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| A peaceful start to the day with Venus Mustang Park, Benbrook Lake, Benbrook, TX 19 October 2012 |
I camped by a lake outside of Fort Worth to save money and because I really enjoy camping. The first night was nearly empty and totally serene, complete with howling coyotes, hooting owls, flopping fish, and shooting stars. After spending 14 hours at the conference the next day, I returned to find a much different vibe at the campground, with a large family reunion in full swing near the entrance and an extensive campsite set up by mine with a van, a car, and a pickup truck.
The too-loud country radio station playing from the neighbor's pickup truck didn't really bother me; I just put on some music for myself at an appropriate volume. The mostly ignored little kids seemed to be entertaining themselves just fine, riding their bikes around and shrieking until after 10pm or so. I admit I was a little worried when the mom pulled up in the car and then jumped out and yelled at one of them because she almost hit him with the car; I'm thinking, "Slow down, lady - it's a campground and you know your kids are running around unsupervised." Eventually, my tunes and the sound of the lapping waves on the shore soothed me, as did a few beers. By midnight, I was sufficiently tired enough to drown out their music and conversation and laughter.
I awoke with a start at 4am sharp to the sound of a couple's argument. I lay there thinking they'd shut up so I could go back to sleep but quickly assessed that was a hopeless strategy. So I decided to go visit the bathroom. Surely when they hear and see my get up, I thought to myself, they will get their agrument tamped down by the time I get back from the bathroom. Wrong.
As I returned to the site, I finally heard enough to catch the gist of the disagreement: The guy is going on about how some tree is the biggest, tallest, and oldest in the world. The woman is disagreeing about some point of this, who knows what. What? They were arguing loud enough to wake me from a sound sleep about some freaking tree? And they were not shutting up at all.
When I got to my campsite, I snapped.
I turned their way and called out, "For the record, the oldest tree, the tallest tree, and the largest tree are three different species."
The woman called back, "What's your point?"
"It's just my contribution as a scientist."
Angrily, she yelled, "You wanna come contribute something over here?"
"What I want to do is sleep!" I shouted and stalked back to my tent.
I heard them laughing and the incredulous phrase "tree scientist" as I realized I was too pissed off to go back to sleep and didn't want them coming over and peeing on my tent while I was in it. So I broke down my camp in about 10 minutes and loaded up my car. I considered waiting until the office opened at 6am before leaving so I could report their rude behavior to the ranger. But I didn't feel vindictive enough to wait around for an hour with so many miles of travel ahead of me before I made it back to Memphis.
The positive side of this incident, other than getting home hours earlier than I'd planned, was that I enjoyed sunrise with fossilized dinosaur footprints in the Paluxy River streambed at Dinosaur Valley State Park. I'd planned this side excursion to close my Texas adventure and really enjoyed watching the stars disappear as the sun came up and illuminated the prehistoric treasures at my feet. No matter what reason got me there so early, I wound up having a really special time.
Sunrise, sauropod trackway, my foot and theropod track, Paluxy River
Dinosaur Valley State Park, Glen Rose, TX
20 October 2012
