A few weeks ago, I was inspired to make the goal of taking all 3 kids to all 95 Texas State Parks by the time Ashlyn was 17. Ten years from now. Crazy goal? Kind of. Doable? Definitely! With 10 down in the last 2 years, I would only need to bump up my average to 7-9/yr to make up the other 85! 👍🏻
Here’s where we stand right now. (In no particular order)
1. San Jacinto Battleground & Monument SP
2. Battleship Texas State Historical Site
3. Palmetto SP
4. Mother Neff SP
5. Daingerfield SP
6. Garner SP
7. Tyler SP
8. Sea Rim SP
9. Sheldon Lake SP
10. Galveston Island SP

Number 9 and 10 I gave myself due to my personal knowledge that the parks didn’t offer anything more than what we witnessed on countless visits to Galveston and Lake Houston. I know, cheater, cheater.

After today, we now have number 11, Mission Tejas SP! We took advantage of the 30 minute day trip from mom’s house and thoroughly enjoyed our 3 hrs in this Piney Woods State Park located along the historical El Camino Real.

The kids got to check out the replicated architecture of a 1690’s Spanish Mission and that of a restored 1820’s log home. We walked the actual site of El Camino Real where I geeked out pretty good.

Some fun facts about El Camino Real that, in my opinion, credits it with Texas’ very existence. As far back as the 1400s, The Caddo Indians “blazed” primitive trails for the purpose of travel between neighboring villages. One trail in particular ran north east through Texas into Louisiana. In the late 1600’s when the Spaniards set out from Mexico to settle farther east into the piney woods of Texas, they found and used this very trail. Which then led them to encounter the Caddo. The natives greeted the Spaniards with a word that sounded like “tayshas” which meant “friends”, but the Spaniards thought they were being told a location name and recorded the area as Tejas. Which we all know turns into Texas.

This particular mission in this area didn’t make it (a whopping 4 years before the Indians ran them off for bringing disease).

Many other missions held their ground along El Camino Real evolving the trail into a roadway for settlers in the 1800’s. Davy Crockett being one!

paparazzi mom made the kids “head west” like Davy Crockett did.😉 I thoroughly enjoyed standing on some of the oldest travelled land in Texas and the kids couldn’t fathom coming through the “middle of nowhere to find a place to live” like that.

-Lindsay