We are camped at Laguna Vista RV park, exploring this area of East Texas that is just knocking on the Louisiana state line. With four days in the area, we got to explore many of the small communities around us. We made a stop in the town of Marshall, and you won't be surprised that Denisa took pictures of the old Harrison County Court House in the town square.
She has raved about the pretty court houses in Texas before, but this might be the grandest of all. In fact, the Texas visitor guide claimed that this is one of the most photographed buildings in all of this very big state. Knowing that, we had to take more than just one picture ourselves. We've seen state capitols that weren't as majestic as this county court house.
Even though it is grand, it was abandoned for 40 years when the county built the modern (and ugly) county court house next door. What were they thinking?
It took a ten-year refurbishment process, but the court house is looking really good, and now houses a museum on its first floor. We were impressed that the four clocks at the top of the dome are all working!
Right across from the court house, is an interesting statue. The three guys in this historical setting are obviously pondering an important message. This is Telegraph Park, where the first telegraph station in Texas was established in 1854.
We drove through the two college campuses in town--East Texas Baptist University and Wiley College, but didn't even take a picture. (That might be a record.)
Sunday after church we headed to the little town of Jefferson, Texas, for some more exploring. Its historical downtown district specializes in antique shops and bed and breakfasts.
Obviously a tourist town, we had been told about a restaurant that served unique sandwiches. So we ended up at Kitt's Kornbread Sandwiches and Pie Bar. They don't even have a slice of bread in the place, as all their sandwiches are served between slices of corn bread. It was an interesting sandwich, with a couple of good sides as well.
And of course, we had to have pie for desert--coconut buttermilk pie, to be precise. All over the town of Jefferson, these old buildings are decorated with the iron balconies that remind us of New Orleans. Just for the record, Denisa is proud that she didn't even take a picture of the small and disappointing court house here in Jefferson.
Situated on the river, Jefferson has a lovely trail that leads from downtown to the river bank. We took pictures of the wild wisteria that we are seeing everywhere! Even though they are beautiful this time of year, this purple-flowering vine can totally smother its host tree in the wild.
We couldn't stand around to take too many pictures, however, because the mosquitoes were vicious on this trail. We have found that all the extra rain that this area has gotten this spring, has led to an early crop of very hungry mosquitoes.
As we are heading through the country-side to our next destination, we pass a large white plantation home beside the highway. This is the childhood home of Claudia Alta Taylor. That won't mean anything to most people. Perhaps it will be more familiar if we use her married name--Lady Bird Johnson. This first lady of the United States was born and raised here near Karnac, Texas.
She was married to a young congressman, also from Texas. When the army was looking for a location for an ammunition plant, Lyndon B. Johnson was instrumental in securing the forested area down the road from the Taylor house. This provided lots of jobs for this community, while the plant was open for close to 50 years. When it closed, it was handed over to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to become a wildlife refuge in 2000. So today, we are touring the Caddo Lake National Wildlife Refuge near Karnac.
Even though their brochure bragged that 216 bird, 47 mammal, and 90 reptile species occur in the area, it was the most wildlife-less wildlife refuge we have ever visited. Aside from the flocks of mosquitoes, we didn't see any other wildlife. The good news is the roads were empty of visitors, so it was a great (and flat) place to ride our bikes. An occasional bunker or factory building was the only reminder that this forest was once an ammunition plant where they produced trinitrotoluene. Most of us recognize that by its more common name--TNT.
We have made many stops during our four-day stop in this part of east Texas. We're about to the end of our current tour of Texas, so we will end this blog as we started it. We feel comfortable in saying that we have indeed found the best court house in the entire state--until we find a better one.
We were searching for things to do on the weekend from our campground near Marshall, Texas. We hadn't found anything in particular, until Friday at 10:00 p.m. when the news from the station in Shreveport, Louisiana, mentioned Crawfest. We did a quick google search, and found an article from the Shreveport newspaper that mentioned four different festivals on Saturday in Shreveport, plus two more in nearby Bossier City. It's a 40-mile trip to Shreveport, and we've been there before because one of our sons lived there for a couple years. We weren't planning to visit Shreveport again, but we just couldn't refuse six different festivals all on one Saturday, could we?
So we headed out early, and arrived just as the grounds to Bloomfest were opening up. This is actually the Norton Art Gallery, where they have 15,000 azalea plants in the gardens surrounding the gallery.
Besides the azalea blooms, Bloomfest also included several other family-friendly displays. We got to meet this Mississippi kite that had been injured and is now a spokes-bird for the local naturalist group.
He was showing off for us and posing for the camera.
Every festival has music, and this one included roaming bands of barbershop quartets. They brought their a capella music to the garden to serenade the festival-goers.
It looks like the rainy weather has kept all the blooms from opening, and we're guessing we saw less than half of peak flowering of the azaleas. But it was still a pretty day in the garden.
A close-up of that sweet little azalea face just makes Denisa smile. They have five petals, but only one is printed with that delicate detail. God does such neat artwork!
The miniature pansies were blooming their hearts out, just to show off in front of the azalea bushes. After all this is Bloomfest!
After an hour, we were on to our next festival just a mile's walk through the historic South Highlands neighborhood. Crawfest was just starting, with live music on the stage and people coming in to order the signature dish. We've had crawfish before, and we're not big fans. There's something a little spooky about eating something with eyes that seem to be watching you. But we did try it again today, just because it seems the proper thing to do at a Crawfest.
There were games for children and other food vendors, and people enjoying the perfect temperatures at the park.
A few vendors were enticing festival-goers with free give-aways and games. We spun the wheel, and we both landed on the big prize--free t-shirts from a local apartment complex. We're not sure if it was a typo on the shirt, or if this is just Louisiana Cajun talk, but we think the word "were" should actually have been "where." That might be why they were giving them away.
We were at Crawfest about an hour, then headed on to the next festival at The Plaza downtown. Parking was already getting scarce, and the plaza was getting crowded for the Battle of the Gumbo Gladiators.
This is a fund raiser for a local youth program, and 40 different gumbo cooks have brought big pots of steaming soup to vie for honors. A closely-guarded judging tent would make official decisions, but the people's choice awards were more fun.
We each got a gold coin when entering the plaza. Each sample of gumbo costs $2, and after sampling we would bestow our coin to our favorite. Obviously the gumbo chefs have to convince you to buy their soup before you will vote for them, so there was much salesmanship going on. It felt a little like a carnival, with barkers calling out to the crowd, or hawkers throwing beads to get people into their kitchen. The beads worked, and our first sample was the chicken and sausage gumbo at the Roux-Awakenings tent. It was delicious!
We tried several more, including one with frog legs, duck, and sausage. Some competitors enticed people with side-dishes like potato salad or bread. The lines got long at the tents of past winners. We came to find out that crawfish gumbo is not our favorite--no matter how long the line was. We eventually awarded our two golden coins to Roux-Awakenings, and then the cajuns that made the Frog-leg gumbo.
After an hour, we were on to our next festival of the day. But first we would have to cross the Red River to get to Shreveport's sister city--Bossier City.
That's where the first ever Corndog Huskers Festival was taking place. Sponsored by the local Sonic, it provided free corn dogs and lemonade to everyone that showed up (even if they were still wearing purple beads from the last festival).
This festival is still a work-in-progress, but we got to take a picture with the Sonic hotdog to commemorate our 4th stop of the day.
The 5th festival was also in Bossier City. The Maker's Fair included 80 different kiosks set along the Louisiana Boardwalk. All the products were home-made, and included everything from salsa to candles to clothing to pain remedies.
This is a great area to stroll, and there are also permanent stores all along the water front. We found a carousel nestled at the end of the store fronts, so Denisa had to ride it, of course.
She chose one of the prancing ponies. But you might notice that a red crawfish is chasing her. We're thinking that only in Louisiana would we find a crawfish on a carousel.
Bass Pro has one of their large stores on the waterfront as well. We're thinking that only in Louisiana would we find an alligator at a shopping venue.
We were running a little ahead of schedule, because our final festival didn't start until 4 p.m. So we even had time to stroll a little downtown, even though our legs were getting very tired. We've gone almost eight miles, and most of it on unforgiving concrete surfaces. Urban hiking is hard on our legs. But we did have enough energy to take a picture of the big dog statue in downtown Shreveport.
This section of the city has many abandoned and very sad-looking buildings. Crumbling store fronts have given way to weed-filled open lots.
But there's a little spot of beauty among the dilapidated buildings--Asian Park. That's where we are headed for our sixth festival of the day.
The 11th annual Aesean Festival includes many different cultures, that have pitched in to build and then police this park. Today they are celebrating with food booths, selling their homeland cuisine. We saw booths from Cambodia, China, Japan, India . . . it was tough to decide what to order. We purchased food at two different booths, and had a hearty meal.
We have said before that Asians aren't good at dessert. We have proof of that once again. After making a thorough search through all the vendors, we bought the most promising dessert after our meal. It looks and tastes like a purple sponge, and it was "frosted" with butter and then sprinkled with shredded cheddar cheese. We are devoted dessert-eaters, but even we couldn't finish it. One taste was enough.
The entertainment was fun, and we even got to dance before we left.
But our legs were mighty tired by the time we headed back to the car through more of the Asian Park.
We certainly had an interesting assortment of food today. We had crawfish, gumbo, corndogs, eggroll, and chicken and shrimp lomein. That's a one-day combination that we'll never have the opportunity to repeat ever again!
We love festivals, but we didn't know if even experienced travelers like us could make it to all six in one day. We felt a sense of accomplishment as we summarized our day on the way home. Any one of the festivals wouldn't have been worth the 40-mile drive to Shreveport, but all of them certainly made for a great day. We couldn't say that any one was our favorite. We decided that the tastiest was the Battle of the Gumbo Gladiators, the prettiest was Bloomfest, the best free give-aways were at Crawfest, the newest was Corndog Huskers, and the best music was at the Aesean Festival. Good job Shreveport for getting our vote for the best day of festivals so far this year!
The main reason we are camped at Marshall, Texas, is to kayak at Caddo Lake. We've seen pictures, and our youngest son has canoed here before with high recommendations. We didn't have the perfect weather day, but we were putting our inflatable kayak on the water of Caddo Lake at Shady Glade Resort in the town of Uncertain, Texas. Lots of jokes can be made about things in a town with such a curious name, but we were a little worried about The Uncertain Church.
This is the only natural lake in Texas, formed when a log jam dammed up the river. That's why it is filled with these giant cypress trees that form channels all over the lake. The forests of cypress make getting from one section of the lake to another impossible.
Sometimes we were in very narrow tunnels of these cypress trees. Very often we were sharing that narrow tunnel with big boats with motors going very fast.
Because all these tunnels and trees look the same, there has to be road-signs to help with the navigation.
We were so glad that we had taken a picture of a lake map, so that these road signs made sense to us.
For example, this is lane N-N, and it connects to lane M, and lane V is around the corner. We are also seeing that there are kayaking trails, so it looks like we are starting on the yellow kayak trail.
We see an occasional glimpse of blue in the sky, but most of the day remains cloudy. The wind picked up, and we were glad to have the rows of cypress trees to block some of that wind.
Denisa is usually the photographer, as she has the best view from the front of the boat. Poor Mark has to see the lake from the rear of the boat with a back seat view.
This is a big lake, and we have made our way from U to V to W to A to N-N to C to F to . . . We have seen several duck blinds out on the lake, and then we spotted this deluxe two-story tree house in the distance.
After hours in the boat, it feels good to get out and stretch our legs. Mark first had the duty of holding the boat while Denisa walked around the tree house.
Our next section took us through a field of water lilies. The leaves are as big as dinner plates! We must have been distracted by all the lilies, because we missed our turn to get back to our dock.
We had missed the narrow opening into M-M lane, also known as Starr Ditch. The cloudy skies and the Spanish-moss-draped trees give a Halloween feel to this lane. We read later that these are old cypress trees in Caddo Lake. Even though they love the moisture, a cypress seed can't germinate and sprout in the water. So these trees started before the natural dam flooded this area into a lake.
With all the motor boats on this lake, they have scared off most of the wild life. It wasn't until we missed our turn, and were in an area less-traveled, that we saw our first bird. We were a little disappointed that it was just an ugly old turkey vulture.
We were glad to see that there was a prettier bird hiding deep in the cypress.
Denisa liked this great white heron better than that ugly bald vulture.
After our kayak tour of Caddo Lake from the town of Uncertain, we went a few miles out of town to Caddo Lake State Park. All their camping spots were booked up for the weekend, but we checked out their boat launch area. If we had an extra day, we might have tried their kayak route that started in a two-mile river paddle before getting to the lake. But today we're going to hike at the state park instead. We're doing the nature trail loop that takes us through the trees that are just starting to put on new spring leaves.
There's other signs of spring in the forest as well. These tiny violets were popping up along the trail, just begging Denisa to take a picture.
These plants were also along the trail, and their big green leaves can be 12 inches across.
We had to literally stand on our heads to see that some of those big green leaves were hiding a delicate flower. Facing the ground, it was completely hidden from the view of hikers above.
All those flower pictures had to be taken quickly, because the mosquitoes are dive-bombing us. Our walk through the forest has become a jog towards the protection of the car. Mosquito season has started early in East Texas this year. But we had a great day at Caddo Lake among the cypress trees and Spanish Moss.
