Geocaching, Anywhere, Earth

Recently, we've joined the world's largest treasure hunt - Geocaching!    Geocaching offers us the opportunity to get off the couch and outdoors.  It is something we can do near our home or on the road.   In the past we have both hunted and hidden letterboxes, however, we love how easy the app at Geocaching.com is to use and the volume of geocaches there are to find.  Being history buffs we love to learn about the area where we are caching.  Also, we have met some interesting people along the way!  To mark our finds, we have been dropping off the usual "swag" items along with a customized swag token that has our blog name on it.   If you have found one of our tokens we would love to hear from you at tkandgman@outlook.com.  Share a story about one of your favorite finds or recommend one that we need to visit!  Good luck!

Cedar Hill State Park, Texas

Our next adventure found us at Cedar Hill State Park in North Texas.  We had tent camped and fished this large, beautiful, park before, however, we were a little disappointed this time.  Since around May of 2015, North Texas has experienced heavy rainfall.  Several areas have suffered due to flooding.   We were sad to see that some of our favorite camping and fishing areas of this park were still submerged under water.  The park is attempting to make a comeback but some of the camping sites are overgrown with vegetation and park roads need maintenance (cracked and bumpy).

Marina closed due to flooding

Camping area closed due to flooding

We have learned that if you want to stay in a Texas state park over a weekend that you need to book your reservations weeks in advance.  So we have become very familiar with the reservation system on the Texas state parks website.  The first site reserved for us was overgrown with poison ivy so we went back to the park office and asked to switch to the campsite next to the one assigned to us. We had a difficult time backing our trailer into the second site because of the drive's incline (our trailer sits low to the ground) so moved to the campsite across the road from the second site.  TK called the park office and explained our situation.  The park office graciously swapped out our site, A THIRD TIME, and we finally had a poison ivy free, leveled site to setup camp!

Hog Wallow Camping Area #244

One of the attractions at this park is the Penn Farm Agricultural Center.  For over a century, the Penn family lived and worked the farm.  The reconstructed and historic buildings date from the mid-1800s through the mid-1900s.  We took a self-guided tour and saw how farming changed over the course of the family’s tenure.

Penn Farm modern house

Penn Farm's modern barn

Although we had a good time at Cedar Hill SP we both agreed that we would give the park some time to heal before visiting again.  In the meantime, we are planning our next adventure....where should we go next?

Prairie grass at Cedar Hill SP

Lake Tawakoni State Park, Texas

The second time we took the new travel trailer out was to Lake Tawakoni State Park located near Wills Point, Texas.  This was our first visit to this small, but very well maintained state park. 

View of lake from public beach

The park was almost full when we made our reservation so we ended up reserving two different campsites - one for each night of our stay.  When we arrived at the park we explained our dilemma to the park headquarters staff.   They were very friendly, allowing us to cancel one reservation, and put us in the same campsite for two nights.  What a relief!   Our campsite was among shade trees of tall oaks and, although narrow, had a very level drive to park the trailer. 

Awesome campsite!

We attempted to fish in a finger of the lake that stretched behind the amphitheater but had not luck. 

Nothing beats a Texas sunset!

Instead, we entertained ourselves riding mountain bikes on the many linked trails and geocaching, our new hobby!  We definitely will be back to visit this lovely little park set in east Texas!

Gman on the trail!