Today we took a spin to the south from our RV park in Texarkana. Not too far from our spot is the northern edge of Wright Patman Lake. We started out by driving southwest along the western lakeshore. Stupidly, we do not have a DeLorme Gazetteer for Texas. Our normally cooperative Garmin was completely worthless without supplying it with mailing addresses and nobody gets mail where we drove today.
Fortunately, Peggy was navigating by using her Google Maps app on our phone. We drove many miles on one-lane and fewer on two-lane dirt roads during our circumnavigation of the northern half of the lake. The terrain along the roads is low rolling hills with some marshy areas. The vegetation is pine and hardwood forests mixed with beautiful pastures. Most of the species are deciduous so, from a distance, the hardwoods look like spooky stuff at this time of year. The pastures, on the other hand, are erupting in new grass and they are emerald. We didn’t see as much wildlife as we encountered down in Columbus a few weeks ago but we still spotted plenty of cardinals, American pelicans, cormorants, squirrels, hawks and a smattering of livestock. We also stopped in a few spots where the only sounds were wind through the trees and bird calls. It was great.
Along the way, we drove into many small Texas state parks located in various places on the lake’s shoreline. The parks were almost empty with only fisherpersons parking near the boat ramps. The roads into many of the parks are dirt and hauling our 34′ fifth wheel into these areas would be worrisome. When I was younger, I might have been game but being stuck at my age is annoying. I am perfectly happy here in Texarkana with my paved RV spot with full hookups and wi-fi. Maybe we’ll try some other Texas state parks for overnight stays on our way back to San Diego.
We took a few pix along the way and some can be seen by clicking here