Cue the Banjo

We made a short day trip from the cabin out to Caddo Lake in East Texas. We were ambitious and took the kids on a pontoon boat tour of the lake. As we were waiting for the gregarious yet amusingly crusty "Captain Wes" to arrive, Norah and Justin spotted a little paddle boat and expressed reservations about it's seaworthiness. We eased their fears when they saw the real boat.

We don't know how much interest the kids really had in the boat or the surroundings, but they were infatuated with the Captain's young Labrador that made occasional lazy strolls around the boat between naps in the sun. Both kids are a little nervous around big dogs, but Norah gently petted him and followed him around the boat. Justin squealed and scrambled for cover every time the dog so much as turned his head.

This lake and it's inhabitants have character. All boat houses, piers, and buildings appear to be on the verge of collapse, held together only by paint and some hopelessly rusty nails. This lake also has the most diverse range of plant and animal life in Texas, including beavers, nutria, alligators, snakes, turtles, etc. We were excited to get to see a couple of beavers working on their den during our tour. Norah thought they were pretty neat and Justin boldly declared them "goats". Not sure where he got that, but everyone laughed when I tried to explain that they were beavers and his response was definitively "No, goats!".

On our way back to the cabin we decided to stop for lunch. The kids were asleep but Jeff and I had no issue with breaking Parenting Rule #1 (Never wake sleeping babies) because we were craving chicken fried steak and knew of the perfect place to find it. The year Norah was born Patrick interned at a church out here, and when we went to visit him we discovered this down home culinary perfection at a local restaurant after services were concluded. The food was just as good as we remembered and Norah and Justin enjoyed flirting with the other patrons.