Camping! Now with Kids!
I think I'll get a State Park Pass. This time, it was Purtis Creek State Park, southeast of Dallas. Good times! Because Jesus loves us, it was sunny and in the low 80s. Perfect! the day before camping was thunderstorms and flooding. The day after was up into the 90s. I am living a charmed life, for sure.
It was more of what we like: hiking and kayaking. Since we each brought a kid along this time, there was less making out, and we added the traditional camping activity of setting marshmallows on fire while eating chocolate and graham crackers. We fished too, but somehow I got stuck tearing the worms in pieces and threading them onto the hooks. I don't know why, but nobody else wanted to do it. I was content to discover that fishing was just as boring as I remember it being, and went to stand in the shade. We saw a man bring in a 25-inch largemouth bass that made quite a stir with everyone on shore and on the fishing pier. I think my son's fishing attention span would have been a good 15 minutes shorter if it hadn't been for that bass.
It wasn't the first time either of us took kids camping, but it was the first time we've camped with kids together. Yay, firsts! The kids didn't even object to indulging my historical marker hobby on the way home! I'm so lucky. First, we found a boring story of land acquisition and the founding of various churches. Things picked up from there with the site of the discovery of prehistoric stone carvings. I hear a couple of them are in Texas Memorial Museum on the campus of my beloved University. My son and I made a few trips there when he was little, and I walk by it regularly on my lunch hour strolls. I'm going to stop in and see if they're on display!
Then we got the story of the Battle Creek Burial Ground, where 25 Texan surveyors got the worst of it in an encounter with 300 Kickapoo on a buffalo hunt. I find this one interesting because, although it does use the word "ambush," it admits the Texans were warned to leave and didn't listen. It does not say the Texans were "slaughtered," "murdered," or "butchered." And it doesn't say that retribution was swift and terrible, though I suppose the omission doesn't mean it didn't happen. What also intrigued me about this one: who is the person putting fresh flags and flowers at the grave marker of people killed in 1838? Is that somebody's job? Fascinating. It was a nice touch.
Then it got a little boring again, with the settlement of some guy who was friends with the president of the Republic of Texas.
I love these things. Each one is like opening a Scrumdillyumptious bar in hopes that it has a golden ticket. Mostly they're just plain old chocolate, but now and then you get a good one. I don't know why, but I like best the ones where the native tribes get one over on the white man.
#10356: "In 1894, the Rev. Monroe F. Jackson came to Malakoff and founded this congregation. He named it Good Hope Baptist Church. The same year, church trustees Sam Robinson, Monroe Porter, and Governor Wilson acquired land at this site for a church building. Over the years, the members of the Good Hope fellowship have sponsored the founding of several other churches in western Henderson County, including Antioch and Macedonia. The current name was chosen after Good Hope merged with Mt. Olive Baptist Church in 1939."
#10366: "A sandstone image of a human head-- carved by prehistoric men-- was found near here in 1929 by workmen of Texas Clay Products Company. It was dug from gravel pit now under Cedar Creek Lake. The carving weighed 98 pounds, was 16 by 14 inches, with eyes 2.5 inches wide. First stone was found at depth of 16.5 feet. Two similar images were unearthed in same area in 1935 and 1939. Archaeologists date Malakoff "Men" as many thousands of years old. Found near the images were fossil remains of extinct horse, elephant, camel species. Images now in Texas Memorial Museum."
#10379: "Three main tributaries-- the West, Elm, and East forks-- feed the Trinity from headwaters in North Texas. Discovery of prehistoric Malakoff Man carved stone heads near this site in the 20th century revealed that humans inhabited the Trinity valley thousands of years ago. Indian villages dotted the river banks when European exploration began. French explorer robert Cavelier Sieur de La Salle called this waterway the River of Canoes in 1687. Spaniard Alonso de Leon is credited with first using the name "Trinity" in 1690. The fertile Trinity floodplain drew Anglo-American settlers to this area during the Republic of Texas. Buffalo, first Henderson County Seat, was founded a few miles upstream at a ferry crossing. Navigation of the Trinity has been proposed in a number of ambitious plans since the 1850s. Steamboats plied the river carrying cotton, cattle, and lumber to Galveston and other Gulf of Mexico ports until the 1870s. Arrival of the railroad ended the era of riverboat trade. Founded in 1881 on the St. Louis Southwestern Railroad, also known as the Cotton Belt, the town of Trinidad had a pump station to draw water for the boilers of steam locomotives. A ferry crossed the Trinity here until a bridge was erected in 1900."
#8271: "A surveying party of 25 Texans ran into about 300 Kickapoo Indians on a buffalo hunt; failing to heed warning to leave, the Texans were ambushed on October 8, 1838. Only seven survived, and four of these were wounded. After the escape, they came back to bury their comrades in a common grave."
#936: "Col. Leonard Williams (1798-1854) Heroic frontiersman and soldier. Was made Colonel by his friend, President Sam Houston. After being a Comanche captive, was a diplomat and Indian agent. Settled near here, 1845. Built area's first tank, using scraper of cowhide. Wife was Nancy Isaacs. They had six children."
