A good fishing trip

I took a break the other afternoon and went fly fishing at Jack Long Falls outside of Kingsland on the Llano River. It's such a beautiful place with granite boulders sticking up out of the river and clear cool water running over the granite sand bottom. The fishing was slow but the scenery more than made up for it. There were quite a few wild flowers blooming in the heat and my fishing buddy fished away as I checked out the more interesting plants on the bank.

With the extra moisture in the ground on the river banks there were plants blooming that normally don't bloom now. Some just looked great and I thought I would share.

Lazy Daisy

Scarlet Gentian

Brown Eyed Susan [I think]

Drummond Phlox

I found this magnificent Trumpet Creeper or Cross Vine, I'm not sure which. It was truly stunning growing up an old dead Willow tree and the orange color could be seen from a long way off. I wanted it badly.

On the way back to the truck I climbed the bank to see what might be blooming on higher ground and came upon a huge field of Snow on the Prairie. Growing as thick as it was made it quite dramatic.
My fishing partner was wading his way back down stream, oblivious to my wanderings about, looking at the plant life. He was still casting his fly as I sat on the bank throwing twigs in the water and watching the Longear Sunfish come up to inspect them. Although a great friend and an all around decent person, I realized that although we were both fishermen I was an outdoorsman and he was just a fisherman. I have hunted and fished my whole life and have many friends, almost all who hunt and fish, but I am the only true outdoorsman that I know. They know of the animals they hunt and the fishes they pursue but that is the extent of their outdoor knowledge. They have no desire to learn more about nature than what they need to know. I have had an unquenchable thirst for knowledge of nature my whole life. I can't stand to move through nature and not know about the birds, the animals and the plants around me. So my little wild flower tour was great fun, a learning experience and very enjoyable.

When I got to the truck I learned that my friend hadn't caught very many fish. He thought it too hot and that we wasted our evening as the fish were not biting that well. I thought of the flowers I had seen and the pictures I had captured and knew it was only a wasted trip if you were a fisherman and not an outdoorsman.