Mammoth Meanders to Goose (Is)Land, Day 6

Sun 12/4

Goose Island State Park to Huntsville State Park

Sorry to leave the goosies, but it was time to head home. With a short stop, to keep from having to drive the whole seven hours in one shot. I chose Huntsville State Park as a stopping place--it's on one of the routes to home, it's about halfway, and it has pull-through full-hookup sites.

And it's gorgeous! Little did I know how beautiful a wooded, hilly spot just out of the Houston mesquite scrub could be. We'd been here once before, on a day trip while we were camping in the Sam Houston National Forest. And I'd remembered it as a nice place, but not beautiful.  But is was--the trees were turning and the ground  carpeted with leaves. Lovely

And, sadly, crowded. Not the whole park, mind you, but the camping loop I chose. The other sites--the tent sites and the water/electric sites, were almost completely empty. And there were some beautiful sites there, too--with no people! But not where we were. We had an couple of empty spots on one side of us but most of the others were filled. And all lit up like the second coming. Blah.

So if we ever stop at this place again, I should pick spots 96 or 98 or any of the back-in spots along the river and well removed from the other ones.

So after a fairly normal drive and a horrid jog around Houston on the tollway by-pass they've built in the last fifteen or twenty years, we arrive. The bypass is a nice road with lots of lanes, but so much traffic. After that, we got on I-45--going north on a Sunday afternoon on I-45 was horrid.

And that's about all. We hooked up and I took Molly for a nice long walk. And then we hopped in the Jeep and ran down to The Woodlands to eat--


Yeah!

Expensive but worth it. Ed had the usual crawfish etaufee plus fried crawfish and dirty rice. I had grilled trout with four shrimp and some yummy, buttery, garlicky spinach.  I must have eaten a stick of butter in one meal. It really needed some rice or some more bread to cut the grease, but I didn't order any and just enjoyed the buttery richness of heaven.