A Short Aside

Curious. It's not often that I do things on a whim while I'm traveling. There are too many variables, too many things that can go wrong, and I like to at least leave some sort of plan with Jared when I go off on my adventures. Every once in a while, though, I see something that looks too neat to pass up. On my way home from my birthday trip at Sea Rim State Park, that's exactly how I found myself on a dirt road winding towards the unknown in Angelina National Forest.

I had driven past the brown sign pointing to Bouton Lake and another wilderness area before I made the decision to see where the little dirt road led. I flipped around on the highway and doubled back to the road. A forest in the grips of a southern winter greeted me. The deciduous trees were bare but there was still plenty of green courtesy of the long and short leafed pine trees that make up the majority of the forests in East Texas. The day was mild, in the 60s, and I drove with the windows down as Callie and I bumped along on the dirt road. I wasn't worried about getting lost; I had a full tank of gas, and besides that, East Texas is so populated that sooner or later you hit a paved road and just follow that to the next small town, and orient yourself from there.

I drove down every road I could, more often than not ending with "Road Closed" signs and blocked with fallen trees. A couple of times the road I was on came out on a paved road parallel to the highway I had first turned off of, and I felt like a gopher popping it's head out of the ground before turning around and plunging back in. I spent a good hour and a half on those back roads, seeing except a couple of random cyclists navigating the soft dirt. I found Bouton Lake and its attached campground and made a mental note to camp there some day. I finally ran out of road and found myself back where I started. It was a short side trip, but well worth the time I spent cruising around the forest. I love Texas in the winter, and I'm sure I'll be back.