What a great weekend.<\/p>\n
Some of Gwen’s friends organized a campout at Colorado Bend State Park<\/a>. I got a few pictures<\/a>. The park was pretty nice–about 10 miles down a gravel road, 100 miles away from home. Right on the Colorado River, at a point where a stream feeds into it. There’s a hiking trail along the stream, which has a few small waterfalls and some pretty good swimming holes, which were the major attraction for us. A lot of bubbas were attracted by the oppportunity to take their motorboats and personal watercraft out on the river. Oh well.<\/p>\n Gwen and I arrived at about 10:00 PM Friday, hooked up with the few people who had made it out there ahead of us, and set up our tent. Made a fine dinner of tuna steak, mashed potatoes, and curried rice. More people in our group started showing on Saturday, and we had a full day of hanging out, walking the trail, soaking in chilly stream water, eating, hanging out some more, and eating some more. In the course of the day we discovered a secluded group campsite, and Susan decided we should move there. The park office was closed by this time, but Susan found a ranger, who cleared it. So we pulled up stakes (literally) and moved about a fifth of a mile. The new site really was better, and not just for us, as it spared our former campsite neighbors from the group’s late-night singalong of bad 80s music (unfortunately, it did not spare me<\/b>). A big feast, with lots of very fine food and lots of wine was put on. To derail my campmates’ caterwauling, I did a fire set.<\/p>\n Sunday was another rough day of soaking at the swimming hole; we packed up around 2:00 and hauled ass back to Austin (those country roads seem to have no speed limit).<\/p>\n That would make for a fine weekend right there, but there was plenty more fun to be had. Gwen and I had tickets for the very last show in Austin by the Flaming Idiots<\/a>, so we got cleaned up and went to that. It was great fun–those guys are really talented as jugglers, but also good comedians and showmen.<\/p>\n But wait, there’s more–Jenny had invited us to meet up with her at Flipnotics<\/a> to catch Shorty Long<\/a>. Flipnotics is walking distance from the Zach Scott Theater<\/a> where we saw the Idiots, so we strolled over and caught the band. Jenny had told us they reminded her a lot of the Asylum Street Spankers<\/a> (a band we love), and when we got there, it was clear why–Shorty Long has both Pops and Mysterious John from the Spankers. Anyhow, Shorty Long put on an excellent, high-energy show lasting over two hours. I marvelled that we live in a town where talent of that quality is playing for tips at a small coffee shop on a Sunday night. Jenny and Gwen also had a chance to meet, and that was good.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What a great weekend. Some of Gwen’s friends organized a campout at Colorado Bend State Park. I got a few pictures. The park was pretty nice–about 10 miles down a gravel road, 100 miles away from home. Right on the Colorado River, at a point where a stream feeds into it. There’s a hiking trail […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/8stars.org\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1035","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/8stars.org\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/8stars.org\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/8stars.org\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/8stars.org\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1035"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/8stars.org\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1035\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/8stars.org\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/8stars.org\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/8stars.org\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}