Monday, March 17, 2003
Riverside Park, Brownwood, TX - Mar 16-17
At various times in our travels we have heard of City Parks that are available for inexpensive or free camping. As part of our on-going effort to reduce camping costs, we found this one along our route. The park has a few inexpensive water & electric sites; no-hookup camping is available for free. Naturally we opted for boondocking. A fairly young couple oversees the park in some sort of capacity (very low-key management), and assured us that we could set up anywhere we wanted. Once set up, we discovered our TV was broken. In a sad commentary on modern America, we decided that it would probably be cheaper to replace the TV than to fix it. After finding one that met our basic needs, we then tried to donate the old set to one of the local charities. In an even sadder commentary on modern America, we were unable to find any charities (we tracked down and talked with three) that were willing to take a nonfunctioning TV. We spent lots more time & mileage trying to find someone to take the old TV than buying the new. We finally left it beside a Dumpster in the park.
The park itself is very attractive (we enjoyed birding in the park & spotted our first Golden-crowned Kinglet on the nature trail) & is currently being expanded. There are a number of branches hanging low over some of the roads; we were lucky enough not to encounter any on our way in & were able to scout a safe way out. Unfortunately, it poured rain the night before we left, turning the dirt roads into thick, slick mud. We needed 4WD just to get to the main road with our trailer!
The park itself is very attractive (we enjoyed birding in the park & spotted our first Golden-crowned Kinglet on the nature trail) & is currently being expanded. There are a number of branches hanging low over some of the roads; we were lucky enough not to encounter any on our way in & were able to scout a safe way out. Unfortunately, it poured rain the night before we left, turning the dirt roads into thick, slick mud. We needed 4WD just to get to the main road with our trailer!# posted by Doug and Willie @ 5:08 PM 
