Day 6: Caddo Lake State Park, TX. Swamp is good.

Nice to not have to migrate far today.

Shout out to some great neighbours / friends back home. This is them tag-teaming our driveway after the big snowfall we conveniently avoided.

Pretty good night’s sleep last night. You can hear the 2 lane highway not far from the campground and the train tracks. I don’t think it helps that the speed limit is 75mph! We still heard the barred owls last night and today. No sightings

The campground has decent trails through the woods. I did ~4km through a bunch of up and down terrain. No fall down go boom! It’s interesting geography here. Supposed to rain overnight tonight so I may avoid the trails in the morning and just walk the roads.

We did a lot of basic “van work” this morning. A bit of a cleaning, I crazy glued the crack in the windshield. Some basic organizing.

Around lunch we broke camp as we had to move sites. Moving sites is common when you don’t book ahead! We had scouted our new site yesterday and knew it was not terribly level. Mrs Milddogs was able to snag us the one right next to it which has much more levelness. Apparently, according to our camp neighbours, the sites we are on are the most coveted in the park. That may be true.

We checked out, checked in and went for a short drive to Family Dollar. I don’t think it is the top tier dollar store. Apparently that is Dollar General or Dollar Tree. Mrs Milddogs grabbed a few things and we came back to get settled into our new site.

This new site is amazing. There are no services (electricity, water) but we are right on the edge of the bayou. Staring at cypress knees is a nice change. If I had a cypress tree, and we know our house has plenty enough water for one, I’d name it Billy Ray!

We are using our Eurovan Window vents for the first time. I like the concept but haven’t been super impressed with the quality yet. I did make some mods to them before we left home.

Post lunch (stuff dipped in humus) the three of us set out on a walk. We went through some of the trails and enjoyed the flora. Not much fauna made itself known. We did almost 4km and Amy was a bit pooped out whence we arrived back “home”. I did some filming with my Insta360 camera, not sure when I will get to editing that.

Post hike we set up our chairs and stared at the bayou until Mosquito o’clock / dinner time. We also investigated places to stop next. Tomorrow we head to the coast! We plan on departing early (for us) as we have a bunch of stops to make and it is about a 400km drive.

Our friends depart home tomorrow on their adventure. We plan to meet up with them in Austin, TX in some days. They have a blog too. https://ourviewfromtheroad.blog/ Follow along, it should be fun. I think he is the one in second place in the snowblower race above.

It was pointed out to me that the wind storm that went through Ottawa and many parts of Eastern Ontario was not a Dodge Durango. It was a Derechos. I should have known better. There is no way a Dodge Durango has that much power nor the ability to last that long. It was a big storm. Much damage. Wind has attitude!

No gators! Plenty of happy frogs and toads.

I have fixed some of the images in galleries so that when you click them they open full res in a new tab.

We get asked about the layout in our van. It has stuff. The features we liked most are the large rear bathroom and the twin beds. The beds function as a Chaise Lounge during the day. This way, Mrs Milddogs can just say “hey you, over there, on the chaise lounge in your…”.

Later!