Winters

Winters, the title of this entry, is not the cold, dark season that many people try to escape, but rather the small town in Runnels County, Texas. It's home to the Elm Creek Reservoir, where we stayed on the first night of a “friends and family” trip to Southern California via the southwestern states – the first extended trip of our traveling life. More specifically, we stayed at W. Lee Colburn Park, a city park dedicated in 1982. It was, coincidentally, winter. Seemed like a cold one for Texas too, so we weren’t sure what to expect. The little we knew about the place we read on Campendium, a popular camping app. Somehow, we didn’t even find the web site I hyperlinked above. Must not have been looking too hard. We did search YouTube during our planning, but didn’t find much. Maybe that’s why we sort of dismissed the place?

As it turned out, had this not been a pre-planned “in-transit” stop, we would have been tempted to stay longer. It was a beautiful place and an auspicious start to our journey. We were the only ones there that night. We even had to call the town offices the next day to find out how to pay for the accommodations as there was no one there to collect when we arrived and no honor boxes. They sent someone out to our site to collect our $15.

I think we had the best of the 14 sites, located on a small promontory surrounded on three sides by water. It didn’t hurt that the sunset was spectacular. The night was cold and very blustery. Since I didn’t bother putting down the stabilizers, the trailer rocked and rolled through most of the night. It kept Kim up; I snored my way through most of it. The cats didn't appear to be too disturbed. I don't think I'll be so lazy about the stabilizers again.

Sunset shortly after arrival.

The following morning. A different story; cold and gray.

Just as I believe every town has its "nice neighborhood” with the big, fancy houses, perhaps where the founders or merchants lived, so too do I believe that there is something interesting to see or learn in each of them. Reading through the Wikipedia entry for Winters doesn’t refute this belief. Winters covers an area of 2.9 square miles. It was settled in 1880, established its first post office and school in 1891, and incorporated in 1909 at the time the Abilene and Southern Railway ran an extension there from Abilene. With the coming of the railroad, land values soared to a lofty $7 per acre. The early baseball great, Rogers Hornsby, was born in Winters in 1896. I wouldn’t be surprised if we find our way back there someday.