Never a Wrong Turn (Ever): East Texas

We traveled across the northeast corner of Louisiana and into Texas. The terrain was rolling hills, covered with oil fields and cows. I don't know why, but next to wells pumping furiously, would be ramshackle houses and single wide trailers. Are the mineral rights sold separately from the land, or are these people tending the wells for distant owners? I don't know, but I sure didn't see mansions and evidence of oil money in the Texas countryside. I mumbled secret prayers that the wells would suddenly pump much more oil so that gas prices would come down. I would send the profits to the local impoverished population, but I have to admit it was a selfish desire for lower gas prices that motivated my prayers.

Oil field.

Uncertain is a very small town, but if all of us who are really uncertain moved there it would be the largest city in the country!

We stayed at Caddo Lake campground. It was a beautifully otherworldish. Cypress trees grew out of the water and Spanish moss decorated them like tinsel on old fashioned Christmas trees. Turtles lined logs at every opportunity for sun, though most of the time it was cloudy. We stayed an extra day waiting for sun so that I could paint in the ambiance of bayou, but when the sun came out, so did the wind. I will have to paint that picture from photographs!

Turtles basking in the overcast.

While we were staying at Caddo Lake, we noticed that Louie kept staring at a 6 inch circumference white plastic pipe sticking out of the ground next to our camp. He was acting like Bernie, who because he didn't see well, would assume that inanimate objects were dangerous intruders. Finally, after a couple of days we investigated and found a possum face down in the pipe unable to move. It was slightly alive and we took the coward's way out. We told the rangers and let them deal with this wild animal!