I realize I haven’t finished writing about our time camping and hiking at Guadalupe River State Park over Thanksgiving but I’m going to transition to a stop-over between that state park and South Llano River State Park, where we spent the second half of our camping excursion. Junction, Texas is a hill country town without the glitz and glamour of being a hill country town like Fredericksburg, Boerne, and similar have turned into. I mean, I love those places and cannot wait until I can be a tourist again and shop in little boutiques and enjoy local restaurants. Junction still has that small-town farm life feel, though it is a…

We arrived at Aransas National Wildlife Refuge far later in the afternoon than I think we had expected. After leaving the house very early for the long drive down to Goose Island State Park and tinkering around there, plus a detour into Rockport for lunch which left us sitting in an obnoxiously long McDonald’s drive-thru line (thanks to a kiddo who only eats McDonald’s nuggets), and then eating said lunch at the Rockport beach park, we arrived at Aransas in mid-afternoon. Our first stop was the observation tower at the end of the road where, of course, a large group of people were already there. A photogenic group of turkey…