Camping at Caddo Lake State Park

I'd be lying if I called myself a true outdoorsy person.  Don't get me wrong, I enjoy camping and did my fair share of it growing up in Girl Scouts.  But when some of the others requested A/C and a bathroom, I was more than happy to oblige.

After a couple of days researching Texas camping areas, we chose Caddo Lake State Park.  It met all of our criteria: A cabin with A/C and a bathroom, slept 3 couples, had tent camping nearby for the 4th couple, and had canoeing.  Camping in luxury - check!  (It worked out that 1 couple last minute cancelled on us so tent camping was no longer necessary... it poured both nights!)

On the drive there...

Too bad it didn't stay that gorgeous out all weekend.

Did you know there is a town called "Uncertain" in Texas near the border of Texas and Louisiana?  Yeah, neither did we so we did the touristy thing and took pictures!

Welcome to our cabin!

It had 2 bedrooms with a full size bed in each, a living room, a dining room, a kitchen (equipped with a stove, microwave, coffee maker, and refrigerator/freezer), a back patio with lounge chairs and a picnic table.  We added an HD projector, DVD player, sound system, electric griddle, gas grill, toaster, and snow cone maker.  Yeah, we definitely went camping in style.  While Jennifer and I unpacked and set up the kitchen, Josh and Matt relaxed in the living room.

And we ate like kings!

Grilled Hawaiian flavored chicken with the best spinach salad recipe ever (thank you The Pioneer Woman!), fruit salad, eggs, pancakes, waffles, bacon, turkey bacon, darn good bacon cheeseburgers, chicken & pineapple shish kabobs, steak & onions/peppers shish kabobs, dark chocolate chip brownies, Strawberry Lime dessert squares, and snow cones.

It was still legit camping - I promise!  Check out the swamp/bayou...

The trees plus the Spanish moss plus the lily pads - it was creepy and awesome!

According to the visitor center, there were confirmed sightings of alligators, river otters, and feral pigs.  We searched and searched but all we found were snapping turtles...

(Don't let him fool you with his baby cuteness.)

and...

white and blue cranes.  Check out Jennifer's awesome photography skills!

We went canoeing for 4 hours... (who knew you could bruise your butt just by sitting in a canoe! add paddling the entire time... )

Kristy and I paddled 1 canoe.  (Sheraun got to ride like a king since his right hand/wrist was in a cast but he did still help as much as possible.)

It took us a while to figure out the steering... we ran into quite a few things in the beginning.

Matt and Josh paddled the other canoe so Jennifer could be our official photographer.

We saw a really random structure that we're assuming was used for observation purposes.

And then a huge storm approached so we hauled it back to land...

And boy were we lucky... less than 5 minutes after getting back inside the cabin...

But we enjoyed it in style.

And it led to a beautiful evening sky...

Kristy and Sheraun just decided to start dancing in the living room.  (It was too cute not to take a picture of and post.)

Add in a couple movies, some games like Skip-Bo, and then we ended the trip with a hike...