WINTER GETAWAY 2026 - First Week at Buckhorn Creek, Lake of the Pines, Texas

 I have decided that I'm going to combine multiple days all into one post. This will be about our first week here at Buckhorn Creek Corps of Engineers park, located on Lake of the Pines near Jefferson, Texas.

Honestly, we are doing so much relaxing and resting and just enjoying this peaceful place, there's not really a whole lot going on to really write about.

 That's exactly as it should be.

After the weekend was over, there aren't too many people left in the park. I think there's about 5 or 6 campers total. Every day we see this gentleman bring his three dogs down to the shore. They romp around and splash in and out of the water a little bit and then head back up to the campground again. So that's about it for activity around us...

Our main activity for ourselves is to sit back in these lawn chairs with our cups of coffee and look out over the water. We are thinking of places we've been, places we'd like to go, and just enjoying this place by itself.  

The temperatures are up in the high 70s and one day it actually topped over to 82. The nights are down in the 60s or maybe the high 50s now. We are past the cold snap earlier in the week where we did have to put reflectix up in the windows overnight because it got down to 31°. Hopefully that weather is now past us.

We have noticed this great blue heron gingerly walking along the shore every day. He comes down into our cove and walks around looking for goodies under the water. Sometimes he holds his head sideways, kind of cocked, so he can look down with his eyes and see what's in the water. And then quick as a wink, his beak plunges down and he comes up with something good to eat. 

After a few days, I decided it would be good to fire up our Costway washer/spinner and do a few loads of laundry. This is just the greatest thing to bring along, because I honestly hate going to laundromats when we travel. 

Being here at one spot for two weeks, is a very good reason why we have it. Now we don't have to pull up stakes and leave to go somewhere for a laundromat. We can catch everything up right here in our very own campsite.

One of the best parts is that I don't have to sit somewhere for an hour and a half to two hours just to wash and dry some laundry. Instead, I toss in a load and crank the timer for 15 minutes. I can go enjoy a cup of coffee, and then I come back and crank it for another 15 minutes. Extra long wash. I can pull those clothes out and start a second load reusing the same wash water and soap. Once they are all done, I can hit the drain and refill it with rinse water. Pretty easy.  

The spinner on the right hand side can only take a few things at a time. But it spins them out so well that they are almost dry by the time you take them out. I hang up some under-things on hangers from the shower curtain rod, and other things go out on a wash line.

We grabbed this washing machine second hand off Marketplace, but you can get it on Amazon: 

https://a.co/d/0dQFTAg1

It's surprising how much you can get into the wash section on the left.  I would say about half of what a normal washing machine can handle. You don't want to get it too constricted because then the clothes don't move around freely during the agitation cycle.

Here's a tiny video clip showing how it works.

While the second batch was in washing, I decided to have some of my favorite bananas and yogurt with fresh raspberries on top! You can't do that while sitting at a laundromat...

When the second batch was completely finished, Steve hung up a clothesline for me and I was able to hang them out to dry. Some campgrounds have rules against clotheslines, luckily for us, this one doesn't. Otherwise I would just switch everything to hangers inside and hang it all in our bathroom or from the cabinet handles throughout the motor home.

We've been enjoying the sunsets here. Even though we are not over on the other side of the point actually seeing the sun set on the water... We do get the beautiful colors striations across the sky from this side of the bay.

It's been very quiet for sleeping. Every once in awhile we do hear a truck go by, but otherwise it's been peaceful. The big dam is nearby, and I think those trucks are shift workers coming to take over from the previous crew.  

When we wake up in the morning, Steve pops open the window shade and we look out at such a wonderful view. So much better than looking at the side of somebody else's camper where you're packed in like sardines at a private RV resort. That's not our kind of place.

Steve gets up and starts the coffee while Nick and I kind of roll around and I scratch his belly and we take it easy in the morning.  It's a pretty relaxing way to start the day.  When we travel, there are no "have to's" like chores at home.

During the first week, we really haven't gone anywhere or anything other than take a few walks and play with the dog. We are going to get out the bikes and take a ride around, and maybe even go down to the little convenience store about 3 miles away on the other side of the dam. We are getting low on eggs and milk. We called ahead to make sure they carry them and they said they are currently out of milk. But the new delivery truck should be there by Monday or Tuesday. So we will wait to take our journey then.

Mr Blue Heron came back and is wandering around looking for breakfast too!  The black ravens (or called buzzards around here?) are hoping to get a bite of his fish.  Nope. He ain't sharing.  

We've been fortunate to get day after day after day of blue sky. There are burn bans on in the area and everything is very dry. I know they are really hoping for some rain but it doesn't look like it will be coming until later next week.

The spotting planes for the fire crews are making loops overhead across this area. They've been going over daily checking to make sure nobody is being careless with fire or any spontaneous areas combusting into flame.  

Entire regions of East Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana are all ripe for fire danger at this time. Hopefully rains will come soon and help alleviate some of the dryness.

We are looking out at the beautiful crisp blue water and it's is lightly rippling in the breeze.  A few fishermen here and there troll on by in their boats.  We watched someone this morning catch a fish right out in front of us. 

In the evenings, we've kind of been taking turns cooking some of the dinners that we like. Steve decided that since we are in Texas, he would make his Mom's favorite recipe, a dish they called "Texas Hash".  Steve is a good cook, and I'm glad that we share the cooking duties.

He browns up hamburger and onion, then he adds a jar of my home canned stewed tomatoes. He cooks up some rice and mixes that in. He kind of lets it soak it up. He adds some spices, mainly salt and pepper and a little bit of Harvest Blend, similar to Mrs Dash. His finished casserole is kind of like a Spanish rice. But his family calls it "Texas Hash". While he's doing that, I get out the dishes and butter up a slice of bread to go along with it.

It's a simple meal, but very filling and hearty. Easy to make and a one-pot meal easy to clean up. 

Another one of the delicious items we made for an evening meal was our precious stash of seafood that we brought from Green Bay, Wisconsin. There is a fish market there that flies in fresh fish from all over and flash freezes it if you want to take it to transport back home.  We get salmon there as well as snow crab legs. The last time we were there they had halibut!  

(We fell in love with eating fresh halibut in Valdez, Alaska last Summer)

We brought along two precious pieces and decided it was time to cook them up.  We thawed them and Steve seasoned them up and put them on a lightly oiled piece of tin foil to put in our air fryer.  He sets it on "bake" mode, so it's like a mini-oven.

He set the air fryer out on a metal table outside so we wouldn't have the cooking smells and heat building up inside of the motorhome. It was a pretty hot day so it was nice to be able to have the option to cook outdoors. 

I pre-baked some potatoes in the microwave and added them for the last 10 minutes or so in the air fryer on a rack above the fish. 

Paired up with a couple of crunchy salads, our baked potatoes, and our big wedges of halibut made a fine feast. The fish is white and flaky and not oily at all. It's similar to salmon in texture. Very light and flaky and delicious. No oily fishy taste, not mushy, with more of a meaty seafood flavor.

They say food always taste better when you cook it outside. I don't know who "they" are, but we're not sharing our dinner with them tonight. Lol!

After dinner is done and the dishes are cleaned up, it's time to curl up and watch a little TV after dark. We are thankful that the Starlink works flawlessly here.  We are able to watch a few of our favorite channels on YouTube. Even an episode or two of Maine Cabin Masters. 

Nick curls up between us, quite content.

I think all three of us are quite content...

Here's the video that goes along with today's blog: 

0 miles traveled today 

1,121 miles traveled so far

NORTH TO ALASKA 2025 - DAY 81 - CASSIAR HIGHWAY DONE, UNWANTED INTRUDER IN CAMPSITE

Waking up in the crowded RV park at Kitwanga was not as bad as we thought. Everyone seemed to be wanting to hit the road early and were quite courteous and quiet as they were packing up. We weren't hearing a lot of slamming doors or shouting or vehicles idling. 

Instead, people were walking around their rigs quietly stowing items away and getting ready to hit the road. I watched out the window as people were carefully shutting their compartments gently with two hands instead of giving it a slam. It was pretty interesting to see such thoughtfulness at 7:00 a.m. as they were getting ready to hit the road. 

By 9:00 a.m. almost everybody around us was gone! We were getting together our bearings and sipping a second cup of coffee. I decided to cook up some breakfast... One of our favorites.

I make French toast but I add cinnamon and vanilla to the batter. Then I fry them with the liberal amount of oil on the pan. So the edges of the bread are actually "crunchy". Drizzled with a little bit of maple syrup from Canada, and a couple dabs of Wisconsin butter, it made a very delicious breakfast.

After we cleaned up and I did the dishes, we looked around and almost every campsite was just about empty. Folks had moved on in their journeys, and we will too. 

Thank you Kitwanga RV Park for a good night's rest even though it was a crowded park. We enjoyed your electricity to keep ourselves cool overnight.

We were sad to end our route along the Cassiar Highway.  We are now turning to the east and we are going to be on the Yellowhead Highway.  

The terrain is still beautiful, and we had a really beautiful blue sky day to travel with. We noticed less mountains and more rolling hills. A lot of the terrain is looking almost like Wisconsin! Can you tell we are thinking of home?

We made it as far as Smithers BC and Steve had something in his mind...  He wanted to stop at this Canadian Tire store. They're kind of like a farm and home type chain in Canada, similar to the Fleet Farm Stores of the Midwest.  Or maybe like a smaller version of Home Depot or Lowe's. 

Steve had looked something up online and it said they had it in stock. So we hoofed it on into the store to buzz through and see if we could find it. On the video link below, you can see how fast Steve zoomed through the store and how I had to practically run to keep up with him.

Yup... He found what he was looking for!

He hugged it tight to his chest, like it was a prized possession.  It's not too often he decides that he wants to buy something. So if he was happy hugging this box, that's good with me too. 

What was it? 

A PROPANE TREE

I will explain more about that later after he actually puts it to use. You'll just have to stay tuned for another blog to see when he's really going to use it.

Now that my man got his tool gadget fix, it was time to get back on the road again.

We could see mountains off in the distance, and it was a perfect day to put some miles under our tires and outrun the wildfire smoke that we were seeing to the west. It wasn't by us... Yet. 

We drove another hundred miles or so, and looked ahead on the internet for a campground. Imagine our surprise to see a city by the name of Burns Lake showing that they had a FREE city campground! 

https://visitburnslake.ca/to-stay/village-of-burns-lake-municipal-campground-free-camping-in-town-on-burns-lake/

It didn't have hookups, but the temperatures were not too bad today. It was only in the high 70s and there was very low humidity. We would not need electrical hookups overnight. So we drove on in and made ourselves at home. 

We pulled down to the end of a row of sites. Each one had its own picnic table. It was level and shaded.  We got set up and decided to make some lunch. We had taken Nick out to walk him around a little bit, and then we decided to check out what else the park had to offer.

There was a pleasant little boat landing with some birds and baby ducks floating around. Off in the distance you could see the rolling hills and the puffy clouds. A few of them looked dark that perhaps might contains some raindrops. But there were no storms or heavy winds forecast for the next 24 hours. This looks like it would be a great place to spend the night.

Beyond the boat landing was a really nice play area for children, grassy area for picnicking, and ample parking that was separate from the campground area.

There was a "kayak o mat" that you could go online and pay to rent a kayak. Then they would give you a code that you could use to unlock the particular kayak you rented. What a wonderful idea. 

When you are done, you put it back into its proper slot and lock it up again, and they know that it's been returned. Otherwise your credit card will be charged for the cost of the kayak and the paddle! We have seen these now at a few different Alberta municipal parks. I think it's a really good idea.

This was a really neat swimming area with a slide right off the dock into the water. We could hear children having fun with shouts and laughter coming through the trees. It was a good family park. Or so we thought.

We took a nice afternoon nap, and then proceeded to start to get dinner going.  It was nice to have the door open and have the fresh freezes blowing in through the motorhome.

A few other campers joined us down the line. In all I think there were five of us in a row.

As I started to cook dinner, that's when things went awry.  A young man, obviously inebriated, not in control of himself, decided to sit down right on our picnic table in our campsite!

He was mumbling and swearing and arguing with some invisible person in his mind. He would lean over and alternating spit and then vomit on the ground next to our table.

(This was right outside of our camper door, I took this photo from inside)

From time to time, he would alternate his vomiting or spitting along with swigs from this bottle of what I think is vodka.

It definitely was not pleasant. We could hear him verbally arguing with the demons in his head. We were not about to engage in any type of contact with him whatsoever.

We called the non-emergency number of the Canadian Royal Mountain Police who service the area. They came to speak to him, and as they conversed with him, he was nodding his head and fully understanding what they were saying. And then they let him walk away right back over to our picnic table again! He sat right down and started spitting on the ground again!!!

The officers began to drive away. Steve got right back on the phone and called them again.  The dispatch patched the call through to the officers, and they said that there was no disturbance so they weren't going to do anything about it. We said we could not even leave our camper to let the dog out to go to the bathroom because he is sitting within 5 ft of our door!

The officers came back a second time and Steve went out our driver's door to go and talk with them. They said he is a "known individual"  and there really isn't anything they can do, because it's a FREE public place.

Yes, this free campsite meant that he could come and sit on our table and do what he wanted with his puking and his spitting, and it was okay to drink alcohol in the city park.  They said there was no reason to detain him or to make him move on. We would just have to deal with it. 

Poor Nick wanted to go outside and go potty....

So we packed it up and pulled in our slides and decided to drive away.

It's a shame that Burns Lake has put up this beautiful facility and family-friendly park, and it seems to have attracted people who are sorely in need of help or guidance or rehab. 

We had also seen two other "shady people" suddenly scatter when the officers entered the parking area, behind our campsite and off on a trail through the woods. One of them was carrying a large knife like a machete style.  He took it out from a sheath on his back and carried it as he slunk off into the woods. That was enough for us.

So we moved on. 

That's what's nice about having an RV. It has wheels. We can move away from places that we feel are less desirable. 

It is now about 8:30 at night.  We looked at the maps and found there was another municipal campground in the town of Fraser Lake about 45 minutes away.  We set it into our GPS and headed out on the highway. Goodbye Burns Lake. 

We drove along as the sun was setting. It was really looking very pretty. But there was no time to stop and take photos. We wanted to get to the next campground to get set up before dark.

We made it to the community of Fraser Lake, and easily found our way to the White Swan RV Park. Guess what? This is also a municipal park that is also FREE!!!

https://www.fraserlake.ca/municipal-hall/village-news/1259/white-swan-rv-park/

JUST LOOK AT THAT GORGEOUS SUNSET!

We pulled in and found our way through the picnic area and over towards the campsites. I had just enough time to snap this one photo before I had to help Steve find a campsite and help get set up. I think we missed a fantastic sunset!! 

We found the free campsites. They were all level and nice and in a row. The front ones, about 10 sites, were all pull throughs and already occupied. The four rear sites were back-in types, and were all empty. So we found a site, backed on in, and said "GOOD NIGHT"! 

We knew when we pulled in that we were right next to a train track.  One train went through during the night. It wasn't that loud,  but we did notice it.

For FREE, we weren't going to complain one bit. 

The next morning, I snapped this pic of how close the train was. I put a segment on the video clip down below. 

We woke up to sunshine and blue skies!!! (and no smoke) Ahhhhhh

No mosquitoes and comfortable temps... With a beautiful view out of the front windshield.

All of the other rvs in the front row left ... Vamoose and hit the road.  We hung out a bit and made some breakfast. 

This really is a very very nice park. The lake stretches out in front of all of the campsites so everybody has the same view. There is a large community fire pit with benches around, that we can assume becomes a nice place to visit and meet people in the evenings. 

The picnic area that we drove through seems to be very well kept and has some large fields maybe for sports. We didn't check out the actual facilities for bathrooms or anything, because we have our own. But I am sure everything is pretty much up to snuff.

Even the four back in sites that we were at seemed to have a little bit of a slope at the beginning, but as you backed in deeper they leveled out. Each campsite had a concrete patio and a very heavy stone/concrete type table and benches. This was a very nice, well thought out, well made campground. I just can't believe it's all FREE!!!

There's a nice little sign, partially hidden by some shrubbery, that asks that you please only stay two nights.

Thank you Frasier Lake Municipal Campground... We really enjoyed our stay overnight.

Steve's cell phone was having some issues, so we decided to contact customer support and deal with that while we were settled in one spot. Much easier to do sitting stationary then trying to talk as we were going down the road and have the calls drop out. It took quite a while and I must say, the team that was working on his problem really took it seriously and kept contacting us back each time as promised. 

This phone is from Visible and they get their cell service through Verizon.

They followed up with emails and escalated his situation to the next level up. We were still having issues and we really couldn't resolve them unless they shipped us a new SIM card. We didn't want to do that while we were on the road. So we let them deal with it further for the next couple days and said we are going to shut down now and hit the road ourselves.

We have my cell phone which is through a different carrier. So we were okay to continue without his actually being operational cellular-wise. He could still use it through the Starlink as data and make Wi-Fi calls if he needed to.

We will deal with that another day... Time to get traveling again!

Here is the YouTube that goes along with today's blog: 

212 miles traveled today 

7,087 miles traveled so far