Tyler State Park should be Turtle State Park? or Rose State Park?

We had a one-night stay at Tiger Creek Wildlife Refuge, because we couldn't get a camping site at Tyler State Park even on a Sunday evening. In fact, we could only find a single camp site that was available for both Monday and Tuesday. This is obviously a very popular place! When we finally arrived, we had a nice big site with plenty of trees to hang the hammock.

The center of the park is a spring-fed lake that just beckoned us to get the kayak launched.

That spring water is so clear that we could take pictures of the fish and turtles swimming in the water.

Denisa's favorite part of kayaking was taking underwater pictures of the turtles. She has to include several, because she took about 100 photos.

When she wasn't taking pictures underwater, she was taking pictures above the water of dry turtles. These turtles aren't afraid of a couple of kayakers gliding by.

They were congregating on the logs and basking in the sun. We have decided that Tyler State Park should be called Turtle State Park.

It was a beautiful blue-sky day, and a great time to be on the water.

We were just putting the kayak away when one of our camping neighbors pointed out a snake in the water.

We were glad to focus in on his big round eye. That was our clue that this was a harmless water snake instead of the venomous water moccasin they had first reported.

Later, we were driving near our camp site, when we found that the road inside the state park was completely covered in smoke.

It must be the season to do controlled burns in Texas state parks. Just like in Huntsville, they are setting fires to kill out the under-brush.

One afternoon we headed into the town of Tyler, and Denisa became the "Y" in the town name on this unusually warm day.

We were here to explore the Tyler Rose Garden--home to 35,000 roses bushes!

Mark's just glad that it is too early for most of these rose bushes to be blooming. He probably couldn't get Denisa out of there if they were at their peak bloom.

As it was, we could look over this 14-acre park and see only a few blooms this spring. 

Their web site points out that this is the largest rose garden in the nation. We are wandering through God's rose wonders today!

The Tyler Rose Festival takes place in October, so we suppose that will be the time when the rose garden is at its best.

Spring is the time for pruning the bushes. We could see the stacks of dead stalks between the manicured rows of roses. It obviously takes a full-time grounds crew to keep this place looking so good.

Even out of season, we found some beautiful specimens of early roses. This one was huge!

Besides the roses, the outside sections of the park are planted with themed flower gardens. The spring flower bed was popping with color!

We've seen lots of bluebonnets lately, but these relatives dawned colors of red and purple here in Tyler.

After pulling Denisa away from the rose garden, we made a final drive around the city of Tyler. Even though we're here at the wrong time for roses, they just finished their Azalea Festival. We followed the signed driving trails through the residential areas with the most flowers. The hard freeze was hard on the azalea buds, and we just saw the end of a shortened azalea bloom here in Tyler.

After three days of admiring the reptiles and flowers, we'll be moving on down the road. But we've had a good time here in Tyler, Texas, among the turtles and the roses.

We're Sleeping by the Tigers

There's nothing like waking up to the roar of a lion! When we pulled into our parking spot for the night, we knew we were going to have interesting neighbors!

We're staying at Tiger Creek Wildlife Refuge. This is our second camping spot using our new Harvest Host membership. It includes a no-hookup site in the parking lot of the Vet Center of the animal sanctuary.

When staying with a harvest host, campers are asked to purchase about $20 in products from the host. In this case, we purchased $20 in admission tickets into the wildlife refuge to see their animals.

That's actually a bargain, because all the occupants of the RV get in for that $20. It would be a great value for families traveling with children, and the kids would love seeing these cats. We know that the kids living in our RV certainly enjoyed it.

The welcome sign out front mentions that they have been featured on shows like "Animal Planet" and "National Geographic Wild."

Tiger Creek didn't set out for such notoriety. They started with humble beginnings, taking in large cats that needed to be rescued from unfortunate circumstances. Each enclosure has a sign with the name and story of the animal. For instance, this is Padma and Skanda. They were brought here from Florida, when their facility suffered major damage in a hurricane and was forced to shut down.

Tiger Creek seems to focus on tigers, with 17 of them scattered throughout the park. This is a white bengal tigers--not to be confused with an albino tiger. Since she was raised here, she used to spend time at the gift shop, playing with the staff and interns.

They also have a rare white lioness. Luna is one of only 300-500 white lions in the entire world. They are endangered because they are especially attractive to poachers and trophy hunters.

It was interesting to watch these big cats. They have habits and mannerisms that remind us of the domestic cats we used to have at home.

The only other lion is on the far end of the facility. Even though we walked all the sidewalks and visited all the enclosures twice, we never did get a great picture of Max the Lion.

Our favorite cat was Raja. We walked by his enclosure several times. Each time, he came to be closer to us. Mark did notice that the first time he was in a crouched position, staying low like he was stalking his prey. 

You actually get quite close to the animals, even though we were separated by two fences. Raja would eventually lay down close to the fence beside us. That's when we got this close-up picture of the back of his ears. We didn't know that all tigers have these signature white spots on their ears. It makes them look like they have eyes on the back of their heads.

This six-month-old cub is new to Tiger Creek, and still looks like a pudgy kitten when compared to the sleek adult tigers.

Tiger Creek will also take in other cats, like this serval. We also saw a puma, a bobcat, and a mountain lion.

A few disabled birds also call Tiger Creek home. Not able to survive on their own because of injuries, they will live out their lives here.

Denisa even snapped this picture of a bird that was just visiting on the chain link fence today.

The last category of animals we found were several of these land turtles.

We were there during their feeding time, and we can tell you that these slow turtles certainly picked up speed when the greens were laid out. Who ever thinks that a turtle is slow has never seen them devour a salad!

It was a peaceful camping spot, followed by a fun day visiting the animals at Tiger Creek. This is a place where we normally wouldn't have stopped, but we certainly are glad that Harvest Host gave us a nudge to sleep by the tigers.

Our Mission is to see Mission Tejas

It's a travel day, and we are blessed with beautiful blue skies. Our final destination is a 2.5-hour drive away. But we often make a stop to break up a long trip like that. We had thought about camping at Mission Tejas State Park, but we decided a stop-by visit would be better. Mark checked to be sure they had RV parking at the visitor center, and we unhooked the pickup so we could drive it around the park when we arrived. Our mission today is to see the Mission Tejas. While we are accustomed to the rock and white stucco missions of south Texas, this one used the most plentiful resource of this area--wood.

This is actually a re-creation of the original Mission Tejas that was built here in the 1690s. The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) used the old building techniques when they built this replacement in 1934. We probably wouldn't have made the stop just to stand in front of a new copy of an old building. We're here because we read that they also have some good hiking in the forest that surrounds it. 

When we asked the ranger if we could ride our bikes on the trails, she chuckled and said "this park has some crazy topography." That's ranger-speak for "you'd be crazy to try to ride a bike up and down the steep hills around here."

She wasn't kidding! Our four-mile hike today had us going up and down the hills of this very hilly state park.

Armed with the state park map, we were checking off the "points of interest" noted on the park literature. We were disappointed with the ''CCC bathtubs" stop, so we took no pictures. After we climbed the hill to the "fire tower" we found that all that was left was the cement base of the tower, so no pictures. When we found the "Sentry Pine" we at least took a picture. It has been standing sentry here for over 100 years, and it was bigger than the other big trees around it. 

Probably the best "point of interest" is the El Camino Real. This is the historic route that traders and Native Americans and settlers took through these woods. Built by the Spanish in the 1690s, we could follow this road and get to Natchitoches, Louisiana in just 151 miles. In fact, the El Camino Real road goes all the 1103 miles to Mexico City.

Mark is standing in the ruts made from years of travelers making their way from Mexico City to Louisiana, and all points between.

After a full year of Covid-closures, we're glad to see a park visitor center that is open. The new center at this state park includes well-done displays. But Denisa enjoyed the "Travel El Camino Real" pin- ball machine the most. Try as she could, she always ended up "rattlesnake bit" or "stuck in the mud" or "lost in the woods." Mark was the only pin-baller who successfully completed the journey on the El Camino Real Road.

It's a good thing he's the one driving the motor home to get us to our destination today. If Denisa was driving, we'd probably get "stuck in the mud" or worse! Now that we have completed our mission to experience the Mission Tejas State Park, we are ready to get back on the road again. It was a nice side-trip on another day of wandering God's wonders.