Drove from Ed’s sister’s place in Stephenville to our first host assignment in Colorado Bend State Park (CBSP) Texas on Tuesday October 7. The closest town, other than Bend, is Lampasas, a city of 7000. It does have a Super Walmart and a DQ. Fuel prices are the best we’ve seen in a long time. Saw $2.85 for regular unleaded, and 3:24 for diesel. A very nice clean town.
The center of Bend, TX is Bad Bob’s store. Bend has a post office, a couple churches, and Bad Bobs. The Store has a few grocery items and a grill. Very nice folks. We hear their hamburgers are to die for…perhaps taken literally.

Bend is on the Colorado River (Texas version), 25 miles west of Lampassas on Farm to Market (FM) road 580. Lots of cedar covered rolling hills along the way; and half dozen very impressive large ranches…at least judging by their grandeur entrances and large ornamental iron gates with brick/stone sidewalls. Sorry no picture yet.
From Bend, we are about 3 miles up FM 442 and FM446, through the CBSP entrance where visitors are greeted by an “Iron Ranger,” a self check-in station; then 2 more miles to the CBSP Maintenance area and Park Supervisor residence, where there are 2 host sites. There is one more site 5 miles further down the road. It’s on the river, and where the park headquarters is located.

Bob and Twila, our host neighbors, were here last year and had arrived this year a few days before us. They will leave around the 20th to be gate keepers at a drilling site were they’ll have hookups and earn $160 a day. But it is a 24/7 job checking vehicles through the gate.

We only had 1x Verizon signal, with ocassional 1-2 bars of 3G. We drove in to Killeen the morning of the first full day we were here to purchase a Wilson Cell antenna and receiver. I mounted the antenna on our TV antenna shaft and just secured it with loop bungies. Ran the RG6 coax into the trailer where it connects to a receiver. The receiver has tuning screws for 4 different frequencies with light indicators. Tune so the lights are green and you’re good to go. Now we have 3 bars of 4G pretty consistently and can finally get around to updating this blog.

This is the view from our door. Notice the cactus. It is hard to tell, but the rock canyon of the Colorado River is in the background.
We saw this armadillo out our door, but only got a picture as he was waddling away. Hasn’t returned.
CBSP Headquarters. Very small for all they have to do and store. We love Debbie, the office manager. So upbeat and pleasant to work with. We’ve spent several hours here to get through all the red tape that will allow us to check in campers, drive a park vehicle and machinery. We now have a park pickup to drive the 9.6 mile round trip between our host site and headquarters. Ed will probably spend a lot of his volunteer time helping with a multitude of things needing attention at the maintenance site. Connie may help at headquarters; but we’ll both be doing some camp site checks and clean up too.
This is the main campground by the headquarters. All campgrounds are “primitive,” meaning water & electric are not provided. Most campers have tents. There is some access to nearby water faucets however. Some campsites are “walk in,” meaning campers have to walk down to their site. Still others are backpack sites.
Above is a larger campground area near headquarters. Just down the bank is the Colorado River. Very low on water, so the fishing is poor. When the fishing is good, they catch huge catfish and bass.
Connie with our boss Ranger, Jason Hairston. Very nice man and treats us special. He took us for a park tour our first day. This is the Colorado River canyon directly above Gorman Falls.