We have a date with Texas. Perhaps you should, too. After all the songs and stories about this Republic have been sung and told over the centuries, surely there is something larger than life going on there. As for Diane and me, we have campgrounds we’ve made reservations with and our daughter, Suni, and her family to see after a year-long drought of being together. Austin bound we are. More specifically, Pfugerville, TX, one of the fast burgeoning suburbs growing up with the Austin tech explosion where Suni and Dane have built a new home. So, we cut diagonally across Arkansas down Interstate 30, through Texarkana and onto the northern prairies of the Alamo state. Southwest we travel in constant search for Spring and Fall, now fleeing the approaching cold winds of winter.
The vistas here are wide, the sky big. This is the exact route into Texas Diane and I took nearly three years ago when we first hit the road on our personal freedom ride, the 50 Amp Vision Quest. Looking back on those days my mind traces the vivid memories of our first Winter and Spring spent living in the wide open spaces of this Republic. I wasn’t so keen on staying in Texas when we first lit out. I’d been in Texas before several times The people were my concern. I believed the citizens to be overtly proud, bodacious as well as audacious, and that they all looked down on anyone from any place other than Texas. My own Grandma even once told me as a teenager, “ Don’t ever marry a woman from Texas”. She never told my why not to...just Don’t ! (So, I didn’t) I believed in my mind that the folks here would be difficult for me to handle after a while. As in a lot of things, I was wrong about that I soon changed my mind about the people of Texas. ( As if you could ever generalize about an entire people of a state, especially as big, broad, and diverse as Texas.)
Though it has changed now from those ballyhooed Technicolor days of lonesome cattle roundups and oil wells sprouting from the fields like dandelions, it is still the Republic of rather than the State of Texas. It’s its own country. Hell, it’s 1500 some odd miles across at its equator. It’s larger than some countries for sure. People from across the country, and indeed, from other countries, are pouring into the state. Change is in the air. Things are in motion. Dust is filling the air. The land is filling in with the inevitable rush of people building a new world for themselves. But, as I think about it now, perhaps it’s always been that way out here. Weren’t Davy Crockett’s Tennessee volunteers at the Alamo doing the exact same thing? Didn’t the German immigrants who filled the Hill Country with their homeland culture search here for the same?
There’s a lot to like about Texas. I reckon its diversity is what I like the most. It’s actually a microcosm of the entire USA. Geographically, you have limestone hills lined with springs and caves just like Missouri. There are vast prairies where buffalo roamed by the millions and Comanches, masters of the horse culture, ruled as nomadic masters of the North Texas Tejano steppe, across the Llano Estacado clear to Arizona desert country. There are hundreds of miles of Gulf seashore where hurricanes batter the shores and Spanish bullion still washes up on the outer banks, Padre Island. There are pine forests at 8000’ altitude stuck smack dab in the middle of the desert Big Bend country. Piney woods forests so thick you can’t see 20 feet ahead of you blanket the eastern edge of the Republic. And, if you think that the Southeast and Louisiana have a lock on all the swamps of this country, visit Uncertain, Texas in the Northeastern corner of Texas. Go on out in that vast bayou by you self. It’s as swampy and snake infested and moss draped as any Southern Gothic novel you’ve ever read. (While you’re there look up the man, Peanut. He’s a terrific crappie fishing guide who only uses cane poles.)
When you start to consider the folks who live in Texas, you find the same diverse USA microcosm as you find within the physiography of the place. While the raw-boned rancher may sometimes now ride a four wheel side by side across the dusty expanse instead of a horse, he and she are still here forever carving out their own version of paradise in the mesquite trees and prickly pear cactus. The roughneck oil field workers fight on Saturday nights in Fort Stockton just as they always have. Some of the Native Americans still hold out, holed up on the plains somewhere while other tribals earn college degrees in Austin. Vietnamese immigrants forced a toehold along the Gulf Coast precariously eking out a life interdependent with the fishing waters they troll. California refugees flood Austin and the Hill Country spreading out into once lazy communities like Pflugerville and Round Rock. In fact, Texas Hill country once saw an earlier mass migration sweep over its rocky terrain. Germans in search of that most valuable of all treasure to them, land, “settled” and “improved” this land during the middle nineteenth century. Most of the towns there have Germanic names, like Fredricksburgh. You see their influence in the stone mason’s architecture of the town squares, ornate, intricate, yet somehow intractable. This town was going to be there’s by God and no one under the Good Lord’s blue sky was going to take it away from them now that they built it. Of course, Texas wouldn’t be Texas without the Mexican presence, now sometimes supplanted by Central Americans. For nearly 500 years now the Spanish influence in this land has been the most profound. Even the iconic battle of the Alamo and the war of Texian Independence was fought against the Spanish landholders and their subjugated subjects, the peasant caste of Mexico.
All those thoughts worked their way across my mind’s windshield as we drifted across the border from Arkansas in Nell, our motor home. Without a definite stop or place to stay in mind for the next few days Diane sat shotgun and plied through Allstays, our heavily used camping App, searching for a great spot in northeastern Texas to set up camp and take in the prairie air. Not far across the border and just a little off I-30 lay Bob Sandlin Reservoir State Park. This park lays next to a very nice large lake tucked into a pineywoods forest. Good reviews abounded on Campendium, my go-to on line reviewer of campgrounds. I like Campendium a lot because in addition to honest reviews from folks like us, they detail cell coverage. Their reports are reliable. Diane made the call to the center that handles state parks in Texas and yes, they had campsites available. Deal! Now we had our target and we were only an hour or two away. 50 Amp, water, and a very nice placed to spend a little time.
Bob Sandlin is a very nice park and campground. The camp sites are tucked into the trees and you can find good privacy while having plenty of space to park and spread out your chairs and grills and such. Our space had a nice little fire-pit 75 feet behind the parking space surrounded by pines and vines with a little path leading back to it. The sunlight broke through the pine branches in shapes of triangular rays, and as the sun began to meet the horizon in these shortened days an amber hue overlay everything within its reach. A slight chill overtook our toes and feet. A campfire was built, its warmth so welcome in the evening. Some campsites here are on the water’s edge and they naturally get scooped up first by experienced locals and second-time visitors. There were actually some of these available to us but we chose the site we did because it had the most privacy being surrounded as it was by the tall pines and underbrush.
Hiking is good in Bob Sandlin. There are several trails to choose from and Diane and I took several hikes here. The land is not spectacular and you won’t find pictures of this park within the glossy pages of a coffee table page turner. Bob Sandlin is simply a very nice place to hang out and relax and acclimate yourself to nature. An interesting feature of the park is that there once was a “fort” here of sorts, built and manned to protect the early settlers from plunder by Commanches and thieving road agents. Most probably it was semi-permanent encampment with a house or two where regional militia set up shop until the area quieted down enough for the local settlers to feel comfortable. Nothing really remains to see, but there are occasional artifacts stumbled upon by hikers that retell life as it was. An arrowhead here, a belt buckleThe next day we found our way to Pflugerville and the Guempel’s manse. Oh, what a true joy it was to hug my daughter again and throw my grandkids up in the air while they squealed in delight to see us. “Grandma...Grandpa!” Those words from the mouths of babes warm our hearts so much that we are overcome with that rarest of human emotions, Joy. The whole heavenly process of getting reacquainted with loved ones must be what it feels like to pass through the Pearly Gates of Paradise and embrace those who’ve gone on before. We played games, cooked food, watched the puppy grow (literally), told stories, played in the back yard, talked about work and the Pandemic, snapped pictures and videos, remarked about how much the children had grown...and did all those glorious things that family does after a long absence. Just as we had done when we visited Eli’s family, we all passed around heaping helpings of love and fondness for each other that, when all is said and done, are the very essence of, and the highest manifestation of, human existence. there, an old horseshoe amidst the rock rubble.
I believe the fishing is good here. There were some die-hard good ol’ boys out on the water fanning out over the flats scouring the depths for the last bite of the fall large mouths. It was very cool and the fish were most probably deep and not moving much, but, for someone who knew the habits of the local piscus mouthicus giganticus, a decent catch could be had. Diane and I decided we would try to pick up a catfish or two for dinner. The state has built a very nice fishing pier out into the water with overhead lights that stay lit all night. As we weren’t in a serous fishing mood we decided to find some bait and just dangle some lines off the pier and see if we could get lucky...hang out on the pier, talk a piece, maybe read a book, and oh yeah, drop a line. No catfish showed up, but I did manage to hook a few bass on the edge of some grass about 30 feet from shore using various lures. No fish tonight for dinner but a great time relaxing and enjoying the late fall Texas sunshine into the evening shade.
We were now either two short driving days from Austin or one good, long drive away. We decided to stay at Bob Sandlin an extra day and drive hard the following day to get to Cedar Breaks campground outside Austin. Once there we would set up shop for two weeks while we visited Suni, Dane, and the grandkids...and their new puppy, the Rhodesian Ridgeback, Ivan. The anticipation of seeing them after a year’s absence was welling up inside our hearts more and more each hour.
We arrived at Cedar Breaks Campground on the 13th as scheduled and set up camp for the remainder of the day, deciding to head over to Suni’s house the following day. Cedar Breaks is one of four campgrounds on Lake Georgetown, perhaps 20 miles or so north of Austin. There are two campgrounds on either side of the lake and one at it’s headwaters on a creek that is the main feeder of the lake. This is a Corps of Engineers lake and so the campgrounds are managed by the Corps as well. Corps campgrounds are typically less expensive than state or national park campgrounds and so much more the bargain. Cedar Breaks and its brother campground, Bill Hogg, are very good campgrounds. Typical of Texas government parks, security is a high priority, especially since these are located so close to a large population center. Gates open only with codes and camp hosts and rangers drive around the park regularly, not that we ever felt we needed them. We chose to stay the limit of 14 days at Cedar Breaks and then another 6 or so at Bill Hogg until we moved into our new camp hosting position at Pedernales Falls State Park west of Austin on December 1. We were really happy we did since they are not only convenient to Austin and Pflugerville where Suni lives but also because they are very, very nice campgrounds. I’d recommend them to one and all if you are visiting the area and need a very nice inexpensive campground with good amenities and good stretches of forest to hike. They are close to civilization as well if you are visiting friends and family or, just taking in Austin proper.
The next day we found our way to Pflugerville and the Guempel’s manse. Oh, what a true joy it was to hug my daughter again and throw my grandkids up in the air while they squealed in delight to see us. “Grandma...Grandpa!” Those words from the mouths of babes warm our hearts so much that we are overcome with that rarest of human emotions, Joy. The whole heavenly process of getting reacquainted with loved ones must be what it feels like to pass through the Pearly Gates of Paradise and embrace those who’ve gone on before. We played games, cooked food, watched the puppy grow (literally), told stories, played in the back yard, talked about work and the Pandemic, snapped pictures and videos, remarked about how much the children had grown...and did all those glorious things that family does after a long absence. Just as we had done when we visited Eli’s family, we all passed around heaping helpings of love and fondness for each other that, when all is said and done, are the very essence of, and the highest manifestation of, human existence.