Oct 17 - Visit with William and River at Lake Tawakoni State Park, Texas

    We met up with William and River today at the Lake Tawakoni State Park, about 20 minutes from our campground, on the other side of Lake Tawakoni.  This park is mostly for picnicking, hiking, swimming (during the summer) and camping.  We decided to hike a nice trail through the woods, that mostly went along the lake shore.  Although much of the lakeshore was eroded away, so there were little cliffs down to the water.  

   There were small signs identifying plants and stuff.  There was one sign that identified an area surrounded by trees as the location of a huge spider infestation back in 2009.  The entire area was covered in a huge spider web, with thousands of spiders.  It was even written up in the news:  

Everything is bigger in Texas, even the spiderwebs. More than just creepy, a massive spider web in Texas was also a surprising revelation for many arachnologists (people who study spiders). When an enormous spider web was discovered at Lake Tawakoni State Park, located just over 30 miles from Rowlett, Texas, it served as evidence that spiders can work together to weave a communal web. This surprised many experts, who had previously thought spiders only worked alone.  The number of spiders who called the web home was likely in the thousands.  The web in Rowlett became quite the tourist attraction for a while, with visitors remarking that they’d never seen anything like it before. For arachnophobes, the web was the stuff of nightmare, but if you can get past the creepiness factor, maybe you can see it for what it truly is: a work of art by mother nature herself.  

  We ate a picnic lunch, where we discovered that River really liked my chickpea/beet/pea chips.  And, that they also liked to pick up stones and put them in the plastic bag my lunch came in.  Lots of fun.  Nice visit.  Peter and William had some nice chat time.

   On our way back to the RV campground, we drove into nearby Emory, Texas, for an ice cream.  This town is the bigger one of the two that are nearby, with a population of 1,628 versus Point, Texas, with a population of 630.  

   I had a family Zoom call, but our internet connection was "unstable", so I kept cutting in and out.  So, it was a short call.  We had dinner, and ended just in time to walk over to the Lake to see the beautifully colorful sunset.  Then, we played another game of "Innovation", which Peter really likes.  I am slowly coming to appreciate it, since I did win the last two games we played.  

Lake Tawakoni State Park photos:

Spider infestation photo (from the newspaper, in 2009):

Sunset at Lake Tawakoni RV park photos: