We drove just over 300 miles today to get to this campsite at Ratcliff Lake Recreation Area in Davy Crockett National Forest.
After almost six hours of driving Bud had to back in avoiding this hole…
and this rock…
which came in to play because he couldn’t let the front of the truck swing into this tree.
But in the end he got the trailer slotted in…
and we managed to level it without unhooking, so we can quickly take off for another 300+ miles tomorrow.
There is a lovely view from our “patio”.
Matey and I had a nice two mile walk…
along pretty Ratcliff Lake.
On our walk we stopped and chatted with Libby Seigars. She and her husband boated the great loop. They also drove through Quebec to Labrador and Newfoundland. She’s from Maine and I had mentioned stopping in Thorndike to see our friends Barb and Charlie last summer. “I know just a couple of people from Thorndike,” she said, “who are your friends?” I told her; she worked with Charlie, is a potter and knew and admired Barb’s work for years and then met her through Charlie. Wow! And we meet in a campground in Texas.
It’s things like this that make the driving and the parking all worth while!
I have been remiss in posting. This has become a photo journal and we have just been hanging around Hot Springs getting things done, so no pretty pictures.
We have gone disc golfing several times, but you’ve seen that.
And Bud’s colonoscopy found no issues, but you don’t want to see that!
Otherwise I’ve been doing glamorous things like the wash.
And now that we know Bud is okay, I’m back to making reservations.
So far I have reservations up to May 22nd. Since we’re going back to Newfoundland I’m dealing with Canadian National and Provincial Parks again, which means I have to find the parks and then make notes on when reservations open on line. If you’re not in line when they open you may not get a spot!
Today we are replacing our gas absorption refrigerator with a 12 Volt model. Gas absorption refrigerators don’t work well in extreme temperatures and we’ve had ours quit on us twice during cold spells, most recently at San Angelo. I contacted the Outdoors RV factory and they are now using a Furion 12V model in all their campers. A bonus is that the 10 cubic foot model will slide right in to the slot where our current 8 cubic foot model sits.
And there it is. Eventually it will have black glass panels on the doors, but those take about 6 to 8 weeks from the factory. So for now it has the kind of ugly gray shipping panels, but hey, it works.
Tomorrow we leave to race across Texas and New Mexico to get back to our original itinerary in Arizona.
We’re back in Hot Springs at the National Park Campground, Gulpha Gorge. We have a pretty unlevel site, but we managed to get the trailer level and we have full hookups, so that is nice.
Unfortunately when we arrived the trails on Hot Springs Mountain were inaccessible from the campground because the water in Gulpha Creek was over the stepping stones. Matey might have been willing to wade it, but I wasn’t.
Yesterday afternoon Jamie, Sean and Bria came and got Matey and me and we went to a new set of trails they’d discovered just outside the city. (We left poor Bud at home to prep for his colonoscopy today, ugh!)
These are the Northwoods Trails, and although they are set up for mountain bikers they are open to hikers also. We hiked a bit over three miles and met just two bikes on the trail, though we saw four others go by on an adjacent trail.
They are built mostly on the land around several small reservoirs that are the water supply for Hot Springs. They extend onto some National Park land and into Cedar Glades Park, where we go disc golfing. We had all seen the sign for the trailhead, but had no idea what nice trails they were.
They were particularly pretty yesterday because the recent rains caused waterfalls over the dams that Jamie and Sean said are usually dry.
Some parts of the trails are along the maintenance roads for the reservoirs.
These offered nice views of the impoundment dams.
In other places they were just broad paths through the woods. They weren’t blazed but were easy to see.
And at every junction there were signs and maps and the trails were named. I loved the names. We walked on Funguy trail, Yaupon Yop and Bees Knees. There were dozens to choose from making loops of many lengths.
A lot of money has been invested, like in this bridge whose one approach is a banked curve for the bikes.
That bridge went across the top of a dam and I appreciated the dog safe railings.
We got an up-close look at one set of falls there.
We chose paths that hugged the lakes…
so we had lots of water views.
We found this stone bench and had to stop for pictures.
You only get to see Sean’s shadow because he thought I should be in one of my photos.
Here they had constructed a wooden causeway over a low area…
and across a little creek.
We then walked along the other side of the little lake and got to look back at the falls we’d crossed.
It’s a really pretty area…
and has the promise of many nice future hikes. Just when I thought I had walked all the trails in Hot Springs I have been shown a whole new set!
We are back in Louisiana and back for a second visit to Jimmie Davis State Park. We stopped here for one night on our way down to New Orleans and thought it deserved a longer stay. I’m glad to be back among the tall trees.
We are enjoying having this nice campground mostly to ourselves. This morning we saw two foxes cross this open area, and late this afternoon a small herd of deer went across.
Or course there are few campers because we are winter camping. But last night was the last freezing night predicted for our stay, so no more dripping water taps. (Yes, that is ice on the ground, although most had already melted.)
Now we’re all hooked up for the rest of the week.
This is a really nice park. It has these docks for the campers to use.
They are lighted at night.
This cement walkway leads from the docks to the other side of the campground.
Louisiana State Parks have laundromats. So far they all have two washers and two dryers. As a full time camper, I really appreciate that. I’ll do wash before we leave.
And the park has a disc golf course. We played today. Matey had to be on leash most of the time for obvious reasons. He’s interacted with four armadillos today, so he is a tired and happy dog. (No animals were harmed to get this photo…thank goodness.)
We’ve now started back east and north for our return to Hot Springs. Our first leg took us to Mother Neff State Park. This is one of the oldest parks in the Texas State Park System. The original 6 acres were willed to the state of Texas by Isabella Neff on her death in 1921. These acres along the Leon River were a place where friends and family gathered and she wanted the people of Texas to continue to enjoy them.
Her son, Pat, developed the family park and added 250 acres. He was governor of Texas from 1921 to 1925 and was instrumental in establishing the State Parks Board. In 1934 he donated the family park and it became Mother Neff State Park.
From 1934 until 1938 the Civilian Conservation Corps worked here. This bell called them to dinner and meetings and warned them of storms.
Besides roads and trails they constructed picnic tables, like this one.
They added to a natural dam to create this wash pond on a stream flowing into the Leon River.
The CCC also built this stone viewing tower;
although I was disappointed that the view did not include the Leon River. In fact, you can’t get to the Leon River or the original 6 acres of the park as all that area is closed due to flooding.
There is still plenty to see, like this cave we explored this morning.
This was used by the Tonkawa people 200 years ago, and is a very pretty place.
However, the civilized tranquility of places like this pond are occasionally interrupted by extremely loud noises. This morning while I walked with Matey there was a prolonged roar that was scary to hear. Bud said it shook the trailer. We found out there is a SpaceX facility in nearby McGregor where they test their rocket engines. So perhaps this park isn’t quite as civilized and peaceful as Mother Neff had hoped.
It was another sunny day, though still cold. Bud joined Matey and me in looking around San Angelo State Park. We drove to one of the boat ramps, now ending far above the level of the water in O C Fisher Lake.
We then drove to the north end of the park to hike the Dinosaur Trail. This is central Texas and it’s pretty wide and empty.
The trail led not to dinosaur tracks, but to tracks even older and more unusual, tracks from animals that lived 90 million years before the dinosaurs.
The actual tracks aren’t marked, and there’s no guide to them. We are certain this is one set. I’ve never seen such a long set of tracks preserved as fossils before.
There were other marks we thought were tracks,
Since the sign said there were tracks from 26 different animals, these might well be Permian era tracks also.
Almost every plant that grows here has thorns.
Or at least sharp points.
The trail back led through some pretty thick stands of prickly pear cactus. Unfortunately, I slipped on a rutted part and fell. It would not have been significant except I came away with one hip and one side of my butt covered in fine, fine prickers. Bud and I both got them in our hands trying to get them off my jeans. I know some are still in me.
Not just the plants are covered with spines. On the way out we spotted this porcupine. I’ve never seen a live one before and was surprised at how big he was. He was at least three feet long.
He just kind of ambled along and we followed him. I got close enough to catch a picture showing his quills. Sorry you can only see him from behind, he did not stop to look at us.
It was a cold day and a prickly day, but we got to see some new things, so it was a good day.
We left yesterday to come a couple hundred miles west. It was in the 20’s and wasn’t supposed to get above freezing. We called ahead to make sure they still had water at San Angelo State Park and since they did we emptied our fresh water tank and drained the water lines to make sure nothing would freeze on the trip. The temperature actually dropped to about 16 and we drove through snow flurries. Ugh!
Eventually we ended up here. But first we went to our site at the north end of the park where all the water was frozen. I called the gate and they had us come back to the south side where they said they’d find us a site with water. But they couldn’t; all the spigots were freezing up despite being wrapped in insulation. We ended up backing in by the hosts’ trailer and using their water to fill our tank. Two hours later (and about 6 hours after we’d started out) we were finally set up. The inside of the trailer was 35 degrees. With two electric heaters and the propane furnace we got it up to 70 in about an hour. But we still had no water because evidently there was enough water left in the lines somewhere to freeze.
So we went to the restroom where we found although the sink had no water the shower was still running and we filled our five gallon container. Fortunately it takes very little water to flush an RV toilet.
The forecast did not look good. This morning Bud took an electric heater outside and aimed it under the trailer. He thought the stubborn freeze might be in the pickup tube from the tank, even though we had our tank heater on. Just after another very kind host refilled our water jug and brought us an extra 4 gallons in an old jug they had (they were about to shut off the water to the restroom) Bud tried our water pump again and it worked. That frozen part let loose about 20 hours after we got set up.
Whenever we head southwest from Hot Springs we try to stop near Austin to visit our friends Jack and Sharon. We were supposed to move on Tuesday but there was a high wind warning for the whole day so we stayed one more day and watched the waves on Lake Livingston.
Wednesday we drove for about 5 hours and came to Blanco State Park. This is a very small park (just over 100 acres) along the Blanco River on the edge of the little town of Blanco.
To get to the campground you have to cross the river on this roadway. It is made so the river can go over it when the water is high. At low water there are a couple of culverts. This picture was taken standing on the crossing looking downstream to the highway bridge. A flood a few years ago had the river up to the bottom of that highway bridge!
For a small park it is surprisingly pretty, with structures, like this pavilion, built in the 1930’s by the CCC.
Wednesday afternoon in our initial reconnaissance Matey and I found this lovely trail heading east along the south bank of the river. It only went about a half mile,
but happily it made a tight loop and we walked back along the lower bank, closer to the river.
Thursday was the only day we had to spend with Jack and Sharon as they were leaving town on Friday. Luckily it was the nicest day in the week. Jack and Bud played a round of golf at Grey Rock, where Jack plays several times a week. He shot this video of Bud approaching a green. Sharon, Matey and I took a walk over to the nearby campus of The Wizard Academy, which calls itself a nonprofit, non traditional, business school. It’s a strange place. There was almost no one around. We walked sidewalks that gave beautiful views across the hills. We tried to get a bit of lunch from the food truck, but it was closed. We came back and sat in the sun in Jack and Sharon’s back yard. I, of course, forgot to take pictures.
Once the guys finished their golf game we went out for an early supper at the Salt Lick Barbecue, a regionally famous place just a few miles down the road. We sat outside because Matey was with us, but it was warm enough. Jack remembered to take a picture and he shared it with me.
Today Matey and I explored a bit upriver from the campground. There are some massive cypresses…
and some big, beautiful sycamores.
At the upstream end of the park is a city bridge that is also constructed to let high water flow across it. Just beyond that, in front of a low dam, is the old bridge. I wasn’t sure we could walk all the way across it.
I later walked up on the other bank to the old bridge; I’m glad I didn’t try to cross it as we would have had to scramble across some broken parts to get to shore.
With its white limestone banks, beautiful trees and old dams and river crossings the park has a lot to see in a small area.
We left Lake Catherine State Park in Hot Springs on January second and drove down to Tom Merrill Recreation Area Campground just northeast of Shreveport, Louisiana.
This is an Army Corps of Engineers campground; it has water and 50 amp electric, paved level sites and with our lifetime America the Beautiful Senior Pass it’s $7.50 a night.
We’re camped next to the now empty playground, and tonight there is only one other motorhome and the very nice hosts, so we have lots of privacy.
It has a pretty decent disc golf course (although there are lots of trees to hit) and we’ve played it twice.
As you can see from my map program, the campground is just below the dam for Bayou Bodcau Reservoir.
The first day I walked with Matey here below the dam and found this rather pretty cypress swamp.
Today we took the truck over to a boat launch on the reservoir side and found this rather pretty cypress swamp!
This is the view of the reservoir from the road on top of the dam. The brown trees are cypresses without their needles (they are deciduous and drop their needles in the winter). The green to either side is the pines on slightly higher ground.
We took a drive down Duck Dam Road to see if we could find some open water. Here we are returning along the road where the map showed it bordering the reservoir. The reservoir is to the left of the road, in case you can’t tell.
I love traveling and finding surprising places like this. That’s why I like to book us into parks we haven’t visited before. People sometimes ask me what my favorite campground is; I have to say it’s the next one.
On the Roam Again 