Martin Dies at Jasper

March 13-17, 2011. Having spent two weeks hugging the Texas-Mexico border from El Paso to Mission, and two months traveling along the entire Gulf coast, we are starting to head north, more or less still on the eastern side of Texas, into the lower reaches of the midwest green belt.

The Texas terrain to date has been endless flat and scrub (of either the desert or dunes variety, depending on the region) punctuated with lots of windswept live oak. Now it becomes hillier, greener, and with more variety in the trees. Weather remains chilly and damp since it's still mid March. We are far from any major cities.

There are many dam-made lakes in this area, with state parks to go with them. We settled on Martin Dies, Jr. in Jasper for a few days' stay. It proved to be a quiet and relaxing park, although Jasper is one of those dots on the map that offers little beyond boating and fishing for visitors. We toured a few other lake parks in the area (= long country drives); followed a solitary sign to explore a Corps of Engineers campground and ended up (after miles of successively deteriorating road surfaces) at a rural dead-end next to a potato farm and horse pasture; and drove through little ol' Jasper, where we finally came upon a Goodwill to offload a mess of things I've been hauling around since January.

Finally out of Texas desert and beach, and into Texas green!

The campground welcome sign at Martin Dies, Jr. State Park in Jasper, TX.

Our rigs were on two sides of a huge corner lot; this is from my front door with Ken's rig way out there. Oodles of space between all the sites made the noisy, happy family to my left almost unnoticeable. Patchouli loved the tree debris to poke around in, and he bravely growled away a raccoon family that visited one night.

My rig, as seen from a wee fishing pier across the way.

The lake from the fishing pier. That straight strip of land across the water is the main road along the lake. Very quiet from here.

Cedars grow near the shores and make the whole place look like a bayou in the narrower waterways. We tried to get Patchouli to join us on the pier, but the sound of water lapping at the rocks was a bit too much...as was a boy carrying a lively fishing pole that clearly was a cat-eating monster.

The park offers a few miles of easy trails that wind you through thin and scrubby trees and past swamps and ponds.

"Turtle pile!" (Yurtle's third from the right.)