Who is Stephen F. Austin? and a change in plans!

Note: We're including some blogs from the month of April that were interrupted when we had to make a speedy trip to Oklahoma to help after Denisa's Mother's house burned. So we are catching up with "old blogs" while we are still helping out in Oklahoma.

We've been camping at Stephen F. Austin State Park for a couple days, so we probably should find out who this guy is. We don't have to go far, as a road-side park just a mile from the entrance to the park has a statue of Stephen F. Austin, surrounded by some nice bluebonnets.

It's a rainy morning, but we decided to take a bike ride to find out more answers. We found that Stephen F. Austin is known as the "Father of Texas" and the state capitol city of Austin is named after him. 

Stephen F. Austin was responsible for settling this part of North America that was part of Mexico in the 1820s. The first 300 families arrived in 1824 to start a new life near the Brazos River. He promised each family 177 acres for farming and 4,428 acres for ranching.

The Sam Felipe de Austin State Historic Site has a new museum that opened in 2018. We were disappointed to find that it was closed on Monday and Tuesday, the two days that we were visiting this area. But the state park office told us that the outdoor displays were open all the time, so we parked our bikes and took a walk through the outdoor buildings of Villa de Austin.

Built just last year, these replica structures were constructed on the land that Stephen F. Austin organized into the town of San Felipe de Austin.

Then he oversaw the surveying and paperwork needed to file the deeds for hundreds of settlers that came from all over North America to make this new area their home. We were impressed with the workmanship to fit the logs together, as they used building techniques from the 1830s in this new reconstruction display. A gutter made of a hollowed log guides rain water off the roof into a wooden barrel. It is important to gather and save every drop of moisture possible in this area of east Texas.

Villa de Austin included several houses, a hotel, a farmstead, a school, a courthouse, etc. It also included a period garden and new fruit trees that were blooming a pretty color of pink. We were enjoying our walk around the outdoor exhibits when the museum director showed up and asked us to leave because they were closed. It looks like we were given the wrong information from the state park office, because the outdoor displays are NOT available on the days they are closed after all.

Before we were asked to leave, we found out the end of the story on Stephen F. Austin's town. It thrived until shortly after the Battle of the Alamo. Then the colonists were in the path of the advancing Texan and Mexican forces during the early days of the Texas Revolution. To avoid having the Mexican army use their homes and property to their advantage, the colonists set their town on fire and escaped on March 29, 1836. The statue out front commemorates that night known as "The Runaway Scrape." 

Now that we feel we have a good answer to the question of, "Who is Stephen F. Austin?" it's time to head on down the road. We've done all the trails at his state park, and trespassed at his museum, so it's time to hit the road again. We have a three-hour drive to our next state park, so we are breaking up the trip by stopping in at another state park--Fort Boggy. At one time a fort was here, to protect early settlers in the 1830's. But now the only thing left for visitors to see is the small lake.

This small state park has a few trails, but no RV camping sites. So we decide to stop in for the 1.5-mile hike around the lake. Denisa is a sucker for a pretty wildflower picture on hikes like this.

That little wildflower was about the same size as the tiny turtle we found on the trail. 

We parked the motor home at the entry parking lot, and used our bikes to check out Fort Boggy State Park. After a steep ride up to the lake, it was a nice downhill ride back through the woods to where we were parked.

With the high price of diesel, we are hesitant to stay at campgrounds that require us to drive a long ways off our route. The next state park campground is about ten miles off the highway. But Fairfield Lake State Park got such good reviews that we decided to spend a couple days off the beaten path to explore it. We got parked into our nice cement pad in the Post Oak campground, and we were looking forward to exploring the trails.

This is also a great lake for kayaking and we were anxious to get out the kayak again. We can see the lake from our camp site. This is going to be another great Texas state park stay! But that's when we got THE phone call. Mark's brother called to let us know that a wild fire was heading straight towards Denisa's Mother's house. She made it out of the house safe, only because Mark's Mother called and woke her up from her afternoon nap. We called to make sure that Denisa's Mother was safe, and she was planning to spend the night at Mark's Mother's house. She didn't know if the fire was diverted around her house, or not. About the time the sun was setting over the lake, we got the second phone call that the house had burned to the ground. Now instead of planning for hiking and kayaking, we are researching the fastest route to get to the panhandle of Oklahoma to help Denisa's Mother through this traumatic event.

We started packing clothes and canceling the camping reservations that we had already made at the next state park. A month ago we had mapped out three more Texas state parks that we had planned to visit, but now we will have to drive right past all of them. It's a reminder to us that one morning you can be learning about Stephen F. Austin and stopping in at a park for a bike ride, and that evening you can get very bad news that changes your travel plans in a hurry.