Last night I slept pretty well at the rest area. I was fortunate in that the semi next to me parked around 6:00p.m. and never moved until probably 6:30 in the morning. That makes the evening much quieter. I knew when he pulled out, as the morning sun suddenly flooded into the bedroom, right into my face and woke me up!! The cats immediately took up positions on each side of me, looking me in the face expectantly. I told them I was not getting up at 6:30 in the morning and to go back to sleep!! They did and I did! 😀💤

I was not in a hurry in the morning, because I could not get into the state park too early anyway. After breakfast and checking everything over and going for a walk around the rest area to make sure I was awake and ready to go, I pulled out. The traffic was very steady on Highway 10. About 30 miles from the outskirts of Houston, there was construction. So we would zigzag off onto a nearby two lane road for a few miles and then zigzag back onto the highway and repeat. A lot of cement barriers along the way as well. The difficulty is that the blacktop used in the transition from Highway to Highway was bumpy. This would set my RV to rocking and jerking against the hitch. I needed to put the brakes on in order to stop the rocking. Not to the point of stopping but just slowing down about 10 or 20 miles per hour less and once it stopped to speed up again. Obviously I began to slow down in anticipation for each transition and that worked well. (I think I have to add air pressure to the air lift bags I have in the back of the pickup. )

At one point a road side traffic sign began blinking that traffic was stopped up ahead. So I took an exit to an Exxon station I saw right off the road. It also happened to be a big travel stop with its own smokehouse. I left my phone in the truck, and was sorry I did so, because I would have taken wonderful pictures inside! It had everything you could imagine. Where you had your refreshments there were also three wood “whiskey” barrels set up each with a type of iced tea. They had rows and rows of smoked meats of every kind of imaginable. I bought stuffed chicken cordon bleu and had it tonight and it was excellent.

They even had quail legs! And stuffed quail breast. But it’s not wild quail. I see quail farms here. A great gift shop, wines etc. Beautiful bathrooms. It could not be very old. Praseck’s Smokehouse. It was a nice stop before getting back on the highway again.

The Sunday traffic picked up and the number of highways increased as I got into Houston. It wasn’t white knuckle driving but it definitely was high attentive driving for the next 30 to 45 minutes! There are a lot of highways that come and intersect and branch off through Houston. They also have an interesting EZ pass toll system. If you have that pass, you turn onto a two or three lane toll road which actually go up and over the regular highways and bypass traffic. Very interesting.

Thank God for gps! Plus I also checked out the visuals on the map because there are so many roads and Lanes to watch for. As I was swinging around the east side going north, they actually have the highway sign painted on the lane to tell you which lane you should be in for the highway you want. It will also say north or south. This is a great gift when you have like six lanes across and numerous exits coming up. Arizona does that as well. Oshkosh could definitely do that at some of their roundabouts!! I did manage to snap a couple of pictures of downtown Houston.

As I was heading north out of Houston, the highway was narrowing down from four lanes to two again because of construction. A frontage road ran alongside the highway because there were still businesses there. As we got closer to the loggerhead, pick up trucks were bailing off the highway over the median and to the frontage road like there was no tomorrow! 😅The median already had about 3 dirt roads formed by how many vehicles have already done this! And there were no cops around! I think they gave up on trying to stop it since the construction has been going on for a while. So I felt vindicated! I was not the only one who pulled that trick. See, others do it, and do it a lot! But I probably was the only one that happened to have an RV behind them at the same time and still did it! What was I thinking??! 🤔 And no I did not go off the road this time!! 🤣

Finally, traffic started to let up and I wound my way through the countryside to Lake Livingston State park. I realized I had been to this park before! It was 2 years ago. It has three campgrounds and I ended up in the same Campground that I was in before.

At that time it had been really wet weather and a lot of the areas around the campsites were flooded. In addition there are deep ditches and a narrow strip to back the RV into your site. Since that was my first time, it was pretty tricky. The rangers stated that this Campground loop was going to be shut down over the summer and they were going to improve the grounds. So when I came back this time, I saw they really have.

The Campground site for the camper is still narrow but now it is with a wider access to back into from the road and it has a raised and level cement platform. The road is nicely black topped. The ditches are still really deep and they are intimidating when backing up.😬 But I did it slowly and got out to check often and it went really slick! 👍 I am on the outside of the loop so I have woods behind me and I am loving it. There is a lot more space between the campers here and the loop has a lot of empty spaces. ( The other loops are closer to the lake itself and are pretty full.) I am appreciating the quiet and privacy after the openness of the last two parks and all the family activity. 😬

Today, Monday, it was overcast all day and looked like it was going to rain numerous times, but did not. I checked out the other campgrounds and took a long walk by the lake area but it was really windy. I also checked out their automated method of renting out kayaks. I don’t know if anybody is doing this in Wisconsin yet, but it looks like a pretty good idea. These photos will pretty well explained it.

I figured out that these doors open outward. By doing so the bottom block , which is attached to the door, opens up so you can get the paddle out and a life jacket. Pretty ingenious and simple design and yet very secure.

I’m going to publish this tonight. Then tomorrow, Tuesday, I’ll take a couple pictures of the park by the lake and that should complete the picture of this park. 🤗 There are a couple hiking / biking trails I might take in and a nature trail and bird blind. Plus I’m going to have to make a trip into town to do the laundry!! 🤪