East Texas

East Texas is not what we expected. Last time we came though this gigantor state we entered from the west and drove across seemingly endless miles of flat farm land dotted with oil rigs. We then spent two weeks in Austin, left the Airstream in Houston for a week while we flew east to visit family, and upon return drove straight to Louisiana. Needless to say we didn’t see a lot of the state, and what we did see looked nothing like this.

Yeah, this is Texas. Surprise! Tim came across some info about Martin Dies Jr. State Park somewhere online, and since it was the right distance from our previous location (a small park in Louisiana that I’m not going to blog about because it rained the whole time and we barley left the house), and it had what sounded like nice waterfront sites we jumped on it. When we checked in the ranger recommended site 108 for its privacy, convenient shore access for putting our kayaks in, and sunset views over the water. He was spot on. We stayed 5 nights and were treated to a spectacular show every single night.

Aside from our most excellent site, the best part of this campground was the kayaking trails. Since we stayed for the weekend we were able to do a really long kayak that took us around an island, through a magical cypress swamp and along a series of canals.

We also did some biking and hiking on the trails and around the campground. It’s a big place with two separate areas on either side of the road, cabins, awesome tent sites with open water views, and a few fun bike/hike trails with lots of bridges.

We enjoyed our time here so much that we extended for an additional night so we could enjoy both weekend days. It means that we’ll have to do some extra after work driving this week to make it to Tucson by the 19th, but it was well worth it.