the crazy amount of hustling it took to make all the shows in one day. The kids were disappointed that they didn’t get to ride more or spend more time just looking at the exhibits. There was also a whole area of the park that housed more dolphins that we didn’t even get to!

So the decision was made to go back Friday morning! Haha. It was an easy decision to make, really. The tickets I purchased through the package were multi day passes and the only thing we had for the day was to get home by a reasonable hour. I told the kids we would go for an hour or so, check out the dolphin section and head home… FOUR HOURS later we finally said good enough 😆.

The dolphin area was beautiful and newly renovated, the kids got to redo a few rides and added on some new ones, we fed the sea lions while checking them out up close and watched the Pets Ahoy show one more time.

I’m so glad this major bucket list item got marked off. And the kids got a trip all 3 of them will remember now.

-Lindsay