On the Friday afternoon of June 5th, Ken McDowell, Joe Coker and John Rich met at the Ratcliff Lake campground, as a staging area for the Neches River Rendezvous the following day. (See the separate report for that event.)
This is a National Forest Service park in the Davy Crockett National Forest of east Texas,
between the towns of Crockett and Lufkin. It takes about a 2½ hour drive to reach this
spot from Houston.
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| Location Map |
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Park Entrance |
Here is how the Forest Service web site describes the park:
"The Ratcliff Lake Recreation Area, built in 1936 by the Civilian Conservation Corps, surrounds a 45-acre lake. The lake was once a log pond and source of water for the Central Coal and Coke Company Sawmill which logged the area from 1902 to 1920. The area offers recreation visitors camping, picnicking, a swimming beach and bathhouse, concession stand, an amphitheater, an interpretive forest trail, showers, boating and fishing in a beautiful forest setting featured in regional magazines."
I believe most people tend to think of State and National Parks as the most premier options for outdoor recreation. But lately I've been visiting a few of these lesser known Forest Service parks, and they are true gems. Keep them in mind and seek them out when planning your trips. They're as good as any of the other more well-known parks, and less crowded.
As you can see from the map (below), the Forest Service road surrounds the circumference of the lake, which is dotted with campsites. For some reason it's called Lee Lake in online boat launch maps. The campsites are several hundred feet apart from each other, so you're not crowded. And each site has direct lake-front access and view, as well as a picnic table, campfire ring, lantern pole, and nearby bathrooms and showers.
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| Close-up Map |
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Aerial view |
Here's the aerial view of the lake. It's not very big, and from paddling it, I envisioned it in my head as being shaped like a giant footprint from a three-toed dinosaur. But from this aerial view, it looks more like bunny ears. Although the aerial photo doesn't quite match my ground-level image, I'm going to stick with the dinosaur toes description anyway, just because I like it.
At the south end of the lake, the straight line you see is an earthen dam, which seems to have been built at the confluence of three water drainages, to form the lake.
Hence, the three toes of the dinosaur. At the west end of the dam is a concrete spillway, to maintain the water level.
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Headless canoeist |
The headless canoeist of Sleepy Hollow carries his boat through the trees down to the waterline.
After setting up camp, we still had hours of daylight remaining, so we decided to get our boats and go explore the lake. It was only a few feet from the campsite parking to the edge of the water. The lake is only 45 acres in size, and can be explored in about two hours, which is what we did. It was fun to follow the shoreline, poking into nooks and crannies, and watching birds and fish.
The bottom of the lake was filled with that fuzzy plant that you often see in home aquariums, which Joe identifies as elodea. Some states consider it an undesirable weed, but it also provides many healthy benefits to a lake.
Once on the water from our campsite, this was the view looking down one dinosaur toe towards the dam (2nd photo below).
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| Campside boat launch |
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Lake view |
Ken McDowell made the maiden voyage of his brand spanking new honey-yellow kevlar canoe. That's always a great feeling. Well, at least I think it would be - I've never had a brand new one. In this very cool and unusual photo, you see the sun shining through his canoe, making it look opaque and revealing the foam reinforcing ribs and other thicker layers. His boat is 16' 6" long, and weighed only 34 lbs. Wow. Color me honey-yellow with envy. There was no prohibition in the Commandments about coveting thy neighbor's boat, was there?
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| Joe Coker |
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Ken McDowell |
There is a public swimming area, roped off from the remainder of the lake, along with boat rentals, and a concession stand. All in a bucolic setting with a log cabin in the woods. I've run across the work of the depression-era Civilian Conservation Corps in many of the parks I've visited, and their handiwork never ceases to amaze me.
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| Dinner |
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After exploring the lake and putting the boats back on top our vehicles, we settled in for the evening. Everyone brought a snack to share with others, so we had shrimp cocktail, roasted peanuts in the shell, and a whole pineapple. What luxury! For dinner each of us brought a potato which was baked on the campfire, and steaks grilled on Ken's small grill. Heck, I don't eat this good at home, with all my modern conveniences.
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Setting sun |
The sun settles toward the horizon through the tall trees. You can see two more tents off in the distance, showing how far apart the campsites are. There is no overcrowding here.
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| Cutting firewood |
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Ken cuts firewood to keep the comfy campfire going. The only dead wood we found was identified by Ken as ironwood, and I decided that it was aptly named, because when you try to saw through it, it's as hard as iron.
I don't know what all those specks are in the photo - could my camera lens actually be that dirty? (gasp!) Upon reflection, I'm wondering if maybe it's just the camera flash reflecting off of specks of sawdust floating in the air from Ken's furious sawing. Hmmm.
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Campfire |
We stored up enough firewood to keep a small fire going while we sat and chatted into the evening, with the sound of a chorus of frogs in the background, who were also chatting with each other. Unfortunately, we also had a chorus of country music from one group of campers hundreds of yards away - they were the type of folks that like to use parks for noisy weekend parties, rather than quiet communion with nature. I much prefer the frogs.
I understand why they put a large, deep fire ring here, to contain ashes and embers. But that deep ring also spoils the pleasure of sitting nearby and watching the red hot coals. As it was, sitting off to the side away from the heat, we could see only the flickering tips of flames above the top edge of the ring.
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| Morning fog |
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Eventually we drifted off to our tents to sleep, as we would be getting up early to break camp and head for the Neches River Rendezvous, 12 miles away. I took the time to wander down to the water and take a photo of the wispy morning "steam" rising off the water, as a singing frog bid me goodbye, and jumped in the water leaving only ripples behind.
Ratcliff Lake - a great place to spend some time in the woods and get away from the big city!