RJ Rambles about her camping trip

Hey everybody! 

So, Mango and I went out camping at Lake Ray Roberts State Park last week and we had a blast. It was definitely the best camping trip that we've been on so far. The lake was beautiful, the hike was fun, our campsite was great, and the weather was perfect. I'm going to ramble on about it for a while, so hang around if you're interested. 

We took the dogs to my mom's house, then headed down there. I didn't really know what to expect. I heard the park was nice, but people have different definitions of "nice". When we got there, as soon as we drove in, two deer walked across the road in front of us. That was a sign of things to come, because we would see over 50 deer while we were there. That is what I'm going to take away the most from this trip. I saw more deer in two days than I'd seen in the rest of my life combined. 

Our campsite was about 1/3 mile from where we parked, so we had to carry everything in. We tried to pack light, but we still brought way too much stuff. When we got to the campsite, we got everything set up and unpacked. Last time we went camping, we didn't get the rain fly on the tent on correctly, but this time we spent a little extra time on it and I think we did a pretty good job. The campsite was just a little walk away from the water. It was so nice.

After we set up the tent, we decided to head to the swimming area. We spent a little time swimming around the water. It was nice and cool, but not too cold, and the swimming area was clean and sandy. After swimming, we had about an hour and a half until sunset, so we took a little 2 mile hike around one of the trails to dry off. It was beautiful and we saw another deer just off the path. 

Back at camp, we took our little stove out to the beach and cooked our dinners. We just ate freeze-dried backpacking meals. I didn't really like mine, so didn't finish it. I found myself not being very hungry at all while we were out there. 

Then the sun started setting and the whole sky turned pink and it was gorgeous. We sat out there and ate dinner and watched the sunset. Another couple in the neighboring campsite was out there too (that is who is in the picture here). 

After sunset, it got dark so we brushed our teeth and settled in for the night. When we started getting into the tent, Mango realized that she did not have her medicine (she takes some for depression and to help with sleep). She thought she might have left them in the car, but at the time she didn't want to go back and look for them. So we got in the tent and lied down. 

A couple hours later, when I was about half-asleep, Mango decided that she did want to go back to the car and look for her pills. So we got dressed, got out of the tent, put on our headlamps, and walked back to the car in the dark. It was pretty spooky and I didn't feel entirely safe, but I did it anyway and it turned out fine. I feel like camping has really helped me with my anxiety. I feel so much less anxious than I used to, when I stayed cooped up in the house all the time. It was actually kind of neat walking around in the dark, because we saw SO many spiders. All their little eyes shining everywhere we looked. She didn't find her medicine in the car either though, so we went back to the tent empty handed. 

I slept pretty well that night, and Mango eventually got to sleep too. We ended up taking the rainfly off the top of the tent to stay cool, and it was nice to see the stars from the tent. The bugs weren't too bad, the night eventually cooled down, and I slept pretty hard. We could hear the highway from the tentsite unfortunately, and there were airplanes flying overhead pretty regularly, but otherwise, the only noise was an owl nearby who hooted all night. It was really peaceful. 

In the morning, we woke up and ate breakfast out on our little beach. I wanted to go on a big hike today. I wasn't sure exactly how long it was, as we were sort of combining a couple of different hikes. Once we were ready, at about 8:30am. 

The hike was wonderful. We ended up doing a total of about 7.5 miles. It took us along a paved trail, then we broke off from that and headed into the woods along a rough dirt path. It took us up along the cliffs that overlooked the lake. We saw SO many deer. We were counting them along the way, and by the end of the hike, we were up to 29 deer. We had fun seeing who could spot them first (it's me). We stopped at a few places along the trail and had a little break and a little snack and just relaxed for a bit. I loved it so much. 

It was about 1pm by the end of the hike. We were both pretty tired and she was hungry. We discussed leaving the park to go get some food at a restaurant, but in the end, I wanted to just stick with what we brought with us. So we went back to camp and had a little lunch. I just ate a protein bar and Mango did another backpacking meal. Then we were ready to go swimming again. We spent a long time in the water that time. The park was basically empty now. We hadn't seen a single person on our hike, and there was only one other person in the swimming area. It was really cool. 

After swimming, we were both feeling refreshed again, so hey, why not another hike? We went on two more much shorter trails and saw the rest of the park. I had been saving those trails for the next morning, but Mango wanted to go then, so we just went ahead. Those trails were fun too, but they were a lot smaller and less wild. I liked the long one we went on a little more, because it really felt like we were out in the wilderness on that one. These were just right off the parking lot really. They did feature some really cool trees though. 

Back at camp, we lounged around on our little beach. I wrote in my notebook for a while. This egret (I think) hung around nearby. We named him NoodleNeck.

I was wishing that we had a kayak. I hoped that we'd be able to rent one out here, but I did not see a good place to rent. I kind of just want to buy a couple and take them out on our own. I would have loved to go out on the water to finish off the day. Maybe next time. We hung out there next to the beach and watched another beautiful sunset.

Our neighbors had left by this point and we were the only ones in the entire campsite. It was pretty cool to be out there all by ourselves. Mango felt a little scared about it, but I felt very safe the whole time, for some reason. I felt safer there than I do out at the park here in town, or at the grocery store, or the movie theater. We had pepper spray, just in case, but I never felt anxious really. 

After dinner, we decided to go back to the car and drive over to the swimming area. Our campsite had an outhouse, but it was pretty gross. The bathrooms on the beach were nice though and had showers and everything. We were talking on the way back to the car about how many deer we might see before we leave, as we'd been seeing one or two hanging around here and there all day long. We were at 37 total from the time we came into the park. Mango wondered if we'd hit 40 before we left. 

We got to the car and drove out towards the beach and both gasped as we looked over to the right and there was this meadow that had 17 deer just hanging out in it all together. I pulled over to the side and we counted them and tried to get a picture. It was amazing. 

Then we went to the bathroom, cleaned up, and were outside at the car, filling our water bottles for the night, when that whole herd of deer just walked right past us. Probably like 30 feet away from us, down the road. It was so cool. We just watched them as they walked away.

Then back to the campsite for another night. I slept even better the second night. Mango did too, because she actually found her medicine in one of her bags that we thought she checked. We flipped around so we were facing the other way, because the night before the moon had been so bright that at one point, I woke up thinking that somebody was shining a flashlight down on us. At one point in the night, I got out and pulled the rainfly down, because it got a little cold. But otherwise, another peaceful beautiful night. 

In the morning, we had breakfast and two more deer just hung out at our campsite with us while we ate. By that point, we had seen enough deer that I didn't feel a need to take any more pictures of them haha. After breakfast, we packed up and took everything back to the car. We had to make two trips to carry everything back, even though we tried to pack light. Then we left the park. We ended up driving around the lake to check out the other end, where there is another branch of the park. That side seemed a little bit less used and less cared for, but it did have kayaks to rent, so we'll keep that in mind for next time. 

Overall, just a really fun, extremely relaxing trip. I felt so good when we got home and I got back to work the next day. Very refreshed and happy about everything. I love our little adventures and I'm looking forward to wherever we go next. 

Every time we go camping, we learn a little too that will hopefully make our next trip even more enjoyable. 

That's it! Thanks for reading, if you made it this far. Hope you enjoyed the little camping journal and pics. Hope you are all able to go on a little adventure sometime too. I truly think it's good for the mind and body. Love ya!