Jet Skiing

 

When I moved to Texas almost a year ago, I knew I would get to have family time and hoped I would get to travel and see new places. I had hoped for other goals and volunteer opportunities and, like a good book, my current chapter is not quite as predicted. I am liking it though. My family is pretty amazing, I am slowly making friends (at least people I know), and am learning to accept new adventures. 

Family time has been great. My niece has found a wonderful lifemate. They are getting married soon. He is a responsible man who can earn a good living, make good decisions, treat her like a queen, and reminds us all to have fun and enjoy life. 

He has a jetski (properly known as a personal watercraft). He loves driving it and takes us out on Lake Livingston when they come to town. I get the "Lake Life" thing. It is a different world on the lake. There are destinations you can boat to, like the waterfall and pine island and the dam. We haven't been to the dam yet. Families party at pine island. They set up shade shelters in the water, park their boats, swim and relax. There are also places where groups of fishermen hang out. I know there is a lake culture I am not fully aware of. I think I would like to hang out more down at the lake. I bought a fishing pole, but am waiting for it to cool off before I learn to fish. 

Village Creek State Park

In early August, my niece and I went to Village Creek State Park with the dogs and met some friends from Florida there. Our friends had the site right next to us. The campground, Hilltop camping loop, was correctly named. It was on a hill. The parking areas of the sites were pretty level and they did a great job putting in amenities for each site. There were terraced steps between many of the amenities, so if you don't do steps, you will want one of the lower number sites at the top of the hill. Each site had a picnic table, tent space, and fire pit with benches. There was a lot of shade. If you need to be close to the bathroom, pick a higher number site towards the bottom of the hill. The bathroom is closest to site 22. The closest trail is about 1/4 mile from the bottom of the camping loop. It is a really pretty 1.2 mile trail along village creek slough and through the woods. There are a lot of little bridges the boy scouts built over low spots in the trail. There would have been a lot of running creeks if we were in the wet season. I liked it dry, with fewer mosquitoes. Further down the road (about 1/2 mile from the camping loop) is the day use area. There is another network of trails a couple miles long, swings, picnic areas, a covered picnic pavilion, and a canoe launch. Supposedly you can fish from the shore, but there is not a really good place to do so. The shore of Village Creek is steep and brushy. It is fun to explore though. The entire park was very clean. There was a major part of the park closed because of storm damage and they seem to have to repair lots of erosion, but the park workers and volunteers really work hard to take care of their park. 

I enjoyed hiking the trails. We spent several hours exploring the network of trails near the day use area and walked down some of the sloughs. The banana spider webs are amazingly strong, Wave a spider stick in front of you. It is great to sit in the woods and watch and listen as well as walk the nice sandy trails and see all the amazing vegetation. Village Creek is in an area called the Big Thicket. This area covers a lot of eastern Texas and western Louisiana. It is a very mixed habitat with woody hammocks, sandy woods, and swampy areas. There is an amazing variety of vegetation, trees, bugs, birds, amphibians, and I assume reptiles and mammals (we didn't see any). It is difficult to bird watch in the woods, because there is so much cover. I heard many bird songs, but have not learned to identify them yet. We grilled our dinner and had nice campfires. It was relaxing to watch the fire and listen to the frogs and crickets. We did have to use bug spray. The girls put their hammocks up between the trees and slept out all night. I had the big window open and got to listen to the night sounds with them until I fell asleep. 

We spent one afternoon in town and went to a really nice Cajun restaurant. It was recommended by people at the really big Goodwill store we went to. The parking in the restaurant was tight, but the food and service was excellent. (It would be helpful if I remembered the name of the restaurant). I enjoyed Village Creek state park. If I need to spend time in Beaumont, I would be glad to use that as a home base.