For our first camping trip since the house flood last spring, Mike and I spent a long weekend at the South Llano River State Park, Oct 14 – 17. It is one of our favorite state parks and we usually get there once or twice a year. It has great birding and is on the Monarch Butterfly migration route. The average peak date for the Monarch migration is Oct 20, so we had plenty of butterflies (most of which were moving too fast to catch with our cameras or net) but the birding was below average. Nevertheless, we had a great time, hiked ourselves into blisters and exhaustion, and got completely away from the day to day life in the big city.

We got to sleep with the windows all open and were serenaded by insects all night long. We had an amazing full moon, with a clear sky day and night. We got to swim in the river and walk in the woods. And we saw deer, armadillo, lots of wildlife and farm stock, and a small brown wild pig whom we chased into the woods only to find a stand of hundreds of Butterflies. It was fun.