Owl Creek-the good, the bad, and the ugly

We went to a place called Owl Creek on the corp of engineer lands near Belton, Tx for our first boondocking experience. It was interesting to say the least. Our first disappointment was with the fact that this place really doesn't accommodate rvs. Although there is a beautiful open campground available to the public the entire perimeter is enclosed by a little two foot high fence....great for tent camping but not so great if you have an rv....so...it just so happened that the only rv spot available was almost right off the water with the exception of a nearby concrete parking lot. Since we arrived on a Saturday this place was packed with locals camping for the weekend. We suspected that they would all leave on Sunday so we could get the one rv spot near the lake. We camped in the parking lot and sure enough, they all packed up and left the next day so we pulled right on in.

I will say this. The place is beautiful. It is a rather mountainous area in Texas and lots of fishermen come out for boating. The first think that shocked us when the weekenders left was the amount of garbage they left behind. It was rather disgusting and we had to clean the camping area ourselves before we could relax. Then if you thought that couldn't get disgusting enough we figured out that the rv that left before us dumped out his pee all on the ground. Yep. Pretty disgusting. We had to cover that up with some old ashes. Yuck.

Beautiful as the place was it was a bit spoiled by the less than desireable characters who showed up. This is more of a place that people come to get into trouble it seems where they aren't under the watchful eye of the law....lots of loud cursing right around the kids, underage drinking, general partying. I'm not a prude by any stretch of the imagination but this company was definitely too crass for us.

My allergies worsened and the wind was brutal so I spent most of the days cooped up inside. Then as a last hurrah we had what I considered hurricane force winds last night rocking the rv back and forth like we were out at sea in a storm. I was absolutely petrified! I'm from Florida and being in a house in hurricanes was nothing like this. I could hear the wind howling over the roof and around the windows and I thought the worst was going to happen. It was like this for hours and we were in the middle of nowhere so I was quite panicked. Then the house battery was dying and the propane gas alarm kept going off in the middle of the night until Riki started the engine. It was craziness. I guess we can assume that five days is the maximum we can boondock without any extra batteries or solar....and that is bare minimum, no lights at night, nothing.

So here we are tonight at the Flying J's and I'm extremely exhausted. Between allergies, obnoxious campers, and wind gusts rocking the rv I don't think I've had a good night sleep in days. It's funny but somehow I think this crowded Flying J without all the flora and fauna around will give me the slumber I desperately need to recharge my batteries.