Martin Dies Jr State Park & Woodville Heritage Center

After yesterday, which was a bit of a washout, when we didn’t go anywhere and spent the day working out mileages between prospective rv park locations, we woke to a lovely sunny morning.

We decided to head off to Martin Dies Jr State Park, http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us/spdest/findadest/parks/martin_dies_jr/ and took route 190 East to Woodville and then across the B A Steinhagen Lake. It’s an interesting drive across the lake, a little like driving along an embankment with a bridge in one section. Spooky cypress trees dot sections of the lake.

Martin Dies Jr State Park is directly across the bridge, the Nature Center was open and the ranger provided us with a trail map and a park map and then pointed us in the direction of the Island trail. The entrance fee was $3.00 each.

We walked across the bridge and took the left fork of the trail, the forest is full of beech, magnolia and pine and there was a real carpet of leaves underfoot, the return section of the trail has views through the trees across the lake and at one point we could see some white pelicans feeding on some sort of weed out in the lake.

The island trail is 0.8 miles from start to finish.

From there we took the observation bridge over to the Woodland Trail which is just over a mile and a half long and followed that back to the park road. On this trail we saw also some stands of palmetto. It seemed to us to be a very similar habitat to that of the Big Thicket, but then this was probably once part of the Big Thicket. On our way back to the car we saw a big white heron standing silently among the cypress trees of the Neches river waiting to pounce on a passing fish.

These forests must smell wonderful when all the magnolia trees are in bloom.

We left the state park and drove back to Woodville to visit the Heritage Village, http://www.heritage-village.org/ most of the buildings in the village are original, although not necessarily in their original location and it is home to the famous Pickett House restaurant, which serves food boarding house style, fried chicken, chicken & dumplings amongst other things.

The Heritage Village is interesting and we enjoyed our visit, although I have to say I’m really glad my dentists surgery is nothing like this one!

I was interested to see the wanted poster for The Wild Bunch, I didn’t realise Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid got to Texas

After a couple of interesting hours around the Heritage Village, the Tolar Kitchen and Main street are shown below

we drove back and had dinner in Pueblo Vieja which was very nice before coming back and collapsing!

We’d never dream of driving some of these distances at home for just a couple of short walks and a walk around a Heritage Village, but apart from passing through a few small towns these roads are soooo much quieter than at home.

Have fun, we are!