Most of these we have accessed from Jasper, Texas. From Jasper, we would take Route 96 north and then Route 255 or Route 83 to access those on the east or north. San Augustine is off Route 83.
Here, as at Twin Dikes, we find a few campers with large setups for a Thanksgiving family and friends get together. We found out from a mom on this nature trail that the schools here have a whole week for Thanksgiving vacation. Of course, their next vacation after Christmas is not until March with school ending at the end of May.
The holly trees on this trail are real trees, about 30 to 40 feet tall.
Another common sight on the trail are these berries. they are called American Beauty Berries or French Mulberry. They have started to fade a little, but they are hard to miss. A pretty berry, but poisonous.
Even the insects can be interesting. At first, it looked like a stink bug.
If it had been resting on a branch, we never would have seen it.
Of course, click to enlarge!
These parks, Twin Dikes, San Augustine, and Rayburn Park , have closed sections for the winter. During the week there are only one or two campers in the park. Weekends bring more, but the hosts say they never fill.
Right around this time, while publishing the last issue, we discovered a problem with our computer. We have two computers a Sony Vaio and an Apple Ipad. We use the Sony just for this blog , checking on other blogs, and sometimes emails. We had picked up an ad malware that was jumping out popup ads for computer fixes and cars and shopping deals. Not sure where it came from, but it might have been an ad on Yahoo or RV Park Reviews that I clicked on by mistake. That wasn't so bad, but then I think I clicked on
an ad that came up from that ad, trying to get rid of it, and that started a popup tsunami. We had some great communications with our antivirus provider ,Trend. It took a while, but they got to the root of the problem and we cleared it. This malware had disabled the Trend antivirus and the Windows firewall. It had also buried itself in a hidden folder and refused to be uninstalled!
With the help of some nice people at Trend we got rid of the malware and reinstalled everything. Only problem was a day later we found out that our mailing list had been stolen from Yahoo and people were receiving spam emails. Didn't even cross our mind. We quickly changed passwords. Jan and I hope that all of you managed to delete that email. We can be slow learners ourselves sometimes, but lessons learned.
1. Don't click on anything until you are sure what you are opening.
2. If someone sends you an email with no message or sometimes even a subject, but only a link--
Don't Open It!!!!!
So------anyway. Here we are at Site 45 at Rayburn Park on the north side of the reservoir.
This park is about 40 miles from Jasper. Surprisingly, that puts this wonderful park too far from a number of campers. Hosts indicate that this park never fills up
We were so impressed with this campground. Again, at this time of the year it is volunteer hosts and workers. The host attendant indicated that she had been working alone, but new workers had just come in to help. Good thing, she had worked diligently to keep this park looking great! She had said that if she did not come back to work here, the Corps was preparing to close the park---not good. Don't spread this too far, but this is the nicest park on the reservoir.
As Jan is discovering, these sites are huge and very well separated. The nightly cost with the senior pass is still $13 per night. Even at this time of year, there are two boat ramps in this area--well used.
What a nice Thanksgiving! We had enjoyed some great Facetime with family earlier. Jan discovered that a Butterball 8 lb turkey actually fit into our oven. That and the Finnish turnip casserole and gravy turned out perfect.
Then, of course, there was Jan's homemade apple pie, clam dip, and we even found some oysters for scalloped oysters.
Just wish we could have family and friends here!!
Thanks for this article on Twin Dikes. I was looking for information on it and found your blog.
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