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...

0 miles traveled today 

1,121 miles traveled so far

WINTER GETAWAY 2026 - Day 11 - Buckhorn Creek COE at Lake of the Pines Texas

I think our instincts are pretty good. It definitely was time to pack up and leave Rocky Point campground at Wright-Patman Dam.  One night was enough. Time to move on. Enough of that. 

We really do like the tall pine trees and the terrain that's slightly hilly and especially the green grass. We remarked that it actually reminds us of driving through the Upper Peninsula of Michigan!  Some of the leaves are coming out on the lower shrubbery and the tall trees of the deciduous type are starting to bud and open their leaves.  Spring!

It really puts us in a good mood as we travel along. Seeing all this greenery is part of the motivation for escaping the whiteness of Wisconsin. Back home, dark gray trees against the winter sky and the white crusty snow at this time of the year does not put a lot of good feelings in our hearts. 

Also, the price of diesel is pretty darn good too. These are the lowest prices we have seen in a long long time. So we stopped to fill up, especially when it is not the biodiesel. We are even seeing more places with DEF (diesel exhaust fluid) at the pumps. We don't need any yet at this time. We get about 2,500 miles per fill up, and Steve topped it off when we left the house.

We even noticed that the pine trees all seem to have fresh green needles bursting out at the tips that gives everything a beautiful green hue as we drive on past. 

We are now trying to take back roads as much as possible. Our interstate travel was to get us South as fast as we could. Now we will try to avoid them if we can.

We traveled along to the next Corps of Engineers Park that we had on our list. This one is called Buckhorn Creek at Lake of the Pines near Jefferson Texas. 

Here is their link: 

https://www.recreation.gov/camping/campgrounds/232536

We knew there were many sites available from looking at their grid formation on the recreation.gov website.  We like to be able to pick out a site once we get to a campground rather than just blindly making reservations online. A lot of times, the location of the campsite means a lot to us. Orientation of North, South, East or West is important as well as which way the winds come off the lake and are we going to get blasted or are we going to find a secluded cove.  

And actually, like at the last campsite, are we going to get located next to an irritating neighbor? 

So we pulled on in and the nice gentleman at the gate said that was fine--- we could drive around and look at the available sites and choose the one that suited our needs.

We drove up in the popular area where there were a lot of campers parked. It was on a higher ledge overlooking the water on kind of a point. But the winds were coming across the lake and we could kind of tell maybe it might not be the best spot. Then we went down in the next loop which was behind all that. It was more secluded with a tall stand of pine trees behind the campsites. The third loop was over in a tenting area and really was not made for RVs. 

We selected a beautiful spot with tall pine trees to the South and to the West of us, to the East of us is a shallow basin.  Straight out to the North is a beautiful cove, secluded and protected from the larger portion of the lake. We found our spot!

E217 was a pull-through site without anybody else around. What's nice is having the grid on the Recreation.gov app, you can look and see how many sites around you are reserved for how many days as well. Nobody was around us on any of the sites for the entire 7-Day period that we were going to take our site. That was great! No Neighbors at all!

This site along the water was a little more expensive than some of the others. It was $32 a night. But with our America the Beautiful Senior Access Pass it was only $16. Water and electric included, and beautiful peace and quiet and tranquility!!

This is what we were looking for!

We pulled into the site in the opposite direction. It's a pull-through site, and we wanted to have the best view out the passenger side of our motorhome. We seem to be doing that a lot lately, haven't we? We pulled the picnic table over out of the way a little bit so we could get the motorhome parked and leveled out. Then we brought it back into place.

We were even in a great location for the starlink to work from where it rides in the skylight in the motorhome. 

In no time at all, Steve had us all set up and brought out the lawn chairs and the patio rug. This sure looks like "HOME" to me for the next 7 days.

We aren't asking for a lot on this trip. We aren't looking at tons of tourist attractions. There are no bucket list items that we need to go see. We are just looking for warmth and sunshine and peaceful locations with a beautiful view. 

And I think we got exactly that...

We took Nick for a little walk around and then set back to relax and enjoy the rest of the afternoon. He seems really content to sit here and watch the birds fly on over the water and land down along the shore.

Just look at these temperatures! Back home in Wisconsin they were experiencing a heavy snowfall and cold temperatures down in the low teens. Yep, we are glad that we took off and headed South.

Now we are up for a couple days of relaxing without really needing to do anything. There are no "have to"s other than just enjoying ourselves.  Even nap time is enjoyable, waking up and looking out the window and seeing that beautiful view on one side of the water, or the tall pine trees on the other.

We had spoken to one of the campground hosts, and he said yes there IS a resident alligator down in this bay. Although this time of year he's not very active and stays submerged. He is about five or six feet long and he patrols the bank. So he does caution people with small pets or children to just be aware when you are near the water's edge.  

Steve took out Nick's favorite toy and the hundred foot long rope on the cord reel. They did some fetch for a while in the evening while we were cooking supper. It takes the edge off of Nick's energy level and it gives Steve a chance to get Nick to play with him rather than needing me along every time. Usually Nick wants me along every time, not letting me out of his sight. This large open area by our campsite gives Nick the opportunity to stretch his wings a little. Nick is learning that Steve can be a "fun person" too...

But he does need to dash back over to me every now and then, just to reassure himself that I have not abandoned him or disappeared forever.

It was a perfect evening to sit back with a beverage and enjoy the view. Steve's ice cold beer and my glass of Two Buck Chuck from Trader Joe's are just a great way to settle back and recoup after our ride today.  

We are not sure what kind of tree this is directly across from us, but it does have green leaves already. It greatly improves the view. Across the bay from us are a lot of pine trees so we do have a lot of green to look at. That's really nice on our Wisconsin Eyes that are accustomed to only brown and gray or white snow.

Just look at those beautiful towering pines!  They make a gentle backdrop against our rig to the South, and also protect us maybe for maybe hot sunshine later in the week? We do see some low 80s in the forecast.

Steve got the grill out and it was time to start putting together some supper. We have along some hamburger patties from our favorite meat market back in Wisconsin, Salmon's Meats of Luxemburg.  This is why I packed the freezer so carefully, to bring along some of our favorites from home.

While he had the patties going, I fired up the air fryer with the last of our McCain's 5 minute fries. Those we can find anywhere, so we can restock on them next time we are near a larger grocery store.

It's a simple meal but easy to put together in the small kitchen of our motorhome. We've kind of gotten it down to a science of what works best and what we need to take out for various meals. The grill he has also has an extra gas burner on one side. We can do some cooking outside if it's too hot inside. We like having options.

Here are the patties, perfectly grilled with the obligatory singe marks. Almost as pretty as in a magazine isn't it?

Thank you to Chef Steveio. (Then I do the cleanup and the dishes) Lol!

Next we were treated with a soft gentle beautiful sunset. It wasn't quite as glamorous as the one we had the night before at Rocky Point. But it was subtle with streaks of gentle colors across the sky. 

It was a great way to end a good day. 

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

Tomorrow I might do some laundry in our portable washing machine.

Only 58 Miles traveled today 

1,121 Miles traveled so far

WINTER GETAWAY 2026 - Day 10 - Wright Patman Dam - Rocky Point

It was that time. Time to pack up and head on out of Craighead Forest in Jonesboro, Arkansas. We have been here a full week and it was time to try and move further south. We were looking for a little bit warmer weather. So Steve did all of the outside jobs and I did all of the inside jobs to get "roadworthy". Nick just sat there and looked handsome. 

We set the camera up and did our little intro for the video on YouTube. We usually start each travel day with a brief talk from the cockpit of our motorhome.

We headed on out of Jonesboro and angled our way down towards Texas. Steve spotted the lowest price of diesel he's ever seen, so we stopped and filled our tank. 2.99 a gallon--- (It's hard to read the LED lights on the right, but that is $2.49 a gallon for regular gas)

At first we were worried that the pump was out of service, but that was only the pump on the right for gasoline. They had plenty of the diesel available from the pump on the left. Yes, this is real diesel #2, not biodiesel or any other blended configuration. Our Mercedes-Benz engine requires regular diesel. We are averaging 12.8 miles per gallon. 

We also stopped in at a Walmart for a stock up of grocery items like fresh produce and milk and eggs. We needed a few things after being stationary for a whole week in Jonesboro.  

As we drove along, our eyes were adjusting to some really beautiful green grass along the sides of the road. Even some of the trees are budding out with leaves. The lower shrubbery is filling in with green deciduous leaves, and we noticed the pine trees are also having fresh new growth of green needles on all of their branch tips.

Our eyes are not accustomed to seeing this in February in Wisconsin!

We passed a lot of flat agricultural land with many channels and irrigation ditches. We know that a lot of these fields are rice fields. Arkansas is the major producer of rice in the United States. We also passed some of these huge solar farms. Amazing!

It was too busy at the gas station to take Nick out for a potty break. But not too far down the road we found an interesting rest area / wayside. It was in the middle of the meridian between both northbound and southbound routes of the interstate.  It was very, very noisy! But they did have a pet walking area so we got Nick out and about. We also noticed they had an overnight camping section. Even though it was noisy, it would be a good port in the storm if you are traveling in bad weather or needed a quick overnight stop. Good to know.

We are now in the Southwest corner of Arkansas and ready to cross the border into Northeast Texas. The roads are good, the skies are clear, and we put on a few miles.

 

We drove through the city of Texarkana about 5:00 p.m. This city is half in Arkansas and half in Texas. The middle of the city is split by a highway that is also the border. There was a lot of construction going on, and somehow we got ourselves into a temporary center "Thruway Route" instead of the right hand lane with exit ramps and on ramps.  We don't know how we got on it, but we couldn't get off! We could see the exit we needed to take to get down to our next intended campground. But we couldn't get there! 

We had to keep going further west. Exit after exit was unavailable to us because we were in this center "Thruway Route" and couldn't get off!!! Concrete barriers kept us from getting into the right hand lanes. I think it's to keep the truck traffic moving through the construction straight through without having to change any lanes. Well, we finally found our way off by the 4th or 5th exit. Now we had to double back around on side streets and side roads to make our way back to where we should have gotten off in the first place. We were miles out of our way...

Finally we worked our way down to the entrance to what we thought was Rocky Point Corps of Engineers campground at the Wright Patman Dam on the Wright Patman Lake.  We saw the sign and made our turn here.

We drove on down and we found the huge Dam. It was an amazing huge mound of grassy dirt with a road running alongside of it. Suddenly the road took a sharp incline and we were supposed to drive up on the top edge of the dam??? 

That didn't seem right to us. We stopped and double-checked the GPS and the maps. It really wasn't very clear. I guess there's another campground down here that's closed until March 1st. So we turned around and headed back out to the main highway.

Now we drove down to the next entrance off the highway also for Wright Patman lake. This one led us to the Rocky Point campground. Oh what a pretty drive into this campground...

We are really enjoying the tall pine trees. It looks a lot like the Northwoods of Wisconsin or the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Not at all what we thought Texas would be looking like. In other years, we've been to the west side of Texas and down as far south as far as Big Bend. It's all desert and rolling rangeland and sagebrush.

We like the Army Corps of Engineer Parks because they accept our America the Beautiful senior access pass. It allows us to camp for half price!  The pass can be purchased on a yearly basis or you can buy the lifetime pass for $80. Ours has more than paid for itself in the first month that we had it.

For example, at this next campground, the electric sites are $26, so we got it for only $13. 

We looked up online to see that there were many sites available at Rocky Point. But there really was only one site that was available for a whole week that was considered waterfront. So that's the one we aimed for. The attendant at the gate said sure we could drive right in and check it out, and then register online. So that's what we did.

Just past the gate house, the welcoming crew made us feel right at home...

The deer in Texas are smaller in size than what we are used to up in the Northwoods. These were pretty accustomed to having people around and didn't seem to be very bothered by us at all.

We found our way to our intended campsite. Steve was just about ready to start backing in when our neighbor came over and interrupted him during the backup process. He was telling us how uneven the campsite was and that he couldn't get level on it etc etc. Well, we eyeballed it and it was pretty darn good. We aren't too picky and we have levelers to help out if it is. As soon as we got backed up onto the site, he came back again to interrupt us and tell us how glad he was that we could make it on to the site. We were busy trying to get set up and get supper going as it was getting late. This guy really wasn't leaving us alone, was he?  I think we were his "new best friends".  (set up and tear down times are the WORST time to interrupt RVers. Mistakes can be made that could be dangerous or costly).  We tried to be polite, but we had to firmly continue our setup routine and get settled in. 

Then he proceeded to go back to his site and crank his music, very loud. 

Yes, very loud! 

Ugh.

I managed to get supper started and Steve finished our hookups and getting our slides out. We were finishing up just in time to catch the most beautiful sunset ever...

Even though we were technically water side, we kind of had to look through some of the other campsites to see the sun setting.

I decided to grab my camera and walk down along the shoreline to catch some beautiful amazing sunset shots.  These are untouched and no filters. I do a little cropping to center the photo but that's about it. I don't manipulate my pictures.

The sun was going down and it was so pretty. What a great way to end a long travel day. The opposite shoreline made the perfect foreground for the sun as it was getting down near the horizon. It got bigger and bigger as it got close to the edge of the land.

As it slipped below the horizon, it made the most beautiful color striations against the clouds. Again, nothing here is manipulated or changed. It was so pretty that it was dazzling to the eyes as it sunk lower behind the trees.

This looks like an abstract watercolor painting or some crazy dyed fabric streaks of tie dye. But no, it was the actual sky!!!

As I walked back up to the motorhome, it was bathed in the same beautiful orange glowing light. I was so thankful we had a nice spot to rest for the night. Even with the loud music, we were happy to be off the road and having a spot to rest.

We decided the next morning that we would either move campsites to another site or head on further south. That's what's great about having a motor home or any RV with wheels. If you don't like your neighbors, you can move. 

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

299 miles traveled today 

1,063 miles traveled so far