We drove through Paris, Texas and stopped to see the Eiffel Tower with the cowboy hat. Next door, we found a new Veterans Memorial Park.
We left Texas and did some fun things in Oklahoma. We stopped in Hugo - " Circus City USA" - winter quarters for 15 circus companies. After a great lunch at Angie's Circus City Cafe, we spent quite a bit of time admiring unique headstones in the "Showman's Rest" section of the town cemetery, dedicated to circus performers, clowns, and trainers.
One inscription carved into granite read, "Give life the best that's in you for it's only a one night stand - there are no repeat performances brought back by popular demand."
I love this one shaped like a circus tent.
After the whimsy of the circus, we headed north for some scenic driving. We drove across Kiamichi Mountain, then west through a valley to Talimena State Park with Winding Stair Mountain in view to the north, the location of the next day's adventure.
We enjoyed a beautiful fall day to drive the Talimena Scenic Byway through the Ouachita Mountains. We crossed into Arkansas and made a short walk to the brass benchmark at the stateline.
Our next encampment was on the shore of Lake Ouachita in Arkansas. We tackled gravel road to get to Hickory Nut Vista for a magnificent view of the lake.
We had great fun introducing Rusty and Mary to geocaching. Here we teamed up to extract a geocache - Rusty held the screwdriver while I held my extendable magnet. This was a cache that Brian and I were unable to find when we were in the area four years ago.
We stopped in Glenwood, AR, at the workshop of John Mark Baker to admire his artwork made from scrap metal. Mary bought a cute dachshund made from a chrome bumper.
The next stop was Crater of Diamonds State Park near Murfreesboro, Arkansas. We didn't dig in the crater in the hopes of finding something valuable, but enjoyed a trail down to the Little Missouri River from the beautiful campground. A quiet walk in the woods is a wonderful way to start the day.
Fall color reflected in the Little Missouri River
the digging field
Heading back to Texas, we tried to avoid the major highways around Texarkana and followed a route on back roads to Caddo Lake State Park. This is a park that Brian and I had never camped at before. More CCC work was done here. The park isn't directly on the lake, but we explored the nearby Caddo Lake National Wildlife Refuge to directly access the lake. The wildlife refuge is on the site of the former U.S. Production Area #1 where TNT and other munitions were manufactured during WW II.
Caddo Lake is the only natural lake in Texas, all others are manmade reservoirs.
It extends across the stateline into Louisiana.
We were on our way before sunrise, as we usually are on road trips. Sunrise with a crescent moon still hanging in the sky was the reward.
The next destination was Huntsville State Park to attend a geocaching event and another opportunity to admire CCC handiwork at the pavilion on Lake Raven. A short visit with my college roommate in Conroe, we attended mass at a beautiful church in New Waverly, and spent one more night camping at Cagle Recreation Area in Sam Houston National Forest. As usual, we dawdled on national forest roads to Montgomery before the worst part of any trip, driving across Houston to get home.
A pleasant surprise in our front yard . . .
Total mileage over the course of 9 days was 1,379
Input from our friends:
Living the first timer Geocaching dream...
How could we not know about the geocaching world? My husband and I have lived 71 full years of curiousity, adventure, and self sustainability. Delving into the day to day mysteries of life. Education, family, home, work and vacations galore!
We were introduced to geocaching by friends who have successfully searched and found approx 38, 000 caches over a period of 18+ years.
And who better than to introduce us to the thrill of the hunt, joyous satisfaction at the discovery and, the driving anticipation of yet another find just down the road.
Public and Private parks and campgrounds invite us to stay just a little bit longer, to wander a trail or two, exploring the beauty of this great big ole world we call home.
And while we are at it, we get to play hide and seek with people we do not know yet who take the time to hide something that we can find.
Simply for the thrill of finding it...
Who knew? That this world of ours held people, strangers who wanted to play with us.
What an amazing world geocaching has modeled for us. To learn how to get along.
Thanks to you our friends. We had a grand time wandering about with you.
We will pass this geocaching thing on to others. Who knows maybe someday, our fun time hide and seek might just make the world a better place.
R and M,
Thank you for the companionship, laughter, enthusiasm, and guitar music under the night skies. And trust that we were not getting lost on the back roads. We need to do this again!
Brian here:
I have to add my thoughts about this trip.
It was a first for us. In all these years, we have never gone on a camping trip with friends that involved more than one campground. When we set out, I felt good about doing it with Rusty and Mary, and was not disappointed!
This was the first time we had done anything with them other than 'shooting the breeze' with them while they were working at our house, when we found out that we had many similar interests. While talking around the campground (no fires due to burn bans) I was surprised to find out that there were more commonalities than I thought.
As Kris said, we need to explore somewhere else with them.
