kim yammers on: Moonrise Retreat, Day Six

I have taken so long to get caught up with our travel diary that I was confused about our nights. The crazy thing that happened that proved "you can take the slicker out of the city but you can't take the city out of the slicker" was actually the night before this. My cousin and her husband had left that morning to go out of town. We turned in for the night after playing games for hours and conked out right away.

Until. I woke up around 2 to see Jav looking out of our 2nd floor window down towards the ground. I asked what was wrong and he said a strange sound had awakened him. Jav did not clarify that he thought it was some type of animal sound. I immediately assumed he meant an axe murderer. Lemme tell you, it only takes a few seconds for your opinion of a place to go from a quaint and quiet house in the country to a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere where no one can hear you scream.

Several thoughts also quickly flew through my head: 1) We were on our own, there was no one in that big house just across the driveway, 2) All of the guns I assume my cousin and her husband own were probably locked up somewhere in said big empty house, 3) the axe murderer was certainly somewhere on the path between us and the big empty house, or was already inside our house, and 4) as we were listening for the sound again, that every window in the house was probably unlocked. And oh yeah 5) that book "In Cold Blood" about the people who were murdered. In a farm house.

I was almost too terrified to move. When Jav realized how frightened I was he finally told me it was a wild sound, more like some kind of animal, but I could tell either the sound was so strange it had really rattled him, or he wasn't telling me the truth and he also thought it was an axe murderer.

I made him walk around the whole house, turning on lights as he went. And then I realized I had to see for myself that no one was in the house or I would never sleep. So I trudged around behind him, heart pounding in my chest so loudly I thought it would wake up the kids. The worst room was a front bedroom they added on recently that had a huge picture window in the front and no blinds. I couldn't go inside it. I was sure there would be a horrible figure staring at me through that window.

We, of course, found no one. But I could never go fully back to sleep during those early morning hours. I worked crossword puzzles, would doze off a little then wake with a start and listen hard for any sound. It was a long 4 hours until the sun starting coming up and I was able to fall asleep.

The next morning I went around the entire house checking the locks on the windows. There were a bunch of them, and very few of them had been locked. Lesson learned: We are not psychologically equipped to live in the country on our own anytime soon.

On to our last full day!

We initially wanted to do a State Park hike early this day. But the hot summer temps finally hit and we backed out of a longer hike. Instead we decided to try Lady Bird Johnson Municipal Park. I visited this park many times in my youth, mostly to fish with my Uncle Robert. There is a large creek that runs right through the middle of the park. We found a small playground area just above where the ducks and geese were.

We had brought a big bag of birdseed to feed them. But we did not anticipate two problems:
1. The geese were as tall as the boys, and
2. They would be pretty upset because we had birdseed and not people food. OK, let's just use the word "mad"!

Those big gray geese chased us all of us, even the grownups. They honked and hissed and flapped their wings. It was a little scary! But we persisted for the majority of the ducks who were quite friendly and appreciative. I guess we are lucky none of us were pecked at!

It's a Hobbit House!

We found the nature trail, which was supposed to be 3 miles if you hiked the entire loop. We probably did about 2 miles, and the heat kept us from continuing. But we saw some beautiful butterflies and dragonflies, some pretty views up and down the creek, and a really cool bird watching blind with feeders everywhere and pics of all the native birds that might come to feed.

By the time we were done hiking we were very hot and thirsty. It just so happened that next door to the park is the Fredericksburg airport. Not a big one, only small planes flying in and out. Most people fly in to play a round of golf, have a meal and fly home. There is a old hangar that someone's turned into an old-school diner that we had been told had great food. We ordered sodas, burgers and fries, and took a seat at the window so the kids could watch the planes landing and taking off. Pretty cool!