Chickasaw National Recreation Area

This day was spent in the car. As Dan put it the driving wasn’t as interesting as it had been going through Tennessee, for example. Dan went up and got some breakfast pastries, fruit and cereal for us to bring with us and we set out. The drive through Lousisiana seemed to last forever, then Texas even though we only went through the corner. Coming out of New Orleans was pretty cool. Caught a tiny bit of the commuter traffic. There were miles of bridges through bayous which gave us nice green views with lots of water.

Other than that we stopped and got a lantern and a few food products (unfortunately not grocery store). We ended up stopping at this bread place with very slim pickings and came out with bread, tortillas, “chili topping” and salsa con queso. You can probably figure out our dinner from there. The only other stops were gas and wal-mart (happened to be next to the gas station and it had a bathroom, and fruits and veggies!). Got some apples, bananas, carrots and green beans to fulfill our fruit and vegetable cravings.

Finally got to the exit for Chickasaw National Recreation Area and I was pretty excited that we were almost there. We almost stopped at an RV park just off the highway but I’m glad we didn’t. We made a split second deision to go to “the Point” camping area and for a little while I was getting worried that we had missed it (the road was a lot longer than I had anticipated). The point was on a big lake with a fishing derby going on. Every so often we’d hear a boat roar past. The lake was quite pretty and the water felt warmish.
Finally got there and chose a campsite, walked down to the lake, set up camp and paid at the front for the site. On the way back from paying we met Jeff and Tank (the very small dog). Tank came out to greet us and Jeff followed. He is the campground host. Him and his wife have been doing it for the past 3 years from March-November and they had quite the set-up. We talked to Jeff for a little while and heard about what it’s like out there, the occasional fish-fries that he hosts at his site and the impending brisket-smoking (someone had lent him a smoker that he was yet to use). He also told us about the cedars. All over the campground were piles of cedar trees. I guess a full grown cedar drinks upwards of 140 gallons of water a day and take the resources from the native trees.
We ate our dinner of tortillas with salsa con queso and chili topping, tried to make a fire out of the too-green cedar that was everywhere and retired for the evening.