You Can’t Always Get What You Want
March 23, 2023 – Day 36
Lucinda Williams? Not The Rolling Stones?
Yeah, you see, you can’t always get what you want, that’s the theme today.
We woke up this morning in Luling Texas, had a quick breakfast. We’re not even sure what time our bodies are on, partly we’re still on Arizona Time which doesn’t observe Daylight Savings Time.
We wanted to do some birding, Gavelston TX and Lake Charles Louisiana are both great for birding. The plan was to stay overnight 3 days, a vacation from our vacation if you will but also just to “stop and smell the roses” (or look for birds). But… the weather is lousy down there. Not only did the heat arrive, the forecast is for rain and thunderstorms for 2 of the 3 days that we would stay.
But if you try sometime,
Mick Jagger et al
you’ll find,
you get what you need.
So we looked north, we can go north now, the winter freeze seems to be over. So we found the Holla Bend National Wildlife Refuge, five miles downstream from the city of Dardanelle, Arkansas. Supposedly great birding there, and, in the new few days, great weather.
Now, we have to get there. It’s 600 miles and when trailering that’s a solid 2 day drive. We booked a Harvest Host in Sulfur City, Texas that was almost exactly halfway and hit the road. Getting there would be ambitious, it was super windy and a long day’s drive. Ambitious? Lets cue that ominous music please…
Luling is a cute little town.
Heading out of town we were stunned by the sheer beauty of the Texas wild flowers, we saw blue, yellow, orange, pink and white and sometimes acres of them.
The previous shot show the Texas Bluebonnet, the Texas state flower. They were everywhere and gorgeous, we passed on field with power lines that was just acres of bluebonnets.
There is actually a Lowe’s off to the left of the steer in the above shot.
The wind was getting really nasty, probably the worst we’ve had the whole trip. (Remember, we’re running away from really bad weather.) A huge gust hit when Susan was driving, the Subaru disengaged the cruise control and applied the brakes, I’m assuming it applied the left and right brakes independently to eliminate the sway. I looked up and saw the trailer moving a lot and then, well, it slowly stopped moving. It. Was. Not. Fun. (susan here: Not fun? No. It was just short of terrifying. OK. No, terrifying but I didn’t let on. I pretended to be competent.) (paul here, at least she had the steering wheel to hold onto…)
But hey, we found a mural at a driver change.
We found a train!
We found a University Library! (Academics must be important to Baylor since they have such a huge library, but they do need to check their spelling, it is spelled L I B R A R Y, not “Stadium.”
We found a Silver Thing!
Speaking of things, my brother writes in about that white thing that was not in Roswell. It is a Very High Frequency Omnidirectional Radio Range, aka White Thing. (See What’s That Thing? Pastoral Doodad Edition.)
Now back to the song.
I knew she would meet her connection
ibid
You can’t always get what you want. The Brewery never got back to us and we were pretty bummed, it looked like a really nice place, so we had to go to Plan B.
Yup, another Cracker Barrel.
Daily: 310
Return Total: 1,474
Overall Total: 5,311
Return Miles/Day: 238
New Life Birds: It’s complicated. Actually, the number is 1, but I got the Loggerhead Shrike in the campground, Susan saw the scissored-tail flycatcher on a wire while I was driving.)