A Gray Day, but a Good Day

When I looked out at the lake before dawn this morning, everything was gray, mist blended into sky, with dark silhouettes of trees in the foreground. It was quite beautiful, especially after I got over my mild panic at not seeing the sun.

I sat at the picnic table where I heard my first real live loon. What an eerie sound for a duck to make, no quack quack for this boy! It took me back to “On Golden Pond,” if you should happen to have seen that. Strange sounds coming from the mist.

Here’s the Wandering Wonder Dog almost lost in both the grass and mist.

Later, as we walked down to the bathhouse, camera-less, I caught a glimpse of a large deer, white tail but quite red in color, breaking for the deeper woods. I doubt I would have been fast enough to snap her picture anyway.

I’m searching out the Crock Pot to fix a couple of meals of food. Dinner tonight will be Chicken Cacciatore over Brown and Wild Rice with a Spinach-Feta salad.

Here’s my easy Chicken Cacciatore in the Crock Pot recipe:

Put three large chicken breasts in the bottom of the slow cooker. Spread over them 4 chopped garlic cloves. 1 chopped medium yellow onion. 1 chopped green bell pepper. 4 oz sliced mushrooms ( 1-4 oz. can). 1- 16 oz. jar classico tomato-basil sauce. Generous sprinkling of oregano. Light sprinkling of pepper. Light sprinkling of basil. Light sprinkling of red pepper or crushed red pepper flakes. Cook on low for about 7 hours. This makes a very Italian-y, nicely spicey chicken with lots of sauce. I don’t add salt, but many people probably would.

Here’s how it turned out. Yum!

We just took a short walk around the campground today since my foot hurt from yesterday’s longer walk. Gotta get my body cooperating in this hiking stuff again!

We checked out the floating cabins, since Cheryl was interested in hearing more about them. Very pretty walkway out to them.

They are indeed floating.

The sun finally came out, but it was pleasant even without it. The leaves are showing some color here, I think they will not last much longer as it seems quite dry. The shot below is of the shoreline on the opposite side of the lake, waaaaay over there, taken with my long lens.

And still we found a little wildflower at the edge of the lake.

Surprisingly, a large boat – I thought it was a ferry at first – came tooling across the lake. Tooted its horn and turned around and left again without coming very close to shore. Maybe a tour boat? Fishing boat? Just somebody’s playtoy?

I learned today that this park is 12,500 acres, pretty large, and Lake Murray is over 5,000 acres. Named for a former governor of Oklahoma. This park would be one of the favorite play places for Oklahomans (and a few Texans besides, since we are about 30 miles north of the Texas border and 60 miles north of Dallas).

I love my relaxed, staying put days. Lots of time to work on the computer, take a walk, meditate, catch up. I paid today to stay until Sunday. I’ll have to work hard to come up with more pictures for you all.

Tomorrow is a new day!