One of the unexpectedly nice perks of traveling by RV is the ability to cook a meal and use your own bathroom anywhere. We find that we often leave a campground and drive for a bit until we get hungry, then we pull into a rest area or a gas station or a parking lot and make something. Below is a picture of one of those times.
We made it to Louisiana on a very long day of driving from Matagorda, Texas.
Part of what made it so long is that there is a very long section of the I-10 that is under construction. Oddly, we remember this same stretch of freeway under construction when we drove through here on our first road trip to Florida…four years ago!
We booked two nights at the Cajon Oasis RV Resort just over the border in Louisiana. The pictures made this place look great. And the reviews weren’t too bad either. The owner said he had a great spot for us right by their little lake. All of this sounded wonderful.
Sometimes reality is not quite as wonderful as a brochure makes it look…
It turns out the owner of this campground is building a bar over the the top of his lake. I’m sure it will be great when it is done, but for now we were lucky enough to enjoy to soothing sounds of construction first thing in the morning. Here is a picture of our prime campsite…
After a couple of nights at the Cajun Oasis RV Resort we headed on to the other side of the state to try out our first Louisiana State Park. Along the way we saw areas by the freeway that were clearly flooded. Many of the news stories attributed the flooding to sea level rise. “Sea levels are rising at an accelerating rate, and the scientific community is confident that global warming is the most important cause. Higher sea levels translate to more and higher coastal floods.” – NOAA Office for Coastal Management
“Tickfaw State Park is a unique 1200-acre park located along three miles of the Tickfaw River…The park features a spacious Nature Center and a network of boardwalk trails into the wetlands adjacent to the Tickfaw River.” – Louisiana State Parks
It was a bit hard to find. We only saw one small sign off the main road telling us to turn into the neighborhood. Driving through the neighborhood roads we kept feeling like we were in the wrong place, I mean, we couldn’t imagine big RVs coming through here.
Finally, we arrived at the entrance.
This park surprised us, in a good way. We were expecting marshlands and instead found a beautiful campground among a small forest of trees. the 30 campsites were spaced to give everyone plenty of privacy. We arrived March 10th and the weather was perfect for the two days we were here. We kept calling this campground “a hidden gem”.
In the beginning, when we were trying to figure out if traveling in an RV would work for us and our cats, we researched ‘RVing with cats’. There is a lot of information about how to do this and YouTube has many videos of people who travel just fine with their cats. In fact, many take their cats out for walks on a leash. We didn’t think our indoor cats would want to do that but we also thought they might want to get out of our small space at some point. So we brought harnesses and leashes along in case that day ever came.
Well, at Tickfaw Shilo, our sweet 13 year old cat, finally wanted out. We put the harness on her, attached the leash, carried her out (because we don’t want her to think she can just walk out on her own – not going to start that habit!), and set her down on the deck next to our little home on wheels. At first she seemed shocked that she was out. Then reality set in and she started slinking along trying to figure out what to do in this great big new world she suddenly found herself in. Finally, she looked up at us and whimpered that she was done. Sigh…so much for us instagramming our adventures with cats.
We are not like Shilo. We have been trying to trying to get out and walk around whenever we can. On this day we walked through the campground and found a path down to a small fishing lake. The path and the grounds around it were very nice.
There is a sand volleyball court and covered picnic tables by the trees.
And nearby is this lovely lake. Not too big and surrounded by trees. We met a woman who was also staying at the campground with her grandkids. As we were talking to her she mentioned that we should be careful of the alligators nearby. WHAT!??! Alligators?!!? She said we could see a couple in the pond from the dock we were standing next to. So we went out on to the dock and, sure enough, alligators!
As we walked off the pier (at a much faster pace than we walked on), we noticed a sign the woman had been standing in front of. Nope, no need to worry about us feeding the gators.
“In August 2016, historic floods devastated parts of south Louisiana after a slow-moving system dumped more than 20 inches of rain in parts of East Baton Rouge and nearby parishes in a three-day span. The flooding was largely the product of extremely warm, moist air in the Gulf of Mexico colliding with a slow-moving storm system. The system spun over the area for several days, dumping between 20 and 30 inches of rain in some areas, according to the National Weather Service.” – The Advocate
This park has a network of boardwalk trails into the wetlands. We decided to “hike” one of these trails.
The ‘Cut Thru Trail’ that we took branched off to the ‘Soggy Bottom Walking Path’. Reading the signs at the start of the trail, and seeing the terrain around us made us decide to skip it and move along to the main road.
In addition to 30 RV campsites with electric and water connections, there are also 14 cabins for rent (which looked really nice), and 20 sites for tent camping (but would you really want to camp near the alligators and snakes?!!?).
Once we made it back to the main road we were greeted by this sign…
We kept our eyes wide open while walking along this road back to our campground.
Within the state park is a famous tree, “The Grandma tree is a bicentennial tree. One of only six, 200 year old cypress trees, that has been certified to be standing at the time that Louisiana became a state.” – Tickfaw State Park
We have discovered that most people we meet in campgrounds have been friendly. Everyone waves to one another and says hi. At this campground we met a couple from Lake Charles who invited us to join them at their campfire that night. They introduced us to a little something called “Gator Bite”, which seemed like an appropriate drink to have after all we had seen so far. Thanks Thibodeauxs for your wonderful hospitality. And for the Gator Bite, we bought two bottles on the way out of town!
On the way out we noticed this sign, which offers a different take on the signs that show how far away other major cities are from where you are standing.
Despite the scary (to us) alligators, this is a park that we really enjoyed. We will be definitely stay here again if we come back this way.
Thank you so much for this information related to your stay at at Tickfaw State Park. My dog and I are arriving at Tickfaw tomorrow and it is nice to see your experience as I plan our time there.