East Texas

We entered Texas on February 19th, headed to Lake Livingston State Park, and found a site overlooking the lake. We spent several days in the park, where we enjoyed walking the trails together, Barkley met a Boxer named Bo from Houston, and Bill had fun building campfires.

Played out after playing with Bo, who could not stop boxing long enough to have his picture taken:

Anhingas taking a break from diving:

These wildflowers looked like the pink Spring Beauties at home in Pennsylvania, except that they were yellow:

There are some interesting buildings in the town of Livingston, one of which was called McCardell Cottage. Beverly Miller spent five years renovating the cottage and now happily hosts overnight guests there. When Beverly noticed Karen taking pictures, she invited her in. Beverly was super friendly and generous with her time. Had we not been hauling our home behind us, we would have been happy to stay there.

Livingston's Fain movie theater:



The court house:

We left Lake Livingston on February 22nd and headed to an RV park called Paradise Lake Resort, outside Nacogdoches. The horribly pot-holed lane leading to the park caused us to recall the back roads of southern Louisiana with fondness and longing.

After setting up camp, we headed to the historic town of San Augustine, where restoration and renovation seemed to be taking place everywhere to varying degrees. A restored caboose greets visitors to the town, and the buidings on the main street were wonderful.

Neither of us had ever seen a sundial on a building before, and this one was huge!

Imaginative use of a ravine at the side of a home in San Augustine:

More great old buildings, this time in the town of Nacogdoches:

The following day found us hunkered down inside, while it rained, sleeted and snowed all day long! Luckily, the park had a great Wi-Fi service, and we were able to use part of our snow day to catch up a little online. We also enjoyed reading Jay Leno's Leading With My Chin out loud and cracking up like loons while we did it.

As we were about to leave Nacogdoches on Wednesday the 24th, Barkley met a friend.

Back on the road, we headed to Kilgore to visit the East Texas Oil Museum. It was fantastic, but we're still at a lack to explain how the oil is brought to the surface.


Just a few miles down the road from Kilgore, we checked in at the
Antique Capital RV Park in Gladewater. The park is new and well
designed, with all pull-through spots, concrete pads for the RVs and
picnic tables, a fenced dog yard, a pond, and wonderful laundry
facilities. We were serenaded often by passing trains.

Gladewater is nicknamed the Antique Capital of East Texas, and we found lots of great shops there. Karen was especially happy to have met Katherine Bowen, the owner of the Pacific East Antique Mall and a fellow vintage jewelry collector. Katherine has gorgeous jewelry for sale in her shop and is expecting much more within the next month or so.



This historic home in Gladewater sold for $200,000 at auction last year! We're told it's in great shape after getting a $10,000 paint job.