YCGL - Day 6 - Friday, April 5, 2024 -Ballinger to Concan - And What Can Happen Today?

 I woke up about 9:00 and planned to get off by 11:00 so I could get to Concan by 3:00 and check in to the Frio Country RV Resort.  I checked my phone and I had a text from Ken Griffin saying "Call me so we can coordinate our travel schedules."  That's not good, I was scheduled to be at Ken's on the afternoon of the 27th so we could go out and celebrate Sally's birthday.  So I called about 10:00.  

Ken complimented me on being up so early (imagine that!).  It seems that his first wife Leah had a bracelet from the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904, which was a celebration of the Louisiana Purchase in 1903.  (Prior Planning Prevents P___retty Poor Performance?).  And Ken had learned there was going to be an Antique's Road Show in Wichita, KS on the 27th, so could I rearrange my schedule to accommodate that.  Luckily, it was the last couple of days of the trip and I only had one other stop after Ken's, which was a Harvest Host that I knew I could change very safely.  The event was taking place in the north side of town and I found a RV park fairly close to the hotel that he and Marcia were going to stay at.  So it all worked out.  Except... by the time all the arrangements had been made, it was 2:00.  Well, I had been working on catching up with the blog, so it wasn't wasted time, but by the time I left my site, took some pictures and then stopped at Walmart to pick up the door mat that I had left the night before (the young lady at the service desk was the same lady who checked me out the night before, we each recognized each other and she reached around on the counter and handed me my mat.  It was actually pretty slick.  

But I got to the resort at 6:30.  Still plenty of time to set up before it got dark.  I even put down the stabilizers, which I normally don't worry about.  

I mentioned pictures.  Did I take a picture outside my slide window of the river?  Nooo...I always forget to take pictures of my sites.  But driving out of the camp site, there is a statue on a concrete hill.  

And then around the base were the names of the donors.  Walking up the steps to top, memorial bricks had the names of the donors also, including the classes of 2015-2023.  It must have just been completed.  

As a quick aside, I listen to audio books while I drive.  Believe it or not, I have some rather eclectic tastes in what I listen to.  The last two days, I've been listening to Gilgamesh.  It is the epic story of a Babylonian king in search of immortality written 1500 BCE before the Bible and before Homer.  (I just checked and "A Tale of Two Brothers" was written during the reign of Seti II in Egypt between 1200 and 1194BCE, so it's older than that.  We read that in my Egyptian Hieroglyphics class my senior year in college.)  Nothing like having a rip-snorter to keep you going on those long drives.!  I got there by the reader, George Guidell, who has narrated most of the Tony Hellerman Navaho novels.  A wonderful voice.  I'll listen to almost anything he reads.  And that is extensive.