Lake Somerville, TX - Mar 2006

Lake Somerville is an Army COE reservoir located about half-way between Austin and Houston. There are at least 6 campgrounds located around the lake and we chose to stay at Rocky Creek. We picked Lake Somerville for several reasons.....the primary being that it was in the right direction for where we were heading at the end of March (Palestine, TX.) Next was the fact that it's in the heart of nearly the best wildflower scenery in central Texas and finally, it was one of very few campgrounds that had plenty of "first come first served" (FCFS) sites giving us the chance to secure a spot during spring break without a reservation.

About two weeks earlier, I'd checked availability at several campgrounds and was dismayed to find that almost every one of them was booked solid for spring break week. So, that left us with the alternatives of going to a private RV park or taking our chances on a FCFS site. We chose the latter and, even though we arrived a week prior to spring break, the campground only had 3 sites remaining in the FSFC pool and the gate attendant told us to hurry up and pick one since several other RVers were roaming around the park looking for a site as well.

We ended up in the group area -- a large circle with only eight sites all total. I'm sure the park opened it up to FCFS camping because the rest of the park was booked. It turned out to be a very nice, quiet area because it was far away from the hustle and bustle of the main camping areas. We had a lovely view of the lake, huge expanses of grass for the dogs to run and play, delightful neighbors, a short walk down to the shoreline and a brand new restroom. The only downside was that there were no trees for shade -- not necessarily a bad thing for this time of year, but it would be a killer in the summertime. Despite being early in March, we had very warm temps -- in the mid 80s on several days -- and very high humidity. We ran around in shorts every day and even had the a/c on a couple of times.

The park has a well maintained hiking trail and we took long walks every day and enjoyed seeing the springtime blooms. There were lots of heavily perfumed Mexican Plums along the trail and we'd smell their aroma long before seeing their delicate, white blossoms. The Redbud trees were showing off their pink flowers in full glory and the Bluebonnets were just starting to emerge. Considering that Texas has been in a severe drought for the past year, the flowers were doing their best to put on a good show.

One day we took a drive around the lake and enjoyed the Texas countryside. Typically, there are only a handful of weeks in spring where the grass is that stunning shade of bright spring green and we wanted to enjoy it as much as possible. Our drive took us around Brenham (the home of the Blue Bell ice cream factory), Indepence (the birthplace of the Texas Republic) and the tiny town of Somerville. The area consists of small, rolling hills that are dotted with cattle ranches, horse farms and an occasional goat farm. The large ranch houses sit back far from the road and all have impressive entry gates. Most of them have names. The trees are mostly live oaks, cedar and the occasional pecan. There are lots of impressive old oaks that have limbs so big and heavy that they've bent down and are resting on the ground and, being so close to the humidity of the gulf, many are draped in Spanish Moss.

We passed one ranch that had longhorn cattle and saw this "cute" bull guarding his fenceline. He could have been UT's mascot BEVO with his burnt orange freckles. He was very shy though, and as I tried to get closer he would turn his back to me and walk away. I finally mooed at him and he turned around and looked up probably to see what made that awful noise and I got a picture of him.