My friend BJ and I were finally able to coordinate our schedules so that we could hike the McKinney Roughs trails. For various and different reasons we had both had to cry off from our previous arrangements to walk in the past two weeks.

With the advent of the “real” Texas summer with all of it’s withering heat upon us, I suggested that we meet at 10:00 am, an hour earlier than our normal start time knowing that by the time we finished, the temperature would already be in the upper 90’s. Not having walked for a while, BJ suggested that we not walk our usual 4 plus miles which made a lot of sense to me so we opted to take the inner circuit of trails. These comprise of Woodland, to Bluff Trail Loop and then back up on Ridge and home on Woodland. There are a lot of ups and downs, mostly ups on these trails so they are a workout even though short in distance. Altogether, we covered just 2 miles, a very short walk for us and half of what we normally cover.

We decided to sit for a while in the area close to the camp buildings and catch up on the latest gossip where we spent a very pleasant 30 minutes talking about the worlds problems. I also discussed my plans for the future which include buying a Travel Trailer to see these United States and eventually live in it full time after selling my house and giving up the ponds. I could tell from her responses that BJ was not wholly on board with my ideas but that’s OK. Each to their own. The Roughs maintain some very nice gardens around the office and the other buildings and I took pictures of them for this slideshow.

Even though our walk was much shorter than usual, it was so great to get out on the trails once more. Being out in the open gave us a chance to be somewhat normal in these difficult times but even then, we were very careful to maintain social distancing the entire time although we only put our face masks back on when we arrived back at the complex. Can’t wait to do it again, hopefully next week.

Written 7/11/2020