Blanco River, Dudley Johnson Park

Yesterday, we went to the Blanco River at Five Mile Dam, just outside of San Marcos. They call it Five Mile Dam because it is five river miles from Wimberley, Texas. The name of the park is the Dudley Johnson Park, in memory of a fallen police officer.

Five Mile Dam, Blanco River

What a wonderful sight met our eyes. The Blanco River is flowing over the dam and the pool behind the dam is deep and wide. Several years ago, the Blanco pretty much dried up during a drought and it broke my heart to see this magnificant river reduced to stagnant pools. Since we have been in a two-year drought, I have not wanted to return.

Dry as a Bone Blanco

I found the picture above on Notes from The Cubicle blog. Sean snapped this picture of the exposed backside of the dam on July 19, 2006.

Tags: Blanco River, Five Mile Dam, Dudley Johnson Park

Parents, frightened by the infant car seat ratings report featured in the February issue of Consumer Reports magazine and on the website, ConsumerReports.org, will be happy to know that the Consumers Union will be retesting all the car seats, using in-house labs.

The crash results and report, performed by an outside lab, concluded only two of twelve car seats tested passed the side impact test. Consumer Reports is suspending the article’s ratings and other recommendations regarding specific car-seat models until this retesting is completed.

In an email dated January 25, 2007, the president of Consumers Union, Jim Guest, stated:

One of our tests was intended to simulate how infant car seats perform in a side-impact crash at 38 mph. That’s the speed at which many new vehicles are tested in side crashes by the government’s auto safety agency. But upon reevaluating our data, we believe our tests simulated crashes that were much more severe than that.

I rely on Consumer Reports for information and testing results on any major product that I might purchase. In the past year, I have used Consumer Reports.org to complete research on front loading washers and dryers and used car safety and repair ratings. This inaccurate report, while disappointing, is only one of four mistakes made by Consumer Reports in 70 years!

The others errors were: Suzuki Samurai (1988) and Isuzu Trooper (1996) road test results, ingredients in dog food lacking essential nutrients dispute (1998), and a depreciation miscalculation involving hybrid gas-electric cars and trucks (April 2006).

Tags: Consumers Union, Consumer Reports Magazine, infant car seats tests, suspending ratings and recommendations, infant car seats safety retested

San Marcos Falls

Many of you know that Texas was in the grips of a two-year drought that had dried up most of the rivers and greatly lowered the lakes.

Lower San Marcos Falls

We were blessed with rain, ice and snow, so the springs and rivers are flowing and the lakes are up again. More rain, ice and snow on its way to Texas! Thank you, Lord!

Tags: San Marcos River, San Marcos Falls, Texas drought broken, Texas rivers flowing