Purtis Creek State Park

Purtis Creek State Park
March 2012

 This is a small State Park with about 60 camping spots.   The spots are in good shape and most of them had shade.   The park sits on a small fishing lake.   They do allow boats but keep a maximum of 50 boats on the lake at any one time.   The park was busy and most of the spots were occupied.   If you don't hit the lake early, you could be waiting for a while for boats to come off the lake once the 50 boat max capacity is met.

The had a small park store and rented canoes and kayaks.   Hardly anyone was in their campsite.   They were out, swimming, paddling, fishing boating, bird watching or hiking.

We enjoyed this park and would recommend it for a short stay.  

We give it a 8 out 10.

Pros
Nice shaded camping spots
Lots to do (boating, fishing, hiking, paddling)

Cons
Busy Park
50 boat limit
Small lake
Hard to find - our GPS kept giving us wrong directions

Tyler State Park

Tyler State Park
Tyler, Texas

We fell in love with this park.   It is a big popular park with over 145 camping spots and 30 cabins.  The park sits on a beautiful 64 acre spring-fed lake.   The park has 100' pine trees and has lots of shade.   The park has a nice park store and a boat house that rents paddle boats, canoes, kayaks and jon boats.   The swimming area is awesome and has a swim pad about 50 yards out.   My kids loved swimming out to the pad and driving off of it.  We rented kayaks and paddleboats and have a good time exploring the lake.

The park has several very nice hiking trails and we did a nice 3 mile hike.   We also did the loop around the park on bicycles.   This was tough for the young ones.  It had several very steep hills.   My kids enjoyed the first part of the loop but hard a hard time with the inclines.

We stayed in spot #10 on the Cedar Point camping loop.   We thought the Lakeview Area #2 was awesome and next time would like to try and stay in this area.   Our site was large with a good size level pad that was in great shape.   The showers were new and in great shape.

We give this park a 10 our of 10.

PROS
Beautiful Park and Lake
Nice park store
Excellent Swimming area
Paddle boats, canoes and kayaks

CONS
None

 

 

 

 

 

Martin Creek Lake State Park

Martin Creek Lake State Park
Tatum, Texas
March 2012

This was pretty neat park, just outside of Longview Texas.   It sits on a 5000 acre lake that supplies water for a power plant.   The fishing is excellent.   We saw several large catfish being cleaned.

The park has 80 RV sites and 20 cabins.   The RV sites are shaded, nice size and in decent shape.  Some of the pads were worn and broken.   Several of the sites has covered picnic tables.

The park has a island that is connected by a foot bridge and the island is only used for primitive camping.

We give this park a 7 out of 10.

Pros
Nice size lake
Great fishing
lots of spots
lots of shade
some spots had covered picnic tables
Cool primitive camping area

Cons
You could hear the power plant that was across the lake.

 

 

 

Caddo Lake State Park

Caddo Lake State Park
Karnack, Texas
March 2012

This is pretty neat park located on Caddo Lake.   Caddo lake is the largest natural lake in Texas.   The park has 10 cabins and 65 RV spots.   Eight of the sites are pull thrus   The sites are in good shape.  Nice level pads with lots of space and shade.   We stayed in the Squirrel Haven Loop which was a short walk / bike ride to the Saw Mill Pond.  

We rented canoes and kayaks and played around in the pond area.   No swimming is allowed because of the alligators.   We also booked a pontoon boat ride tour out to the Big Cypress Bayou.   We were a little disappointed the tour stopped short of going out to the main part of the lake.   Next time we would of toured the lake with another guide outside of the park.   We've heard that there are steamboats that still tour the main lake.

We did enjoy all of the history behind this park and area.

We give this park a 8.5 out of 10.

PROS
Good sites
Canoe & Kayak rentals
Bayou Tours
Cool History

CONS
Tour didn't do main part of the lake.