Skip to main content

Caddo Lake


This is a somewhat belated post about our Labor Day weekend away at Caddo Lake, on the Texas - Louisiana border. I've just got the photos up on Facebook which tells most of the story:




It was fun to be camping again - I haven't done that for ages, but I've always enjoyed camping since we had a trailer tent when I was younger. In the States, of course, keeping cool is more of a problem than keeping warm, and the countryside is populated with lots of nasty bugs who thought of me as a tasty picnic. For some reason Graham tastes bad to them, which is totally unfair!


We were right on the border where Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas meet, so we drove around a bit just to say that we'd visited each state. To be honest they looked a lot like Texas.


We camped near a little place called Uncertain (which must give rise to endless puns) but the nearest interesting town is a place called Jefferson, which used to be a big inland port - paddle steamers would come all the way up the Red River from New Orleans. In fact Jefferson supplanted a place called Caddo Landing as a port, which used to be pretty much where we were camping, as far as I could tell. It was founded, grew to be a bustling port, and faded away again to the point where there's nothing left in some ridiculously short time - about 60 years! It seems incredible from an English point of view.


It was a good weekend and great to see something which you just can't see in the UK. We just don't have that kind of lake.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Erewash Valley Trail: Ilkeston

You could spend a lot of time following old canals and railways in the Erewash Valley. This walk included parts of the Erewash Canal, the Nottingham Canal, the Nutbrook Canal, and the Stanton branch line, and I could have continued further along any one of those, if I'd had the time. I started in Kirk Hallam, which is mostly a post-war housing estate with a distinctive outline on the map: the main road to Ilkeston through the middle, and a loop road encircling the village. It looks like the London Underground logo. I parked at the lake at the top of the loop. There was a sculpture commemorating the nearby Stanton Ironworks - the ground remembers the roar of the blast  read the inscription around the base - and the remains of a lock on the Nutbrook Canal. Heading towards Ilkeston, I crossed a former golf course, now a nature reserve called Pewit Coronation Meadows, passed a large sports centre, and was soon in the town centre. There was a general impression of red-brickiness, with l...
Post a Comment
Read more

Ten books that shaped my life

Ten books that shaped my life in some way.  Now that wasn't a problem.  I scanned the bookshelves and picked out nine favourites without the slightest difficulty (the tenth took a little longer). The problem was that, on the Facebook challenge, I wasn't supposed to explain why .  Nope.  Having picked out my ten, I couldn't let them go without saying why they were special to me. These books are more than a collection of words by an author.  They are particular editions of those words - taped-up, egg-stained, dust-jacketless and battered - which have come into my life, been carried around to different homes, and become part of who I am. How to Be a Domestic Goddess Well, every woman needs an instruction manual, doesn't she? Nigella's recipes mean lazy Saturday mornings eating pancakes, comforting crumbles on a rainy night, Christmas cakes, savoury onion pies and mounds of bread dough.  If you avoid the occasional extravagance (20 mini Bundt tins...
3 comments
Read more

Erewash Valley Trail: Stapleford

It had been a long wait for this walk. All through the Christmas holidays, and an inset day, and weeks and weeks of appalling weather. Now it was the end of January and there was still a dull grey layer of cloud, but at least it wasn't raining. I set out. If you like a good ex-industrial landscape, the Erewash Valley is the place to be. It is veined with old canals and railways, freckled with former factories and mills, and pitted with coal mines. The M1 and a railway run north to south through it, but parts of it still feel surprisingly rural. I had been drawn in by all that there was to discover, so I'd shelved the Portway for a little while and diverted onto the Erewash Valley Trail. I parked in Bramcote Hills Park again and had a quick look at the walled garden, overlooked by the  Hemlock Stone. Hickings Lane heads towards the centre of Stapleford. It looks like it should be a dual carriageway but it's not; there are two separate roads with a wide grass strip between th...
Post a Comment
Read more