Moving into Texas

From Betty's RV Park we made our way into Texas. As usual, we took the backroads, only getting on I-10 at Lake Charles, Louisiana and traveling to the Texas Welcome Station to grab brochures to try to map our route through that huge state. Once we had our brochures, we exited the interstate and headed north on Texas Highway 62 to catch US Highway 96 to Jasper, Texas. Our plan was to stay at Sandy Creek Corps of Engineer Campground if they had vacancies. Luck was on our side and they had plenty of vacancies. The campground hosts let us drive through the park and pick a site. We chose site 42 overlooking Steinhagen Lake!

The rest of the afternoon, we looked over our brochures to try and decide  where we would go after our four night stay. We found out that there was a Texas state park within hiking distance of Sandy Creek! The next day we drove to the park to get a Texas State Park Pass. Unlike Florida parks, Texas charges an entrance fee for each occupant in a vehicle. Bob and I figured we would visit quite a few parks and that would make the pass worthwhile ($70 for a year). After purchasing our pass at Martin Dies, Jr. State Park Hen House Ridge Unit, we drove to the Walnut Ridge Unit just a mile down the road to do some hiking and geocaching. Texas state parks have geocaches located in them for the Texas State Challenge. We are going to see how many of these we can find and log this trip.

Our first hike was the Island Trail. The trail wound around an island and continued on shore for about a mile. Yes, it was a dreary day, but there was no rain in the forecast for the day. We took advantage of the cooler temperatures in the morning to do our hiking.

 Then we continued on to the other trails in this unit until we had walked them all!

 That afternoon we walked the trail from our campground to the state park just to get the Texas Challenge Geocache. We had everything we needed except the passport which we were supposed to use a special punch to mark. The cache was located on Slough Trail which intersected with the Sandy Creek Trail. We completed all the other tasks associated with the cache and would return to get the punch when we hiked Slough Trail the next day.

 Bob and I continued our hiking and geocaching in the state park the next day. Once again, we got an early start because there was rain forecast for the afternoon. We found all the caches hidden in the park and got the stamp for the Challenge Cache. We returned to our campsite and waited out the storm. This storm had heavy rain and winds, but we stayed warm and cozy in Sol.

The next day we drove around the area looking for geocaches. We stumbled upon a national forest campground in Angelina National Forest. The area was built by the CCC in the 1930s. The waterway was destroyed by floods in 2005, but the forest service rebuilt it to look similar to the original.

Much to our surprise, there was a trail that we would have liked to hike at the campground--Old Sawmill Trail---but we weren't prepared to hike that day. We put the trail on our list for a return trip to the area because it was time for us to move to our next destination in Georgetown, Texas.