Pond Soc. Field Trip - eat before or after? How it Went....

[Julles]

I'm setting up a field trip for the Houston Pond society, March 6, Saturday, to Sheldon Lake State Park.  It's a relatively small park, with smallish ponds left over from the days when it was a fish hatchery.  There is an adjacent lake which is not accessable by foot.  So we will be walking the trails around the ponds, maybe walking into the marshes to bird watch, and looking at the small garden and smaller-still interpitive center.  All this will take about two hours.

The question is, do we eat before or after the field trip?

We are meeting at 11:00 am to catch a (free) county bus that will take us the 40 minute drive to the park.  We will be leaving the park at about 2:00 pm.

If we eat before, we might be sleepy or sluggish for the park tour.  To me, it's customary to eat after the event, so you can talk and recap what you saw.  But that means eating at 2:30 or so, which is too late for lunch and too early for dinner.

What do you guys think?

[Jerry]

Take a few so called "Energy Bars" along. Then a late luch or early dinner.  Texas Bar B Q!
Water too.

[miguynmkoi]

I would say "After" so you can enjoy more time together.

[Julles]

Oh, that snack idea is PERFECT!  I KNEW there always had to be a middle ground, but you need several heads thinking to find it! 

That way, we can snack lightly on the bus (one member is diabetic, so blood sugar is important), which is always fun, like kiddies with a lunchbox, and have a real meal later, to rehash what we saw and did. 

[Esther]

I agree with the snack and late meal so you can discuss freely what you have experienced. If you eat before, you may feel rushed. Take some thermoses of water too.

[PondJoy]

Agreed......sounds like fun Julles....how many do you have going?  And where is Sheldon Lake?

[Julles]

Here's the link to our website, the page with the field trip info on it.
http://houstonpondsociety.org/meetings.html

I have added a few updates that are not on the website yet, but you get the jist of it.  I'm hoping to get some publicity for it, so who knows who many people will attend?!  From just our group, I expect 20. 

[Julles]

OK, so the field trip was Saturday.  I had bought a couple boxes of granola bars, and some fruit roll-ups, plus some of those single-serving bags of chips.  I had a case of water left from another event.  Hauled all that to where we were catching the bus - free from the county (for senior citizens - people over 50    !)

Well, even though I spent two hours submitting the info to the various on-line neighborhood sections of our local paper, we only attracted "the usual" group of Pond Society members.  Some met us at the state park, so that left us with only 7 people to ride the bus.  The minimum was 10.  The driver was a doll, and looked like someone who would make the ride a lot of fun.  She said she would fudge a little and take us with 9 people, but not 7.

So, we got off and car pooled to the park.

No one ate any snacks.

At the park, the weather was beautiful - absolutely perfect.  Bright clear sky, cool temperatures, warm sun.  But, since we here in sub-tropic Houston had had the recent freeze, the vegetation had not had time to recover, so we were walking along in a very brown setting.  No water lilies, no gardens, no wildflowers, no prairie grass.

But... we did see a good number of birds, both land and water, and one member had brought along a guide, which made it fun to try to identify them.  We also saw several snakes, some turtles, and THREE alligators! 

One lady in particular, she's a fairly effervescent gal to begin with, as we walked along, she kept exclaiming about what a fine, beautiful day it was, how good it felt to be outdoors.  Her enthusiasm was catching.

People started getting antsy after about an hour and a half, and hungry, so we piled into our cars and drove to Johnny Carnino's, which had a table waiting for us.  About half of us had wine, and the other half had caffine, so the room got loud and vivacious.  The food was good, service was great, and everyone had a good time.

Most of all, I have to say, EVERY SINGLE PERSON made it a point to say what a good time he had had, and to thank me for setting the whole trip up.  I was really flattered, because, I have to admit, it WASN"T all that great of a trip, or anything special at all (except that we've never done a field trip before), and not all that much work to arrange.  But it sure felt good for people to say "thank you."

[Esther]

It's too bad it wasn't better but it still sounded like fun, just spending time together, at least. And you all learned some stuff too.