Friday, February 11, 2011 (Sam Houston Jones State Park, Lake Charles, LA)

Well last night was the coldest night we have experienced...our water lines froze...even with leaving the outside shower hose dripping. The official temperature this morning was 25F/-4C...with the windchill making it feel like 19F/-7C!! The water hose was completely frozen right up to the trailer...there was even a big icicle hanging down from the connection to the filter.

After the last three busy days... today we decided to just take it easy and hang here. We had a leisurely start to the day and then decided we should get on with our exercises. After showers and breakfast, we headed out for a walk around the campground.  But first here is a picture of our campsite...

There is a wildlife pond...more of a bayou with trees...looks very cool...

Interesting looking bird...

Then the river...

There is a huge day use area with lots of picnic tables and hiking trails...and if you are not into camping, there are a number of cabins for rent...

We had a nice, fairly leisurely 45 minute walk as Steve took lots of pictures. Once back, we sat outside in the sunshine...it was still chilly out but the sun was sure nice! Then it was time to try getting a satellite signal...after moving the Satellite dish around to 3 different locations Steve finally got a signal. We had opted for the manual dish instead of an automatic rooftop dish because we knew that we would be amongst trees a lot. Boy it can be a pain in the butt! For those of you that aren’t familiar with satellite, every time you set up the tripod you have to make sure its level...then you have to aim the dish to your co-ordinates on the horizontal.....then elevation....then tilt the dish askew. So when the dish has to be moved to several different locations it can get very labour intensive....but still beats work!

Well that took a good hour, and after all that frustration, we thought we would get a little exercise by checking out one of the trails. We hadn’t planned on a major hike but a good fast-paced walk felt good so we continued along the trail which followed the river.

There are some huge homes on beautiful pieces of property on the other side of the river...

Not sure exactly where the trail went, we were happy when another hiker came along and told us that it looped around back to the campground. So 40 minutes later rounded a curve and low and behold...there was the campground and our trailer.

We relaxed outside for a bit until the sun went down behind the trees and it got just too chilly...so we headed inside to sit in front of the fireplace.

We had had a very relaxing day...with lots of exercise as well!