Day 6 – Lifes a beach

Relaxation. Theres nothing quite like camping out on the shore and waking up to a beautiful sunrise with the sound of waves lapping on the rocks with absolutely nothing to do and nowhere to be for the day. Our plans for the day: Fishing, Relaxing, and resting from the road.

We slept good but it wasn’t quite as peaceful as we had hoped. Once the sun went down the frogs started up. Right away I thought Uh-oh I hope these don’t keep us up all night. Cece said she liked the frogs singing us to sleep. That was until 3AM when they went ballistic and were suddenly about twice as loud. They all just went crazy. Cece woke up too, “I don’t like them anymore, make them stop…” I couldn’t help but laugh. The second night I figured out that 3AM was the time the moon came up over the tree line, triggering the frogs to really crank it up.

We had a morning walk around the campground while I tried to unsuccessfully get pictures of egrets and woodpeckers and had to hurry to the other side of the land to the marina for breakfast. Don’t want to miss out on the morn’n fish’n. Breakfast at the marina was awesome, they really know how to do biscuits and gravy down here, most places in NM that I’ve tried it at have been horrible.

We were the only ones there and the ladies were nice and courteous. My only complaint was that the older guy who rang us up ripped us off! I looked at the ticket before handing it to him, 2 breakfasts with mine the most expensive at $6 something, and one coffee and my water. By my calculations it should have been $12 plus tax, but he rang it up as almost $19, what the hell?

I think he tacked on an extra $5 for charging my phone. The ladies said it would be fine and didn’t seem to care, but he came in and unplugged it to plug in his laptop, even though there was 4 free outlets there. I had to move it to another wall. Or maybe he thought us shady bikers wouldn’t leave a tip. I reluctantly paid it and broke another 20 to leave the tip I was going to originally, I intended just to leave one $20 and give the waitress a sizable tip but the old man took it all. Whatever.

We came back to the marina 30 minutes later after fixing the fishing poles from the disaster of trying to fish last night off the rocks in the dark to get some fresh worms and new bobbers. I asked about fishing from the docks and Mr. Grumpy wanted $20 each for the day. WTF? First he rips us off for breakfast and now he tries to really gouge us after we’ve already been in there 4 or 5 times and spent quite a bit already. I mean it just costs like $18 for a camping spot in his higher priced campground and then it would have been free for both of us, and here he is trying to get another $40 out of us. Way to permanently drive away customers man.

We did some more shopping for cold drinks, really ticked off at this point. But this time when we went to the counter the nice older lady was at the register, who said if we still wanted to fish just go out there and if anyone said anything tell them she said we could. Thank You, Thank You. Thank You! for letting us use the docks, and because we stayed there all day after that we ended up spending close to $100 more between us and Dino’s group who came up to meet us there with our breakfast the next day, which I might add was suspiciously cheaper even though I got an iced tea and she got something more expensive that time.

The docs had a big gate to keep people out of the boats tied up with a big sign No Fishing beyond this point. So of course I was rather annoyed when a guy who knew the code to the door just walked in there and proceeded to catch some good sized crappie in the empty slots. Meanwhile me and Cece didn’t get so much as a nibble. We could see the fish in the shadows of the boat house but couldn’t get any bites.

It soon got hot and the guy with the secret code to the good fishing grounds had caught his fill and left as well as some young kids that were playing around. They had a neat net for catching minnows for bait that was pretty cool, I need to get one of those. No more paying for live bait.

With nowhere else to go we sat and relaxed for hours and hours. Just us watching the birds and boats going by trying to keep the pesky turtles away from our worms with our feet hanging off the dock and sipping cold drinks. Isn’t that what fishing is all about? When afternoon rolled along I sure was glad I didn’t have to pay $40 to fish here and not caught anything. With the $60 for 2 day fishing licenses that would have been just an expensive way to get sunburned.

As the day wore on I really wished we had bought those tripod folding camp stools in Santa Fe, they would have come in handy last night too around around our camp fire (lantern). We were making jokes about all the fishing scenes from Stargate, “Theres no fish in this lake is there Jack? … Nope.” and right about that time I got one! It was the tiniest most pathetic thing ever caught on a rod and reel, but after 4 or 5 hours of sweating away in the East Texas heat, landing anything was pretty exciting and I was damn proud of it.

Dino called to make arrangements, and Cece wanted to stay and continue fishing now that I had one. I think if he’d been able to call a few hours earlier we would have happily abandoned out spot to hop on the bike and gotten out of the heat for some home cooking. As soon as I hung up she had one too. Now we know where they’ve been hiding all day! 20 ft off shore in the shallows.

We hit quite a mess of crappies, they’d hit the worms as soon as it hit the water. We were catching em left and right. So fast that I barely got to fish. Cece couldn’t quite get the hand of casting with the spinner reels so as soon as she’d get one I’d re-bait the hook and cast it out for her. Before I could do the same for mine she’d have another one! She thought this was the greatest thing ever, I’ve never seen her this excited before.

Most of the fish were too small, with some palm sized borderline ones that I threw back anyway. I set the floats a few feet deeper to try and get some bigger ones and snagged a monster, my first of two fair sized catfish of the day right under the crappie. Yeah Baby!

Right in the thick of things Dino and Marty showed up and we had to put down the poles for some dinner back at the marina. It was good to see them again. If it wasn’t for the 2000 mile round trip to Dino’s house we’d have to stop by more often. When’s the next Meet & Greet Dino?

All too soon they had to head out so Dino wouldn’t be riding in the dark. Guess thats a good idea in these parts as we saw 4 or 5 deer grazing along the road just before last night. Everyone else was in the car. I don’t recall why Marty doesn’t ride much anymore, something about a bad back. I think its time Dino upgrades from the little V Star vibration machine to a nice cushy Goldwing or BMW to enjoy through retirement for her.

We had wanted to cook our fish but were just too full after dinner. You’d think it would be easy to give away fish but nobody wanted them. The crappie guy didnt like catfish and the kid’s father was taking them to a soccer game. We fished a while longer and the catfish couple we’d been talking to earlier came back and gladly took ours, but threw out the crappie.

All in all we caught 2 catfish, 3 or 4 big carp and maybe a dozen crappie. We only kept the biggest of the crappie and the catfish, still not a bad haul.

We got back to the showers just in time to catch this beautiful sunset. I was busy snapping pictures when some lady snuck in behind me and took the last available shower, Argh! I’m glad she did now, otherwise I wouldn’t have had to sit outside for 5 minutes watching the sun going down and gotten one of the best pictures of our trip so far.

A tip about Rayburn Park I found out, use the handicapped shower! The showers are nice but they only stay on for a short time and you have to push the button again. This time the handicapped shower was the only one free and it was almost dark so I didn’t expect anyone else to need it and this shower stays on much longer, Nice! So you aren’t fumbling for the on button with a face full of soap.

This was an amazing day, Finally some time to relax and decompress. Up until now we’d always been in a rush to get somewhere or been under some deadline. With the birthday party behind us there was no more reservations or appointments to keep, and we can travel at our own pace.

Tomorrow I’m excited to cross the Mississippi, I’ve never seen it before. This will be the furthest east I’ve ever been without traveling by plane.