Day 8: A perfectly lovely day

As I mentioned yesterday, we planned an outing to a state park today. We decided upon Daingerfield State Park about 1 1/2 hours from our house. It was recently featured in a Texas Parks & Wildlife post on their facebook page as being known for nice Fall colors. We had planned to make up our sandwiches and fill the camelbaks and get a lot of things ready last night to help us get out early, but that didn't happen. Even still we were all up by 7 and left the house by 9 which was VERY surprising considering I had to tend to my cafe on Cafe World first. *snicker*
The hiking trail around the lake at DSP is just under 2 miles. We made a nice leisurely trip around the lake with minimal problems. There were a couple places were we had to go around some mud. Along the way we ran into two older gentlemen with two little dogs. One of them asked us what kind of dog Luke was and we answered "Mutt." He then told us that his dogs were "founts" and went on to explain that his neighbor had "fount them and he took them in." They looked like a Chihuahua and a Jack Russell to me, but the joke was kinda funny.
At the end of the trail we found a picnic area to eat our sandwiches. As we finished up, the same two gentlemen happened along. This time they stopped to chat and we discovered how truly small the world can be. One of them had been in the Army, stationed in Germany in the 60s. We said that Jayme had also been in the Army and we had lived in Germany as well. He asked us where and when we said, "Darmstadt" he said that he had been stationed there too! In fact he was in the sister battalion to Jayme's unit. He had a daughter born in Heidelberg, just like Raley was. They called her their little Fraulein...we used to call Raley our little kraut.
The fall colors were very pretty and about as good as it gets in the East Texas Pineywoods. All in all it was a wonderful day spent doing what we love. We like to call it "going to church."