Sunday, May 13, 2012

San Angelo State Park, San Angelo, TX - Weekend Getaway

Rocky at San Angelo SP w/Sweetie inside
Bald Eagle Creek
We took a weekend to camp at San Angelo State Park at O. C. Fisher Lake outside of San Angelo, TX. We elected to camp on the north entrance at Bald Eagle campground (near, of course, Bald Eagle Creek). Since My Sweetie is going to be working in North Dakota for a few weeks (lat/long 48.03, -102.88), we both felt getting out to a state park together for the weekend would be something special.

That, and being able to have a righteous steak supper at Zentner's Daughter's restaurant for an early Mother's Day celebration.


We arrived on Friday evening and set up Rocky fairly quickly. Amazing how much faster we work when the temps aren't in the triple digits! After an evening supper of Thai crab cakes, mixed salad with toasted sesame ginger dressing, and olives, we talked outside watching the sunset and, moving inside, played gin, cribbage, & dominoes until way too late. Didn't get into our bed until well after 2300!

Our PUP kept us nice and toasty and we didn't have any problems at all! The wind kicked up briefly during the night but that only enhanced our sleeping experience! Duh!

Sometime after dawn, we finally crawled out of bed to make our breakfast of Starbuck's K-cups, bacon, eggs with chives and spring onion on an enormous wheat tortilla followed by fruit chunks in fruit juice. Dang, I forgot to bring the cheese and salsa. Still, I thought the scrambled eggs were delightful.

We headed out to visit San Angelo and see all of the sites. Actually, we only went to see Fort Concho. At their parking lot, we saw the farmer's market and bought some nicely spicy radishes and some very tasty (and unusual) locally made goat cheese from El Camino de Las Cabras, a farmer who makes her own artisan goat cheese, milk and soap. Yep, goat soap. Check them out!

After tasting several kinds of their goat cheese and buying a small bunch of German radishes, My Sweetie, SuperGeo*, and I headed over to Fort Concho National Historic Landmark. As we had visited the interior of the Visitor's Center just the week before, this visit concentrated on viewing the extremely well-preserved buildings.


Here, SuperGeo and Sharon seemed to have a grand time exploring the 1870's era wagons and leatherworks. They also enjoyed viewing the Telephone Museum (located in one of the Officer housing units).

SuperGeo Picking the Lock



Established in 1867 and finally abandoned in 1889, Fort Concho was mostly constructed from native limestone and covered more than 1,600 acres. Fort Concho and it's sister fort, Fort McKavett, were built to protect frontier settlements, patrol and map the vast West Texas region, and quell hostile threats in the area. Today, the fort includes 23 original (& restored) of the more than 40 buildings built.
Sweetie Explaining Granite


Apparently, the fort has great supporters. And I really think you should stop by and take a look. The buildings are mostly original (at least the limestone walls). While the opened buildings are furnished with period furniture and furnishings, I wish the entrances were just a bit larger as we had trouble getting interior photos.

After spending time at Fort Concho, we decided to have our Mother's Day supper a little bit early and headed over to Zentner's Daughter's restaurant on Knickerbocker. We walked in about 1100 but weren't expecting the number of folks there! Clearly, we didn't know that every family with a graduate (high school or college) in a 200 mile radius was having their lunch - today - at Zenter's! We did get a table, a great server, and fantastic steak so it really wasn't that bad!

Heading back to the park (to let that 30 oz T-bone settle), My Sweetie and I took a walk down to Bald Eagle Creek to take some pictures of flowers. We found a very interesting struggle going on so take a look at this photo and see what we found.

Yep. A butterfly has been captured by a spider's web and the spider (well-camouflaged) is wrapping up her meal. This photo seems to show a calmness that really wasn't there as the wind was blowing the insects in wild, fast circles. I wondered how that single strand of web was holding both insects to the flower. Very strong web, I guess.

Although we didn't get to walk their trail, previously we walked a Volksmarch here and saw a lot of the park then. I regret we weren't able to take a long hike but, as it were, we totally enjoyed our time here. The campground was very quiet and we slept well both nights. The toilets were a bit of a hike but wasn't so far that we would drive there (well, no ALL of the time anyway :). Since the park has two distinctly separated campgrounds, I can only evaluate the North Entrance campground (Bald Eagle Campground). But I can definitely say I would return to this one and, therefore, give San Angelo State Park (North Entrance Campground) a three-camper rating!



Working the Hitch
* SuperGeo is a mild-mannered, computer-oriented, math-wizard geophysicist during the week who turns into a rock hammer-wielding, rough & tumble, cider-drinking geologist on the weekends! She likes pink shirts, blue jeans, boots (when she wears footwear!), and just about every rock ever made.
Enjoying a cold one



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