In Fort Worth, TX, the summers are so hot that it's hard to go outside. Everything fries to a crispy brown (especially our yard...and the bushes in the back yard....we are bad, bad tenants). Walking from your office to your car is an intense and draining experience and getting into your car, after it's been sitting in the parking lot all day...torture.

That said, we welcome the fall with open arms and much enthusiasm!

North Texas has lots of state parks, so we have been exploring them. Today, we even bought a state park pass, so that we can go to the parks as much as we want AND we can bring fifteen of our friends with us. If we make sure that we visit state parks at least 15 times in the next year, we'll break even on the cost of our state park pass!

Anyway, until today, our experiences in the North Texas State parks have been pretty dismal. The first state park we went to, Lake Mineral Wells, was desert-like. It was 103 degrees outside and we had the brilliant idea to go to the park and take a bike ride. At first, we were enthusiastic, enjoying the scenery, marveling over the cacti, in awe of the coyote poop. Then, our bike trail led us into the town of Mineral Wells, which looked a lot like most towns around here--strip malls, huge pick-up trucks, lots of mullets and cowboy hats. Continuing on, we soon entered the ghetto of Mineral Wells, complete with falling down houses, chickens in the bike path, goats tied to trees in the back yards. Finally, the trail ended in urban Mineral Wells, where homeless, slightly demented looking people, were surrounding the water fountain. We chose to take a chance with our minimal water supply and headed back up the dusty trail. Moments after we stopped for sips of 100 degree water (baked by the sun), on a scenic bridge, I got a flat. We were out of water, it was 103, and we had never changed a bike tire before. But we made it back to Fort Worth safely, after taking a dip in the slightly slimey, luke-warm, and red-neck filled Lake Mineral Wells.

Our next park adventure was at Ray Roberts State Park near Denton, TX. This park is ideal for mountain bikers (which we are not), so we decided to take advantage of the mountain bike trail trail and hike it instead. Apparently, they had done some controlled burning right before we got there. Somehow, it wasn't the scenic experience we had hoped for.

So, today, when we decided, on a whim, to go to Dinosaur Valley State Park in Glen Rose, TX, we went with very low expectations. First of all, this park is called Dinosaur Valley, because there are fossils of dinosaur footprints in it and, on their webpage and all the guides, there are pictures of these huge, plaster dinosaurs. We figured it would be cheesy, but it was a beautiful day and we wanted to get out and enjoy it, so we took a risk...and it was SO worth it. The park does have giant, plaster dinosaurs, but they are there to give you an idea of the size of the dinosaurs that lived there. The first fossils they found there were of a giant plant eating dinosaur (something like the brontosaurus) being pursued by a meat eating dinosaur (something like a smaller Tyranasaurus...sorry, I'm not very good with my dinosaur names). Those fossils are now in the New York Natural History Museum. There is a beautiful, shaded river that runs through the park, and that is where we found our first dinosaur tracks. I was surprised at how excited I was and how cool it was to look down into the water and see the tracks from something that lived so long ago. It's hard to imagine North Texas, with all it's strip malls and bad traffic, being a place where dinosaurs used to live.

After the fossil viewing, we went on a hike up some bluffs and were, again, surprised at the beautiful views and the steep drop offs. There also were, as evidenced by this picture of Jim, many cacti.

We plan to continue exploring the Texas State Parks--next on our list is Colorado Bend State Park and then, our big trip in December, is Big Bend. We have to keep our food in a bear box and were warned, repeatedly, not to bring our pets unless we wanted them eaten by a bear or mountain lion or goared by a wild boar. And we were also warned, repeatedly, to make sure that our families knew where we were going, in case we didn't make it back to our campsite. Very reassuring...this will be a true test of my camping stamina and survival skills....stay tuned.