Taco salad, canoes, and bowling

Had a pretty darn good weekend.

Michael makes a damn good taco salad. I wasn't sure how the "ground beef that is actually soy" was going to turn out, but it's actually quite good. My (admittedly undiscerning palette) would probably not know the difference between this and real meat. Yummy. We watched lots of cartoons Friday evening, as well.

Saturday, it was out to Caddo Lake State Park to go canoing, and lots of fun was had. Caddo is a fairly large body of water on the Texas/Louisiana border, and this particular park is located on the Texas side. I'm still weirded out by the fact that I live close enough to this border to "go to Texas for the day," having lived a good 2.5-3 hours from New York's borders with PA, VT and Mass for most of my life.

I handed the stern over to Micheal for this go-round, and he picked up the steering pretty quickly. This was no small feat, mind you, given that this particular canoe was only about 14' long, but nearly 4' wide. (Translation: turned like a pregnant whale.) I guess the Old Town canoes at Bistineau have spoiled me rotten. We also had to deal with a lot of motorboat traffic in the main channel leading to the lake itself. Most weren't too bad, but there were a few pulling waterskiers trailing considerable wakes. Had the channel been the only place to ski, it wouldn't have bothered me so much, but I wish they'd save that kind of thing for the lake itself.

Eventually, we came upon a smaller channel that forked off that was clear of such traffic, so we headed in there, paddled around a bit, then pulled up on shore to check things out with the intent to swim. We found a few large freshwater clamshells, as well as one that was still alive. Finding the leeches on its shell, we decided that maybe we wouldn't swim, after all. We saw some other cool stuff, though:

Some crawfish architecture:




A more representative and less-phallic example:


The remains of a turtle:


It's upside down, and the head is on the left side of the frame. Whatever ate it smashed the shell near the rear end and got it from there.

I also saw a sapling pine tree covered with these little pink things:


I'm guessing some kind of insect cocoon. Any ideas?

These white flowers also seemed to have a bit of an insect infestation:


Note the bugs in the upper right and lower left. Another flower right next to this one had the same bugs and the pedals had also been chewed through in several places.

My Very Attractive Graphic Designer Boyfriend:


We poked around, looking at the deer tracks in the mud as well as a three-toed one we weren't sure of... possibly an otter? Eventually, we had to head back in order to get the canoe returned on time. Maybe we'll go back at some point and get farther up that channel. It was really cool with the trees hanging over it, and oddly, not much in the way of mosquitoes. We got back to the park, said, "the heck with it" and jumped into the water at the boat launch, and floated around until the feel of water-flora brushing at our legs creeped us out too much and we got out. Felt good to swim for a bit, though.

Home. Nap, dinner, shower. Michael looks ridiculously cute when he falls asleep in the car - he usually winds up leaning forward and hangs lopsidedly by the seatbelt.

Then, out to bowling (of the intergalactic variety, of course). Michael got to meet Dave, Trish, Ken, and a bunch of Centenary alums, and seemed to have a good time. It's always tough meeting new people in a loud environment that isn't really conducive to conversations, but Dave's really good about chatting up new people, so it went pretty well. All in all, lots of fun was had.

Yesterday was pretty lazy... laundry, nap, grocery shopping, catching up on stuff I'd taped Friday night.

Man, I love summer.