Our mailing address is Livingston, Texas--home of the Escapees mail-forwarding headquarters. As we drove through Livingston, Denisa snapped this picture as we passed the Livingston City Hall. She even got the Livingston water tower in the background, just to prove we rolled through "home" once again. We've stayed here before, and we really like our little town.
But this day we are heading another hour down the road to Martin Dies Jr. State Park. Even though we haven't been able to score a reservation during the weekend in a Texas state park, we have our pick of many sites during the week. We got this great 50-amp and water site facing the lake.
After months of being parked in private campgrounds with RVs parked side-by-side, it's nice to be back in a state park. Our site is a couple acres in size, and we can only see one other RV in our entire section. We love camping in the middle of the week in the spring!
We celebrated having all that extra real estate by doing some projects outside. We washed the front of the RV, and we sorted through our stash of citrus fruit. We still have a few juice oranges, and some tiny grapefruit, as well as some extra tangerines. We juiced them all together to make a delicious breakfast drink that was as pretty as a picture.
We wanted to spend more time outside, so we went on a bicycle ride around the state park. Denisa is glad to report that the roads are surprisingly flat and make for a great ride among those tall pine trees. You can barely see Denisa riding down the road, dwarfed by those trees.
We rode down by the lake, with more tall trees close to the water. Everything is so green here, due to the excessive rain they have gotten this spring.
That extra rain has closed some of the trails around the park. This trail was supposed to be closed, but you notice that Mark has crossed the "caution do not enter" tape because he's pretty sure it has dried up by now. Denisa hates to admit it, but he was right. She also hates to admit that she followed him through that taped off trail.
We loved the hiking trails at Martin Dies Park, because they are very wide and flat and make good biking trails as well.
We rode all the trails in the park, even the one that connected us to the Corp of Engineer park a couple miles away. One evening we rode over ten miles, and another evening it was close to twenty miles on our bikes.
As we rode through the Walnut Ridge section of our state park, we saw a young deer in the bush beside the road. Instead of darting into the thicker brush, she stepped out towards the road. She even walked along the road with Denisa as we continued slowly on our way.
Eventually, the deer lost interest in walking with us, and turned right in front of Denisa's bike to get to the other side of the road. What a fun experience with the state park wildlife!
Martin Dies Jr. State Park is located right between two towns. Woodville is to our west, and will celebrate their Dogwood Festival in a couple weeks. Jasper is to our east, and celebrated their Azalea Festival last weekend. We feel like we're in the middle of the spring time blooms! So Denisa had to take a picture of the Jasper County courthouse, with the azaelas blooming on the front lawn.
We stopped in at the Jasper Welcome Center and found out that the town had just gotten good news from the American Azalea Society. They have just been recognized as one of the 15 official azalea cities in the United States.
We couldn't help but notice the bluebonnets also blooming in front of the courthouse as well. This is one of Denisa's favorite flowers, so she is trying to soak up all of these blue beauties that she can.
Our trip into Jasper also happened to coincide with Dairy Queen's free ice cream cone day. Guess who couldn't wait for the picture before he had to have a taste of his ice cream?
It's been a great move, and we're really enjoying our new camping spot. Because Mark pulled the motor home in facing the lake, we can sit in our comfy front seats and watch the sun setting over the lake through our big windshield. Life is good!
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