Texas State Parks and Travel Tour: April 2018

Abilene State Park, 3/31 - 4/2/18

64. Scampsite #73, in our "new" Scamp!!! This is a very nice park - the hiking trails are all easily accessible from the camping areas, they are of varying lengths and mostly easy terrain. There is a CCC-built pool (open in the summer), concession building and the lookout tower. There is also a lovely pond and Lake Abilene, which appears to be dammed for flood control. One of the other distinguishing features of this park is its yurts that are available to rent! We saw a lot of birds here (there is a bird blind on the old CCC road) and a porcupine in a tree on the dam trail!

Scampsite 73.

Lake Abilene.

Porcupine.

Buffalo Wallow (pond).

Lookout / water tower.

Pool.

Concession building.

Stairway up the hill to the Concession building and pool.

Yurts!

Bewick's Wren, building a nest in our Scampsite!

Lark Sparrows.

Red-Shouldered Hawk (I think).

Spotted Towhee.

Nearby attractions: Abilene has 3 breweries, one of which is a pizza restaurant, one of which has a food truck frequently, and the last one has no food options. Perini Ranch Steakhouse, ranked #3 in Texas by Texas Monthly, is 4 miles away from the park. Abilene is a county seat, home to two colleges and an Air Force base. It also has one of the few remaining drive-in movie theaters in Texas, and Dr. Seuss sculptures downtown!

Purtis Creek State Park, 3/16 - 17/18

63. Scampsite #22, this was a small site, but close to the water and to the hiking trails! There are lots of hiking trails and all are accessible from within the camping area. The lake is a smallish fishing lake with a boat ramp, but we didn't see a lot of big fishing boats. Sites 20 - 24 on the water are the best ones. At night we heard the howling of a large pack of coyotes that sounded very close to the park, perhaps just by the dam. Our Scampsite also had a resident Cardinal who was adamant about attacking our truck, the interloper.

Scampsite 22

Sunset on the lake.

Early morning fog from our Scampsite.

Scampsite 22 in the morning.

Least Sandpipers.

Attack Cardinal.

Savannah Sparrow.

Nearby attractions: Athens is the county seat and has a lot to do! We visited Athens Brewing for lunch and then went back up to Cedar Creek Brewery in Seven Points. There is also at least one winery close to Athens.

Lake Bob Sandlin State Park, 3/15-16/18

62. Scampsite # 72, at the end of our area. This is another power plant lake, but it's a huge lake, part of a chain. It's definitely a big-boat fishing lake. There is some hiking, we saw Buffleheads in a cove of the lake while hiking, but the trails aren't close to the camping areas. There was a bird blind at the pond on the hiking trail, but we were there in the middle of the day and didn't see any birds.
The camping pads are sloped for run-off, so make leveling a challenge. The cemetery of old Fort Sherman, a military post to help settlers, is all that is left and happens to be within the park boundaries.

Scampsite 72

Bufflehead Ducks

Fort Sherman cemetery.

Lake Bob Sandlin.

The pond with the bird blind.

Pilgrim's Pride history, now Anvil Brewing.

Bo Pilgrim, at the factory.

Ezekiel Airship.

Nearby attractions: Pittsburg is famous for being the hometown of Bo Pilgrim, of Pilgrim's Pride chickens, and of race car driver Carroll Shelby. It was also the site of the Ezekiel Airship's construction and flight attempts (a replica is in the local museum, which is also the old depot). Pittsburg has its own type of hot links, a brewery, and Vaughn's Catfish, a lakeside restaurant. When we were in the area 7 years ago, we ate dinner at Snappy Pappy's but it's now closed.

Daingerfield Lake State Park, 3/14-15/18

61. Scampsite 16, our site was a lovely little one. It was a short site, which was fine for our 13-foot Scamp, but would be problematic for other RV's. (Several of the parks asked us the length of our RV and deliberately put us in shorter sites, which was unusual.) This was our first time to this park - 7 years ago we stayed at an Army Corps of Engineers park instead (I don't remember why). It's not as spread out as other parks, but it's history is different too. Apparently the town of Daingerfield (a county seat) wanted a park so they asked the CCC to help out. Consequently, the CCC built a dam to create the sweet little lake, the pier, beach and picnic area.
We hiked the whole park, including the Mountain View Trail, and saw lots of Bluebirds, Dark-Eyed Juncos and American Goldfinches. This park has a tons to do: fishing (trout, bass, channel cat), swimming, small boat rentals, hiking, a playground, and nice facilities.

Scampsite 16

CCC fire pit.

View of the park from the other side of the lake.

CCC-built dam.

Swimming beach, picnic area.

Dining hall.

Old CCC sign.

American Goldfinch

Dark-Eyed Junco

Eastern Bluebirds nesting.

Nearby attractions: Daingerfield is a county seat, but the park is the best thing in the area.

Caddo Lake State Park, 3/13-14/18

60. Scampsite #37, our site was the end one in our area, so was very quiet. It was also lush with green grass, moss, and lots of wee birds chirping, but none that sat still long enough to identify. This lake is the only natural lake in Texas - it actually was created by a logjam (called the Great Raft) in 1799 on the Red River, until steamboat captain Henry Shreve removed the logjam by 1873 so that the river could be navigable by steamboats. However, once the Great Raft was totally removed, the river lost enough water that steamboats could no longer navigate it, so by 1914 a dam was reconstructed. The current dam was constructed in the 1970's. Interestingly, Caddo Lake never went totally dry, due to sedimentary deposits that created a bowl shape at the lower end of the lake.
We had intended to rent canoes and paddle the bayou, but there were torrential rains a few weeks earlier, so the boat dock was under water and the boats were locked away for safekeeping. So we hiked instead - there is a good hill to climb, complete with a CCC-built pavilion and a stone grill nearby. One of the camping areas (the tent one) was also flooded, and our area restroom was in the process of being rebuilt, so the park had a trailer of individual toilet-shower combo rooms for use! Again, it was lovely to see the parks being upgraded and maintained.
In the morning we woke up to 33 degree temperatures - yikes! We heard barred owls caterwauling twice, but didn't actually see many birds at all.

Scampsite 37

Flooded boat ramp area.

CCC pavilion.

CCC grill near pavilion.

Flooded campground.

Fishing pier at dusk.

Morning at Caddo Lake.

Nearby attractions: The town of Jefferson is a county seat and is a lovely town. There are lots of antique shops, a great barbecue restaurant (Joseph's Riverport BBQ - on the most recent Texas Monthly Best BBQ list), a Carnegie library that is still a library and sells used books if you need one, gobs of B&B's (it's the Texas B&B Capitol y'all), and Steven Jay Gould's Train Car, to name just a few things. Jefferson used to be a river port on the Red River after the logjam was removed

Marshall is also nearby and has a fabulous old courthouse that is now the county museum. We also needed to restock our coffee and found a good coffee shop that sold us fresh ground coffee (Joe Pine Coffee Co.).

Martin Creek Lake State Park, 3/12 - 13/18

59. Scampsite #53. We got a beautiful site, and since it was so close to our last park (Fairfield Lake), we were able to have a late lunch before walking around on the island! Seven years ago, when we stayed here while courthousing, we brought a 2-person kayak, along with all our camping gear (we didn't have the Scamp then) and we kayaked out to the island and camped on a beachy cove. This year, the lake level was high enough that we couldn't find our cove! We hiked several trails and saw 4 different woodpeckers! Martin Creek Lake is another power plant lake, but not as big as Fairfield, so no big boats allowed.