East Texas to West Arkansas by Way of Oklahoma

New Braunfels was our last stop in the Texas Hill Country. We took off and headed north and east to Nacogdoches. There are Caddo Indian mounds just to the east of Nacogdoches that we wanted to stop and see. We stayed overnight at an RV park in Crockett, Texas, on the way, which was of course named for Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier. And we had dinner at Davy Crockett’s Bar & Grill, where I had another great Texas hamburger. I think I’ve eaten more hamburgers on this trip through Texas than in the past year all together.

Davy Crockett is, of course, a hero of the Alamo, and a big name in Texas history. (Believe me, I’ve edited a lot of history textbooks for Texas adoption, and they all have a big section on Texas history, so I do know a thing or two about it.) When Davy Crockett lost re-election to Congress from Tennessee, which may or may not have been due to some dirty tricks by then-President Andrew Jackson, he is alleged to have said, “You may all go to hell, and I am going to Texas.”

Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier
and Hero of the Alamo (Wikipedia)

The next morning, we were saddened to discover that Davy Crockett’s Bar & Grill was not open for breakfast, but we found a good substitute at the Hilltop Restaurant on the other side of town. It had an interesting view, the only remaining building of the Mary Allen College, which operated for almost 100 years, from the 1860s to the 1970s. What’s left looks like it would make a very good haunted house, but the town hopes to make it a museum.

Mary Allen College in Crockett, Texas

From Crockett, it was a short drive to the Caddo mounds, and we spent some time there walking around what was once a Caddo village, viewing the mounds, and looking at the museum and some other things of interest in the area. There was what archaeologists refer to as a high temple mound, as well as a burial mound and a low ceremonial mound. They found quite a lot of evidence of the village around the mounds as well, including pottery and arrowheads and places where thatched houses once stood.

    

A replica of the thatched houses the Caddo Indians built, and two of the mounds

The Caddo Indians and their prehistorical forebears clearly had many trade routes, and seem to have exchanged goods throughout the south and as far as Cahokia in present day St. Louis to the north, and even Mexico City to the far south. The Caddo Indian trade routes were used by the first Spanish explorers to the area, who called the intersecting trails El Camino Real—the King’s Road. We came to the mounds via Texas Route 21, which follows the old Camino Real route in the area. We found a surprising bit of history on the outskirts of the mound site; apparently Zebulon Pike and his party camped in the area in 1807, after they left Colorado and headed south. They were forcefully trotted out of Spanish Texas, which they had been scouting for the governor of the Louisiana Territory.

  

There was a trail that followed the El Camino Real nearby, and Mike set out to check it out, only to encounter a rather worrisome sign. When a niece-in-law of ours saw a photo of the sign, she remarked that they might have at least tempered the warnings with at least one positive thing you might see on the trail . . . or else no one was ever going to hike down it.

Here there be alligators—and feral hogs!

On to the town of Nacogdoches, still following the Camino Real. We do like following these old historic routes . . . so we wandered around downtown, with its bumpy brick streets, boutiques, and quaint buildings. There was a free art gallery we wandered in, and saw a display of aerial photographs of western locations by photographer Christopher Talbot that looked like abstract art. They were huge, panoramic, and very interesting. Upstairs at the gallery there was another exhibit, much smaller but very intriguing. The artwork was watercolors, gouaches, and “zines” that created memories with landscapes. Very small, but full of detail. The artist was Heather Sundquist Hall.

  
Some lovely (and haunting) little paintings we saw at a gallery in Nacogdoches

After walking around the gallery, we headed back to the van and camper, parked on a side street that wasn’t brick. On the way, we passed a memorial to the Tejans and Texians from the Nacogdoches area who fought at the Battle of San Jacinto to win independence for Texas in 1836. To my surprise, one of the people listed was named Rinaldo Hotchkiss. Truly a name to conjure with. And of course that, and a friend, jogged my memory to recall a Cincinnati connection—the  Lone Star Pavilion in Clifton’s Burnet Woods was a gift from the people of Texas to thank Cincinnatians for the gift of twin cannons that helped them win the battle and their independence.

Rinaldo Hotchkiss is the third name in the third column

From Nacogdoches, we headed north; it was raining, windy, and getting colder, so we stopped at a motel in Longview, Texas, and had dinner at the Waffle House in their parking lot. I also took advantage of the fact that there was a nail salon right next door and spent an hour of the stormy evening getting a pedicure, which I surely needed after weeks on the beach. There were 22 large screen tvs in the salon, which was insane. I could watch football or baseball or hockey or cooking shows or the weather, which was definitely a bit freaky—there were tornadoes not too far away, and hail near where we had camped in the Hill Country.

On north to the Red River, which is the Texas border with Oklahoma, or more specifically, the Choctaw Nation. Eastern Texas and Oklahoma are lush and green, not what we expected at all. We stopped in the first town of any size in Oklahoma, Idabel, and had a nice lunch in town at the Red B Diner. Still raining, and getting colder, so we stopped for the night in a rather rundown Comfort Inn outside of Idabel. The next morning we got gas and coffee at a convenience store nearby, and there was a fellow complaining bitterly about getting a speeding ticket from a tribal policeman for going one mile over the speed limit. He was saying he’d gotten a bit belligerent about it, and told the cop, “Skoden!” I was tickled to hear that Native American/Oklahoman phrase in the wild—an abbreviated way of saying “Let’s go then,” which could mean anything from we’re out of here, to you wanna make something of it?, to full-out fisticuffs.

The Red B Diner in Idabel, Oklahoma,
in the Choctaw Nation

The skies cleared by the next day, though it was still pretty chilly. Our next stop was Queen Wilhelmina State Park in the Ouachita Mountains of western Arkansas, and since the forecast was calling for more rain and even colder temperatures, we decided we were going to the park lodge.