Lake Texoma → Lake Bonham → Lake Tawakoni → Hawkins
My first day in Texas was hot. I woke up to an overcast morning. It was still and muggy. Just as i was leaving i bumped into the woman cleaning the bathrooms - she's a workamper, cleaning for her spot. We talked a bit about my bike trip and then she revealed she decided to go full-time RVer during COVID. She quit her job in Arlington, moved out of her apartment and into a fifth wheel trailer. She said with the work her only costs are car payments (she doesn't have a truck of her own to tow the trailer), food and phone. She says it's great, she gets to wake up beside the lake every day, sit outside, cook up food on the fire. Some of her friends thought she was nuts, but she's happy, and has made new friends in the RVing community.
She said she was a divorcee, with grown kids. She raised them in the country but moved to the city to try find something more to life than just church and her dog. She went out for drinks twice a week and got into (computer) gaming, but eventually decided she'd had enough when the landlord hiked the rent again.
We talked a bit about our moms, who both passed away. She said hers got deep into conspiracy theories and it consumed her life, always worrying about politics. Then she said "but you know, it turns out a lot of what mom said was right". I nodded for her to go on. "Yeah, like back in Obama time, oh i hated Obama so much, he created this thing called Obamacare, and mom told me if it passed i'd be thrown in prison if i didn't get insurance. Well i never had insurance before because i have a preexisting condition, but now i was going to be forced to pay 800, 900 a month? I ain't paying that. So i never paid it, but they didn't catch me yet. I lived a good life, if it's my time, it's my time." I didn't ask why she hated Obama so much, or how her mom had been proven right given she wasn't in prison right now, and i didn't point out that Obamacare fixed the preexisting condition absurdity in American healthcare, i just said that it's sad when people get completely wound up in political drama that doesn't affect their lives. As we both know, it turns out if you switch off the news for a few months... Life still goes on. The world didn't end. So was it really worth the stress? Not really.
This is my way of avoiding political conflict. Most people can agree that it's not healthy to obsess over politics, and that a lot of what happens in DC and the stuff that gets talked about on cable news is so far away from our day-to-day lives that it's hardly worth worrying about. I like to say that it feels more constructive to focus on the change you can affect, so small things that matter in your local community. It's sort of planting the seed of anarchism in their minds, because the next logical step is if you are involved in shaping your community, why not let other communities decide for themselves how they want to operate?
Anyway, it was a nice chat, but the day got better from there! I decided to bike along a bunch of back roads to my planned lunch spot of Denison, and along the way i found myself in the Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge. It is the best place i have been in America on this whole trip. It was so cool, i finally felt like i was really in "the south" (that is, the south that i imagine it to be and not necessarily what it actually is).
The refuge is a whole bunch of swampy marshlands with mud and vines and dead branches all over. Insects constantly shrieking. Pelicans and other water birds off in the distance. Old dykes that seem to have created some polders or at least shallow pools - not sure if for salt, or aquaculture, or what. Rusted up oil derricks and pipes everywhere. It was awesome. I spent about an hour cycling around and probably could've spent all day. I really hope i get to see more of that sort of thing as i get more into the deep south.
Because of the morning conversation and refuge diversion, i was starving. I didn't make it to Denison so just got gas station tacos at Pottsboro instead. Why does a gas station have a taqueria inside? Because Texas, that's why. The tacos were pretty good, but probably not enough calories. I'm still struggling with how to eat more. It feels so unnatural and gluttonous.
I did stop at Denison to pick up some Ursack supplies and chat with a lunching Walmart employee, then continued along the back roads past big ranches and little ranches, Trump flags and Texas flags, lake houses and mobile homes. Multiple times i had dogs charge out of the yard barking and growling, chasing me down the street.
It disgusts me that people train their dogs to be aggressive like this. It's bad enough that these animals have been forced into intergenerational servitude in the first place, but then to deliberately breed them to be more vicious than a wild canine, it makes me sick. If anything domesticated animals should be more docile, getting fed and petted and walked all day as they do. It's only gotten worse the further south i have come. I feel like the people who perpetuate this must have a screw loose. Why isn't it a law to leash, fence or put down all violent dogs? Fuck. Put down their owners too. I suppose the reasoning is similar to thinking it's a great idea to own a gun for protection, but i don't understand that either. These folks don't seem to realize that they are the ones who are making society dangerous for everyone else.
And that is my rant on dog and gun ownership. Thank God a car didn't try run me down too or y'all would've gotten a trifecta of me hating on things a lot of people inexplicably love.
Anyway, after evading the attacks of a half dozen psychos' dogs, i got to Lake Bonham. It's just a small local lake for the nearby town. Middle of the week, there is a small community of long-term RVers in the front, nobody in the back. Peaceful spot to sleep. It is very humid. The insects are going wild. Feels like i'm really in a new place now. The hot and heavy subtropics. Let's go.
-o-
Today i was chased by dogs again. It's getting to the point where i dread cycling past people's houses because inevitably at least one house every mile or so is going to belong to a psychopath whose dog will literally run into the highway - cars and all - just to try to attack me. Fuck dogs, fuck dog owners and fuck all this bullshit.
Deep breath.
Speaking of dogs, when i was in Oklahoma i started watching Reservation Dogs. It's a comedy about indigenous kids living in a small town on the rez. It's very funny and worth watching the whole season, but cycling past all the ranches today reminded me of a scene where one of the kids and their dad go out hunting. They run across a couple of Texas ranchers whose only lines are "taxes", "Mexicans", "wokeness", "cancel culture" and so on. It made me laugh because it's such a perfect representation of these cranky right wing elites who seem to spend all their life grumbling about how the world is being destroyed by liberals while still paradoxically doing all the same shit they always did. If this is the liberal takeover, it is some weak sauce revolution, lordy.
Another thing i thought about was calories. I stopped at a donut shop in Bonham, because it seems every Texas town had about 6 donut shops and no bakeries. Seriously, i haven't seen this many donuts since leaving Canada, which has an obnoxious amount of donut shops hidden inside coffee shops. I kind of hate donuts. They are too sweet, too soft, and don't feel satisfying in any way. After i eat one it just feels like i ate some butter and sugar. Actually, butter and sugar spread onto bread would taste better. This might be my Dutch heritage showing. Although the Dutch have their own donuts called oliebollen, so that doesn't make sense. Anyway, they also had a hot dog bun at this place, but they called it a pig in a blanket, so i guess it's a standard thing in the US. I got an "apple fritter" which basically is a donut that tastes exactly the same as all the other donuts, but it has a fruit in the name so it sounds healthier, i guess?
Oops, i got sidetracked talking about donuts when what i really wanted to talk about was calories. I am still trying to figure out how to up my calorie count. I feel so gross eating as much food as i probably should be eating. It just feels profligate. Like, it goes against my philosophy of minimalism and not taking more from this planet's ecosystem than i need. But then i thought about how far the food is taking me, and i got to wondering how it compares to cars.
Turns out that a liter of gas (petrol) has around 8000kcal in it. I think a fairly efficient car could get you about 10km per liter. So, if i need to eat double-calories compared to a normally active person - 4000kcal per day - and i go 100km per day... I am 20x more efficient than a car in distance per calories. Looking at it this way, i shouldn't feel guilty about eating a disgusting amount of food, because it's still much less wasteful than anyone who drives an internal combustion vehicle.
Except, of course, gas is around 3 dollars a gallon in America. Let's make it even and say dollar a liter. That means a driver can harness 8000kcal of energy for a single dollar. I normally buy 500g of quick oats at a time, which if it's on sale might cost a bit over dollar. That's around 2000kcal in total, i think. Adding nuts or dates or dried fruit ups the calories, but also ups the cost. I'm not sure there would be any way to get the calories of gas in human edible food at the same price. A 500g container of peanuts is closer to 2500kcal, but costs two dollars.
I mean, obviously the energy density of gasoline is the reason why we use it in cars instead of burning oats or peanuts. But still, it makes you think. It is much more expensive to get calories for humans than for cars. Even though we are vastly more efficient energy-consumers than cars, if people are only thinking about the short term, then they will choose the cheaper, faster and more polluting option.
I think this is why action on climate change needs to be backed by serious government regulation. It needs to become economically unviable to destroy our planet. That's not something that "the market will decide" because the market will never choose the slower and more expensive option, even if it is more efficient in the long term.
Yeah, cycling with a tailwind through a flattish part of Texas got me thinking big thoughts.
At a gas station i met a cute little girl who ran out and shyly introduced herself while i parked my bike. She might have been school age, but it's hard for me to tell. She was little. She said my hair was pretty because it was pink. I explained that it used to be red but it fades out in the sun. She said she wanted to have pink hair, so i suggested she ask her parents if she could get it for Halloween. I said it's a good time of year for pink hair.
I also drank a large serve of sweet tea, which is basically just very expensive sugar water, but it's calories i needed.
I had tacos for lunch in Greenville. Then i found a frutería and got a wonderful fruit salad thing made from pineapple, cucumber, mango, peanuts and some kind of chewy sweet thing that might've been raisins or tamarind, with chili salt lime sauce. It was so good. It's weird how you need to go to an "ethnic" place just to get fresh fruit in small town America.
Now i am at an expensive camping resort on Lake Tawakoni. I paid $20 for a tent spot because they had a laundromat. Another $5 into the machines and finally i have clean clothes again. I have been desperate. It's going to feel so sweet to cycle out of here in clean clothes tomorrow.
Most of the campsites i can find in my next 100km circle are even more luxurious resorts charging $25+ for tent camping and even more for RVs. I can hardly believe how expensive it is to camp down here. Now i know why the RVers up in Kansas gave that state (and Nebraska) the thumbs up.
This morning the host at Lake Bonham kicked me down some cash after we chatted about my journey. He said it's not much, but it should help. It covered my camping for the night there - which was very affordable compared to these spots on the lakes east of Dallas - and my donut and sweet tea breaks.
This evening i talked to an old guy who used to hobo around many years ago. He said i should check out Leesville in Louisiana where he worked for a while. He said "there's no problem with the blacks..." Then caught himself, perhaps realizing that nowadays saying "the blacks" might be problematic. But he went on, explaining that it was a rare place where at the time there wasn't much racial violence and everyone pretty much got along ("as long as you mind your business"). I suppose that's relative to other parts of the south, where by all accounts it still very much sucks to be a person of color. Although, who knows, might have changed for the better since he was young. Or it might have changed for the worse. ("Down in Louisiana, all the churches are open, you can walk in anywhere and if you need a place to rest, you'll be looked after." Still the case? I doubt it.)
Either way, he's the second person i've met who reckons Louisiana is the place to be. He said to watch out for gators, though, especially on my bike. He said there's a road that goes through the bayou, swamp on both sides, gators just walk across the road out there. Fuck. Can't be as bad as the dogs, though, can it? He suggested when i camp to sleep up on the picnic tables. He also said that Anthony Fauci was a mad scientist who created the coronavirus in a Chinese lab and now we are all paying the price. I admit i am more scared of gators than corona, but that might be a misplaced fear. The old hobo said he met a guy at the fishing pier last night whose wife died of corona. How many people know someone killed by a gator?
I also cycled through a goddamn fucking bog today after a gravel road randomly turned into a deep mud patch, but that's another story. This is getting too long.
-o-
I'm starting to get a very clear picture of what i look for in a campsite, and i'm realizing it is very much not what people in Texas are looking for.
I need a flat place to pitch my tent, preferably with a bit of a wind break, but not with overhanging trees or any kind of hill or structure that will block the morning sun. I need a source of potable water - filtered from a creek or lake is fine, just as long as i can drink it. And a place where i can poop. I don't mind to dig a hole, but it is much more convenient to just sit and go. Flush is nice but not required. Picnic table to eat and organize my stuff. I also really need internet, either wifi or several bars of 4G. This is so that i can plan my route for the next day. I can do without internet for a night if i know in advance that's going to happen, but it's really annoying to expect it to be there and then not have it. Especially if the campsite i'm staying at stupidly requires internet booking instead of putting money in an envelope and done.
Things i do not care about include having an RV dump station, shade, trees, boat ramp, lake, fishing, quiet/far away from the highway, not having tweakers as my neighbors, pull through spots, pets allowed/not allowed, volleyball courts, fire pits, door code for the washrooms, gated entrance, and so on.
Basically, i want a motel version of a campsite, not a hotel or a resort. The campsite is where i sleep along the way, not a destination in itself.
That worked fairly well in the prairies, both in Canada and the US, where towns understand that people are passing through, so they have cheap and cheerful spots with just the bare essentials. But down here it's incredibly hard to find anything under $20 a night, and they're all "destination" spots where people are expected to stay for a while.
My struggles of Texas include... Spots you have to book several days in advance. A requirement that if you book one day on the weekend you have to book at least two. Double the price on holidays. Parks that ask if you own your own home and/or RV on the application form for an overnight stay. Parks that have a requirement that your RV must be newer than 10 years old. Parks out in woop-woop that don't have any mobile reception and still require you to pay online. Parks that ban tents. God. It never ends.
Yesterday i found a new kind of camping spot. A glamping spot. I booked in one of three tent sites on someone's private property, where they also have some huts, a tipi, gussied up caravans and so on. After chatting to a workamper who suggested i go to her home state of West Virginia which she said is very underrated, i cycled out of my resort site on Lake Tawakoni and in the direction of this glampsite. For some reason i had very little energy, so took a couple hours to barely go 30km.
I had lunch in Emory, and was distraught to find that the town has no taquerias at all. (There are three Tex-Mex restaurants, but it's not the same.) So i got Greek. All veg, i just got a dip platter, some potatoes, olives and salad. I also got two honey-drenched desserts.
The ride to my campsite near Hawkins was fine. Passing through Quitman i saw a taqueria inside a gas station that proclaimed itself to have the "best tacos", so my worry at having already left America's taco belt subsided.
The road from Alba to Quitman was unexpectedly pleasant. Most Texas roads are boring as hell. They're efficient and go straight from one town to the next (so there's no annoying stair-stepping like in the prairies), but they don't have much interesting scenery and the cars all drive 70+ miles an hour so it's hard to relax on a bike. But occasionally you find a road with fewer cars, and one that zigs and zags, meandering around the landscape in an aesthetically pleasing way. That was this road.
Also interesting is that East Texas has a bunch of pine forests. In my head Texas was swamps in the east, cacti in the south/west and ranches in the middle. But there is an area in the east called the Piney Woods, and that's where i am now. It is definitely much, much nicer to camp on a bed of dry pine needles than the rotting, spider-infested shitfest that is the boggy oak groves that have up until now been the only serious woodlands i've seen on this trip to the US.
And this campsite is gorgeous. It's on acreage owned by two old hippies who found Jesus and now have this festival-looking property with all kinds of whimsical fairy lights and installations and a giant fuck-off cross as the centerpiece of the public area. I had a long chat with the owner, he's a nice dude. He said on Sunday they have Java and Jesus around the campfire, there's no minister, they just talk about God and how He affects their lives. I guess it's something like a Quaker meeting, although i have never been to one of those so i don't know what that is like first hand.
I like this kind of Christian. I mean, who knows, dude might still preach fire and brimstone, but i get the sense it's more chill. You know, believe hard, worship with intensity, see the Holy Spirit in every little thing, God is all around, bla bla, but also it's a personal journey, and people need to find their own path to salvation, and sometimes that path is long and winding, and that's okay. I respect people who find comfort in their faith, and even those who evangelize or celebrate it proudly. Good for them! I only find religion objectionable when it starts being used as a basis for discrimination against non-believers, or just anyone who is living a peaceful life that certain sects deem to be sinful.
So this is a really nice camping spot. It's in the pines, it has all kinds of nice lighting, it's peaceful, it's owned by a couple of Actually Good Christians... It even has wifi (albeit very slow). But i want to leave. I don't want to sit around all day on the pine needles tethered to this power outlet in the middle of the public area trying to catch up on LiveJournal and email friends and family members who are long overdue for an update. I want to leave because the wifi is flaky and i have no mobile signal when it drops out and i don't have enough food in my Ursack to eat anything besides oatmeal for lunch, dinner and breakfast tomorrow morning.
So i will pack up and leave here in a minute, and once again struggle to find a fucking campsite for tonight. (Even worse because it's Saturday.) Once again i will spend over $20 to stay at a place that doesn't check all of my boxes because that's literally the only place available. And i will continue southish or eastish in the hopes things will change as i get closer to either Beaumont or Shreveport, even though i know they definitely won't. The only hope is that i find some delicious tacos along the way. And a grocery store or Walmart where i can buy tortillas and some more fruit.
I think i will post this update now despite y'all not having seen any Oklahoma photos yet, because this is a long and inner-thoughtsy update, and it feels like a continuation of the camping troubles i've had since south Kansas. Here's hoping i find somewhere with more consistent wifi and/or mobile signal for tonight. Sigh.
She said she was a divorcee, with grown kids. She raised them in the country but moved to the city to try find something more to life than just church and her dog. She went out for drinks twice a week and got into (computer) gaming, but eventually decided she'd had enough when the landlord hiked the rent again.
We talked a bit about our moms, who both passed away. She said hers got deep into conspiracy theories and it consumed her life, always worrying about politics. Then she said "but you know, it turns out a lot of what mom said was right". I nodded for her to go on. "Yeah, like back in Obama time, oh i hated Obama so much, he created this thing called Obamacare, and mom told me if it passed i'd be thrown in prison if i didn't get insurance. Well i never had insurance before because i have a preexisting condition, but now i was going to be forced to pay 800, 900 a month? I ain't paying that. So i never paid it, but they didn't catch me yet. I lived a good life, if it's my time, it's my time." I didn't ask why she hated Obama so much, or how her mom had been proven right given she wasn't in prison right now, and i didn't point out that Obamacare fixed the preexisting condition absurdity in American healthcare, i just said that it's sad when people get completely wound up in political drama that doesn't affect their lives. As we both know, it turns out if you switch off the news for a few months... Life still goes on. The world didn't end. So was it really worth the stress? Not really.
This is my way of avoiding political conflict. Most people can agree that it's not healthy to obsess over politics, and that a lot of what happens in DC and the stuff that gets talked about on cable news is so far away from our day-to-day lives that it's hardly worth worrying about. I like to say that it feels more constructive to focus on the change you can affect, so small things that matter in your local community. It's sort of planting the seed of anarchism in their minds, because the next logical step is if you are involved in shaping your community, why not let other communities decide for themselves how they want to operate?
Anyway, it was a nice chat, but the day got better from there! I decided to bike along a bunch of back roads to my planned lunch spot of Denison, and along the way i found myself in the Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge. It is the best place i have been in America on this whole trip. It was so cool, i finally felt like i was really in "the south" (that is, the south that i imagine it to be and not necessarily what it actually is).
The refuge is a whole bunch of swampy marshlands with mud and vines and dead branches all over. Insects constantly shrieking. Pelicans and other water birds off in the distance. Old dykes that seem to have created some polders or at least shallow pools - not sure if for salt, or aquaculture, or what. Rusted up oil derricks and pipes everywhere. It was awesome. I spent about an hour cycling around and probably could've spent all day. I really hope i get to see more of that sort of thing as i get more into the deep south.
Because of the morning conversation and refuge diversion, i was starving. I didn't make it to Denison so just got gas station tacos at Pottsboro instead. Why does a gas station have a taqueria inside? Because Texas, that's why. The tacos were pretty good, but probably not enough calories. I'm still struggling with how to eat more. It feels so unnatural and gluttonous.
I did stop at Denison to pick up some Ursack supplies and chat with a lunching Walmart employee, then continued along the back roads past big ranches and little ranches, Trump flags and Texas flags, lake houses and mobile homes. Multiple times i had dogs charge out of the yard barking and growling, chasing me down the street.
It disgusts me that people train their dogs to be aggressive like this. It's bad enough that these animals have been forced into intergenerational servitude in the first place, but then to deliberately breed them to be more vicious than a wild canine, it makes me sick. If anything domesticated animals should be more docile, getting fed and petted and walked all day as they do. It's only gotten worse the further south i have come. I feel like the people who perpetuate this must have a screw loose. Why isn't it a law to leash, fence or put down all violent dogs? Fuck. Put down their owners too. I suppose the reasoning is similar to thinking it's a great idea to own a gun for protection, but i don't understand that either. These folks don't seem to realize that they are the ones who are making society dangerous for everyone else.
And that is my rant on dog and gun ownership. Thank God a car didn't try run me down too or y'all would've gotten a trifecta of me hating on things a lot of people inexplicably love.
Anyway, after evading the attacks of a half dozen psychos' dogs, i got to Lake Bonham. It's just a small local lake for the nearby town. Middle of the week, there is a small community of long-term RVers in the front, nobody in the back. Peaceful spot to sleep. It is very humid. The insects are going wild. Feels like i'm really in a new place now. The hot and heavy subtropics. Let's go.
-o-
Today i was chased by dogs again. It's getting to the point where i dread cycling past people's houses because inevitably at least one house every mile or so is going to belong to a psychopath whose dog will literally run into the highway - cars and all - just to try to attack me. Fuck dogs, fuck dog owners and fuck all this bullshit.
Deep breath.
Speaking of dogs, when i was in Oklahoma i started watching Reservation Dogs. It's a comedy about indigenous kids living in a small town on the rez. It's very funny and worth watching the whole season, but cycling past all the ranches today reminded me of a scene where one of the kids and their dad go out hunting. They run across a couple of Texas ranchers whose only lines are "taxes", "Mexicans", "wokeness", "cancel culture" and so on. It made me laugh because it's such a perfect representation of these cranky right wing elites who seem to spend all their life grumbling about how the world is being destroyed by liberals while still paradoxically doing all the same shit they always did. If this is the liberal takeover, it is some weak sauce revolution, lordy.
Another thing i thought about was calories. I stopped at a donut shop in Bonham, because it seems every Texas town had about 6 donut shops and no bakeries. Seriously, i haven't seen this many donuts since leaving Canada, which has an obnoxious amount of donut shops hidden inside coffee shops. I kind of hate donuts. They are too sweet, too soft, and don't feel satisfying in any way. After i eat one it just feels like i ate some butter and sugar. Actually, butter and sugar spread onto bread would taste better. This might be my Dutch heritage showing. Although the Dutch have their own donuts called oliebollen, so that doesn't make sense. Anyway, they also had a hot dog bun at this place, but they called it a pig in a blanket, so i guess it's a standard thing in the US. I got an "apple fritter" which basically is a donut that tastes exactly the same as all the other donuts, but it has a fruit in the name so it sounds healthier, i guess?
Oops, i got sidetracked talking about donuts when what i really wanted to talk about was calories. I am still trying to figure out how to up my calorie count. I feel so gross eating as much food as i probably should be eating. It just feels profligate. Like, it goes against my philosophy of minimalism and not taking more from this planet's ecosystem than i need. But then i thought about how far the food is taking me, and i got to wondering how it compares to cars.
Turns out that a liter of gas (petrol) has around 8000kcal in it. I think a fairly efficient car could get you about 10km per liter. So, if i need to eat double-calories compared to a normally active person - 4000kcal per day - and i go 100km per day... I am 20x more efficient than a car in distance per calories. Looking at it this way, i shouldn't feel guilty about eating a disgusting amount of food, because it's still much less wasteful than anyone who drives an internal combustion vehicle.
Except, of course, gas is around 3 dollars a gallon in America. Let's make it even and say dollar a liter. That means a driver can harness 8000kcal of energy for a single dollar. I normally buy 500g of quick oats at a time, which if it's on sale might cost a bit over dollar. That's around 2000kcal in total, i think. Adding nuts or dates or dried fruit ups the calories, but also ups the cost. I'm not sure there would be any way to get the calories of gas in human edible food at the same price. A 500g container of peanuts is closer to 2500kcal, but costs two dollars.
I mean, obviously the energy density of gasoline is the reason why we use it in cars instead of burning oats or peanuts. But still, it makes you think. It is much more expensive to get calories for humans than for cars. Even though we are vastly more efficient energy-consumers than cars, if people are only thinking about the short term, then they will choose the cheaper, faster and more polluting option.
I think this is why action on climate change needs to be backed by serious government regulation. It needs to become economically unviable to destroy our planet. That's not something that "the market will decide" because the market will never choose the slower and more expensive option, even if it is more efficient in the long term.
Yeah, cycling with a tailwind through a flattish part of Texas got me thinking big thoughts.
At a gas station i met a cute little girl who ran out and shyly introduced herself while i parked my bike. She might have been school age, but it's hard for me to tell. She was little. She said my hair was pretty because it was pink. I explained that it used to be red but it fades out in the sun. She said she wanted to have pink hair, so i suggested she ask her parents if she could get it for Halloween. I said it's a good time of year for pink hair.
I also drank a large serve of sweet tea, which is basically just very expensive sugar water, but it's calories i needed.
I had tacos for lunch in Greenville. Then i found a frutería and got a wonderful fruit salad thing made from pineapple, cucumber, mango, peanuts and some kind of chewy sweet thing that might've been raisins or tamarind, with chili salt lime sauce. It was so good. It's weird how you need to go to an "ethnic" place just to get fresh fruit in small town America.
Now i am at an expensive camping resort on Lake Tawakoni. I paid $20 for a tent spot because they had a laundromat. Another $5 into the machines and finally i have clean clothes again. I have been desperate. It's going to feel so sweet to cycle out of here in clean clothes tomorrow.
Most of the campsites i can find in my next 100km circle are even more luxurious resorts charging $25+ for tent camping and even more for RVs. I can hardly believe how expensive it is to camp down here. Now i know why the RVers up in Kansas gave that state (and Nebraska) the thumbs up.
This morning the host at Lake Bonham kicked me down some cash after we chatted about my journey. He said it's not much, but it should help. It covered my camping for the night there - which was very affordable compared to these spots on the lakes east of Dallas - and my donut and sweet tea breaks.
This evening i talked to an old guy who used to hobo around many years ago. He said i should check out Leesville in Louisiana where he worked for a while. He said "there's no problem with the blacks..." Then caught himself, perhaps realizing that nowadays saying "the blacks" might be problematic. But he went on, explaining that it was a rare place where at the time there wasn't much racial violence and everyone pretty much got along ("as long as you mind your business"). I suppose that's relative to other parts of the south, where by all accounts it still very much sucks to be a person of color. Although, who knows, might have changed for the better since he was young. Or it might have changed for the worse. ("Down in Louisiana, all the churches are open, you can walk in anywhere and if you need a place to rest, you'll be looked after." Still the case? I doubt it.)
Either way, he's the second person i've met who reckons Louisiana is the place to be. He said to watch out for gators, though, especially on my bike. He said there's a road that goes through the bayou, swamp on both sides, gators just walk across the road out there. Fuck. Can't be as bad as the dogs, though, can it? He suggested when i camp to sleep up on the picnic tables. He also said that Anthony Fauci was a mad scientist who created the coronavirus in a Chinese lab and now we are all paying the price. I admit i am more scared of gators than corona, but that might be a misplaced fear. The old hobo said he met a guy at the fishing pier last night whose wife died of corona. How many people know someone killed by a gator?
I also cycled through a goddamn fucking bog today after a gravel road randomly turned into a deep mud patch, but that's another story. This is getting too long.
-o-
I'm starting to get a very clear picture of what i look for in a campsite, and i'm realizing it is very much not what people in Texas are looking for.
I need a flat place to pitch my tent, preferably with a bit of a wind break, but not with overhanging trees or any kind of hill or structure that will block the morning sun. I need a source of potable water - filtered from a creek or lake is fine, just as long as i can drink it. And a place where i can poop. I don't mind to dig a hole, but it is much more convenient to just sit and go. Flush is nice but not required. Picnic table to eat and organize my stuff. I also really need internet, either wifi or several bars of 4G. This is so that i can plan my route for the next day. I can do without internet for a night if i know in advance that's going to happen, but it's really annoying to expect it to be there and then not have it. Especially if the campsite i'm staying at stupidly requires internet booking instead of putting money in an envelope and done.
Things i do not care about include having an RV dump station, shade, trees, boat ramp, lake, fishing, quiet/far away from the highway, not having tweakers as my neighbors, pull through spots, pets allowed/not allowed, volleyball courts, fire pits, door code for the washrooms, gated entrance, and so on.
Basically, i want a motel version of a campsite, not a hotel or a resort. The campsite is where i sleep along the way, not a destination in itself.
That worked fairly well in the prairies, both in Canada and the US, where towns understand that people are passing through, so they have cheap and cheerful spots with just the bare essentials. But down here it's incredibly hard to find anything under $20 a night, and they're all "destination" spots where people are expected to stay for a while.
My struggles of Texas include... Spots you have to book several days in advance. A requirement that if you book one day on the weekend you have to book at least two. Double the price on holidays. Parks that ask if you own your own home and/or RV on the application form for an overnight stay. Parks that have a requirement that your RV must be newer than 10 years old. Parks out in woop-woop that don't have any mobile reception and still require you to pay online. Parks that ban tents. God. It never ends.
Yesterday i found a new kind of camping spot. A glamping spot. I booked in one of three tent sites on someone's private property, where they also have some huts, a tipi, gussied up caravans and so on. After chatting to a workamper who suggested i go to her home state of West Virginia which she said is very underrated, i cycled out of my resort site on Lake Tawakoni and in the direction of this glampsite. For some reason i had very little energy, so took a couple hours to barely go 30km.
I had lunch in Emory, and was distraught to find that the town has no taquerias at all. (There are three Tex-Mex restaurants, but it's not the same.) So i got Greek. All veg, i just got a dip platter, some potatoes, olives and salad. I also got two honey-drenched desserts.
The ride to my campsite near Hawkins was fine. Passing through Quitman i saw a taqueria inside a gas station that proclaimed itself to have the "best tacos", so my worry at having already left America's taco belt subsided.
The road from Alba to Quitman was unexpectedly pleasant. Most Texas roads are boring as hell. They're efficient and go straight from one town to the next (so there's no annoying stair-stepping like in the prairies), but they don't have much interesting scenery and the cars all drive 70+ miles an hour so it's hard to relax on a bike. But occasionally you find a road with fewer cars, and one that zigs and zags, meandering around the landscape in an aesthetically pleasing way. That was this road.
Also interesting is that East Texas has a bunch of pine forests. In my head Texas was swamps in the east, cacti in the south/west and ranches in the middle. But there is an area in the east called the Piney Woods, and that's where i am now. It is definitely much, much nicer to camp on a bed of dry pine needles than the rotting, spider-infested shitfest that is the boggy oak groves that have up until now been the only serious woodlands i've seen on this trip to the US.
And this campsite is gorgeous. It's on acreage owned by two old hippies who found Jesus and now have this festival-looking property with all kinds of whimsical fairy lights and installations and a giant fuck-off cross as the centerpiece of the public area. I had a long chat with the owner, he's a nice dude. He said on Sunday they have Java and Jesus around the campfire, there's no minister, they just talk about God and how He affects their lives. I guess it's something like a Quaker meeting, although i have never been to one of those so i don't know what that is like first hand.
I like this kind of Christian. I mean, who knows, dude might still preach fire and brimstone, but i get the sense it's more chill. You know, believe hard, worship with intensity, see the Holy Spirit in every little thing, God is all around, bla bla, but also it's a personal journey, and people need to find their own path to salvation, and sometimes that path is long and winding, and that's okay. I respect people who find comfort in their faith, and even those who evangelize or celebrate it proudly. Good for them! I only find religion objectionable when it starts being used as a basis for discrimination against non-believers, or just anyone who is living a peaceful life that certain sects deem to be sinful.
So this is a really nice camping spot. It's in the pines, it has all kinds of nice lighting, it's peaceful, it's owned by a couple of Actually Good Christians... It even has wifi (albeit very slow). But i want to leave. I don't want to sit around all day on the pine needles tethered to this power outlet in the middle of the public area trying to catch up on LiveJournal and email friends and family members who are long overdue for an update. I want to leave because the wifi is flaky and i have no mobile signal when it drops out and i don't have enough food in my Ursack to eat anything besides oatmeal for lunch, dinner and breakfast tomorrow morning.
So i will pack up and leave here in a minute, and once again struggle to find a fucking campsite for tonight. (Even worse because it's Saturday.) Once again i will spend over $20 to stay at a place that doesn't check all of my boxes because that's literally the only place available. And i will continue southish or eastish in the hopes things will change as i get closer to either Beaumont or Shreveport, even though i know they definitely won't. The only hope is that i find some delicious tacos along the way. And a grocery store or Walmart where i can buy tortillas and some more fruit.
I think i will post this update now despite y'all not having seen any Oklahoma photos yet, because this is a long and inner-thoughtsy update, and it feels like a continuation of the camping troubles i've had since south Kansas. Here's hoping i find somewhere with more consistent wifi and/or mobile signal for tonight. Sigh.