The Kingsland Slab
On the Llano River - an endless sea of puddles and grasses
Wednesday, September 13, 2017
Choosing a place to stay can be tricky. For the Outdoor Painters Society Llano Paintout I went on-line to find something near Llano. Llano filled with a “Jeep Jamboree”. So I googled “places near Llano”. Most were the boring usual RV park, leveled field etc. One looked promising, but had a wierd name, The Kingsland “Slab” RV Park. I looked at images that past visitors has posted and thought it worth a try. The park is located along a beautiful slab of granite with water meandering through its bumps and holes. Beautiful! Yes! After one day at Enchanted Rock State Park, I spent my time a stones throw from “The Slab”. Not only did the RV Park have this water attraction, but it had absolutely monumentally huge
Mesquite trees, the biggest I have ever seen and huge Live Oak Trees that draped to the ground with limbs a foot and half thick! As if that was not enough the sunsets were nonstop beauty. A closer look found wildflowers of every kind. I could have illustrated the catalogue for the Wild Seed Farm with them. Several kinds of milkweed, Maximilian Sun Flowers, American Beauty Berry to name only a few. This place was a hidden paradise!
It had a variety of dogs a cat, birds galore, butterflies and moths - one of which flew into our trailer unnoticed and tried to spend the night. He had a four inch wingspan. I had to cup both hands to catch him - or her. He went back outside happily, we thought a bird was flying around the trailer. It was cool at night, but by noon of each day it was beastly hot! Summer was still in full force.
At left is a stacked rock formation that the RV Park used to mark the roads and corners in the park. Somebody really went to a lot of trouble to make all of these and drill holes through the rocks.
I don’t mean to diminish the interesting rock formation at Enchanted Rock State Park. There are miles of trails and massive rock formations to conquer. Humanely, there was a pavilion there to hide from the heat, but by 3 pm even with a wet shirt and shade it was really uncomfortable.
The most intersting thing that I fount to paint Enchanted Rock were these dead gnarled trees that I thought looked as if they were dancing with each other. Their grey weathered trunks were a stark contrast to the greens of the plants and the red rock formations. The sun made moved constantly making the tangled limbs really resemble couples dancing. It doesn’t take much to amuse me. This was devinitely a place for cactus!
Here is our Casita parked under one of the Mesquite trees and the Live Oak that must be several hundred years old. I should have had somebody under it for scale. I wanted to paint it, but it was most interesting about 7:30 am for about 15 minutes as the sun hit the top portion of it.
