Daingerfield State Park

Date: June 21-24, 2018

Location: Daingerfield State Park Site: 8 Who camped with us: Just us!

LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this park!! It’s on the smaller side with a clear lake and new restrooms that had A/C and big showers. We loved our site too! Beautiful lake views sitting on a bed of pine needles & towering pine trees offered tons of shade. Another really cool thing was the amount of lily pads on the lake – I’ve never seen them like that.

I think he likes this spot?

There was a great 2.5 mile hike around the lake that we all enjoyed, including Chewy, of course. It was SUPER humid and the horse flies were the size of horses themselves, but we managed. Nolan thought he struck gold when he found a cool turtle shell. Chewy enjoyed drinking from the people water fountain.

Turtle shell

Chewy needed a drink from the water fountain too!

The kids rented paddle boards, something they both love, while Kevin and I got a John boat to follow them around and do a little fishing. Does anyone else get heart palpitations at the thought of getting on and off those tipsy things? I am always certain I’m going to tump, but managed to get on and off without incident this time.

There was a nice swimming area with a floating dock that provided for hours of entertainment.

As for the wildlife, there was the cutest little family of ducks. Well, I say “cute”, but they were actually quite ugly – white with large bubble red faces, but they can’t help it. We also came across a dead snake on the road that fascinated us. Lots of deer, including the one in the parking lot when we checked in.

Gross!!

This trip was the maiden voyage with our new RESIDENTIAL SIZE FRIDGE! The RV fridge Shasta came with took nearly 48 hours to cool (and even at that, only down to 55 degrees – granted, we were camping in 100 degree temps, but that’s not going to cut it for milk and meat). We got several recommendations to replace it with a standard residential fridge, which are must less expensive (because they operate only on electric instead of propane/electric). We got it from Home Depot and the RV repair guy never showed up, so Kevin took it upon himself to remove the old one and install the one. He had to get creative with pool noodles and hooks/clamps to secure it to keep from bouncing around when we’re on the road. So impressed! And it worked – we have ice AND it only takes a couple of hours to cool down!! Cross our fingers it keeps on ticking.

Other indoor activities included watching 2 movies (Yes Man & Hot Pursuit). We baked cookies in the oven for the first time and ate them with ice cream – from our NEW FREEZER – can you tell I’m excited?! :-). One thing we’ll never forget is Cameron setting her phone alarm every couple of hours, so she could stop everything and “bake her brownies”- EMERGENCY! She’d race out to Kevin’s truck, he’d fire it up so the wifi would turn on, because she did not want disappoint her customers with burnt treats! This is a “fun” little game app on her phone called “Bakery Rush”. You know, really becoming one with nature . . .

We tried out a local Mexican restaurant, Don Juan’s, which was not great. Bad service, brought the wrong order and sub-par food. Don’t think we’ll be going back to this one.