COLORADO BEND, TX 2011

You didn’t know that the Colorado River cuts across Texas to empty into the Gulf of Mexico? Well, it does.  And about 200 miles southwest of Dallas/Fort Worth, there is a great spot to camp along the river in Colorado Bend StatePark. The park opened its doors Memorial Day of 1988, after having been a cattle ranch and a cedar farm, making it one of the newer state parks in Texas. It is also one of the more rustic parks in the state. There are no campsites with electricity or a water tap, and there are no real showers, other than a “rinse-off shower” where families line up in the evenings, parents holding up towels as their children squeal and rush through their cold showers.  In Wendel Withrow’s book “The Best in Tent Camping: Texas” (which has served me as an excellent guide, so far), he suggests you “watch for Texas-size red ants and silver dollar-size spiders that seem to like to spin their symmetrical webs between the junipers and directly across the trail. Luckily, it’s easy to go around these scary-looking friends, but don’t forget to check the trail ahead for the far-more dangerous diamondback rattlesnakes as they wait in the shade or come out in the cool of the evening after the hot Texas sun heads toward the horizon”. So, it may not be the best place to be introduced to the great outdoors. In fact, I wasn’t sure I wanted to go, either, but it seemed like a good place for us to further our backpacking practice. So on Friday, William and I again left work early to head out for a weekend of camping with Pumba.

CADDO LAKE: EAST TEXAS OCTOBER 2011

I seem to end up spending a lot of my weekends with boy scouts … not by choice, really (although they seem to be a good group of kids), we just seem to have the same hangouts. October is when you get some of your best camping weather in Texas. So, when we headed out that first weekend in October to camp at Caddo Lake State Park in East Texas, I fully expected to find a mobbed campground. Happily, I was mistaken.

William and I left work a little early that Friday to pack up Pumba, the car and the eighteen-foot tandem Ocean Kayak, and drive the three hours to get to the park before headquarters was scheduled to close (five pm). The park is located less than an hour due east of Shreveport, Louisiana, but still in Texas. It is on the banks of Caddo Lake, the largest naturally formed lake in the south, half of which is in Texas and the other half in Louisiana. Named after the Caddo Indians, the lake is now guarded by thousands of cypress trees bearded in Spanish moss (which is actually not Spanish at all, but actually very much a native plant species). It is one of only 22 wetlands recognized by the Ramsar Convention as a “wetland of international significance”. Whether they consider it “significant” because it is home to over twenty animal species of concern and two that are on the Endangered Species list (the black bear and the alligator snapping turtle – we didn’t see either) or because the area contains one of the highest quality old-growth bottomland hardwood forests or because of its unique historical significance (more to come), I don’t know. But from the moment we passed through the gates, the place had me.