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Beth and I planned a Christmas trip to New Orleans for December 2004. We had to get across Texas so we took the opportunity to visite a few easy county highpoints while on the drive. Her brother lives in Houston so we got a handful in that region. The weather was pretty rotten so we were forced away from other easy county highpoints, mainly due to the potential for mud and lost time. After a week in Louisiana, we re-entered Texas up near Texarkana and bagged Cass County, then drove the long distance back home.
Our trip started with a long drive from Phoenix to Van Horn, Texas, where we stayed in a $20 hotel room - and worth every penny, I'd say. Then two interesting days and nights in San Antonio, and another pair in Austin. We visited all the touristy places: River Walk and the Alamo in San Antonio, and Armadillo's in Austin, where one of the workers showed us the 6-fingered guy in one of the many photos on their wall (so when you go, look for this one guy out of hundreds). As for highpoints: no luck. I ran up the Travis County apex but decided not to count it as I didn't give the top area enough inspection to satisfy myself, while a short side trip to the Yegua Knobs in Lee County met with no success and a barking dog. So here we are today, December 21, 2004.
Beth and I were on our way from Austin to the Houston area where we planned to visit her brother and his family that evening. Along the way we explored a few highpoint possibilities, eventually working our way just south of Interstate-10 and to the small town of Eagle Lake. The Wharton County highpoint was in our sights, an easy, flat highpoint with good road access, based on the map. From Eagle Lake we went east on Alt-US-90 about 5 miles to the Wharton County sign, then hard right onto a good dirt road for another 2.5 miles southwesterly to a T-junction. According to the map we were at the highpoint, where a single 165-foot contour enters the county and lists a 166-foot elevation at the junction itself. Visually, it looked totally flat. We spent a few seconds walking the area, and stepped on some berms along the road, then got moving. Nothing much to see here, but I snapped a photo anyway.
Not long after completing the easy Wharton County highpoint just up the road, we traveled south into Brazoria County, a low-lying county bordering the Gulf of Mexico. Typical of these counties was its low elevation - most places being just a few feet above sea level. However, the highpoint of the county is an interesting geological formation called a salt dome, which forms a little hill with a listed elevation of 146 feet above sea level. It may not sound like much but in these parts that pretty much makes it 145 feet above everything else! From afar the hill rises above the countryside with gentle slopes. It's not very dramatic but it is obvious. The small community of Damon along highway TX-36 sits astride the hill, which is known as Damon Mound. We encountered a bit of drizzle as we entered Damon, and using Bill Jacobs' report from the county highpointers site, we left the highway, found Southwell Street, then worked our way to the town cemetary, which is where Bill started his hike. However, the light rain and the general scrub of the land combined to make this a potentially muddy, prickly jaunt, so I decided to backtract to Southwell Street and drive up the dirt-road driveway that Bill mentioned but did not follow. Shortly it ended at a somewhat run-down trailer with some vehicles out front, and two very playful dogs: a pretty german shephard and a smaller puppy - make and model not obvious to me. Beth stayed in the truck while I went and asked for permission to cross their property.
I'm always a bit nervous going up to strange homes and asking for their blessings, although in the past I have usually had good luck and avoid the obvious scary places. This place kind of straddled my comfort margins. Definitely run down a bit but seemed like an okay place. Anywho, I knocked on the door, then stepped back onto the grass and waited for an answer. I could hear some general noise in the house - talking, some walking - but no one came to the door. Meanwhile the dogs ran and jumped and generally had a merry time while I waited for an answer. Not sure what to do I knocked again but almost immediately started to slowly return to my truck when a young woman answered the door. I apologized if I disturbed her and asked her my request. She kept a poker face and said she'd have to see if it was okay. So I waited some more, played with the dogs, and looked back to the truck where Beth sat. Then the girl came to the door again and asked again what it was we wanted to do. I explained, then she gave me the thumbs up and had her dad come out to talk to me. I waited some more. After a few moments - almost 5 minutes since I first knocked on their door and in which time we could have walked out and back to the highpoint 3 times - her dad came to the door. Poor fellow was in a wheelchair and I felt just terrible disturbing them but he turned out to be super friendly and more than happy to let us go explore. He was well aware he owned the highpoint lands and seemed pretty proud of that fact. So, with his okay, I motioned to Beth and told her we got the okay. Beth had been watching this from the truck and seemed to be amused by it all.
The walk to the highpoint took all of a minute. It's juts a few dozen feet - maybe 80 in all - behind their home, where the land tops out. They've dug in some stock ponds and other things over the years, so we explored the area and stepped on some berms before returning to the truck and our drive out. For a 2 minute hike to the highpoint, it felt good to get the landowner's okay and his friendliness was the best part. From here we drove on into the Houston area, making our way to Baytown, where her brother actually lives, amid periodically heavy rain.
We had an anjoyable visit with Beth's brother and his family and many pets. Afterwards we retired to our hotel in Baytown. During the evening the rain picked up and by this morning we awoke to a fairly wet everything, including a big puddle that had formed around my truck. Our plan today was to make our way to Lafayette, Louisiana, and visit a few highpoints along the way. I actually had a lot of maps with me but the rain pretty much nixed anything that would require dirt-road driving and/or brushy, thickety hiking. Hardin County seemed to be doable despite the rain, and we decided to go check it out. We needed to get onto highway US-190 and this was very nearby so it wasn't too much of a burden to visit this highpoint. From Baytown we went north through the towns of Dayton and Liberty and followed TX-146 to its junction with FM-787 near the town of Marvels. East on FM-787 a couple miles brought us to a simple junction with a big sign mentioning the Big Thicket retreat in the 'town' (?) of Fuqua. We had Bill Jacobs' report from the county highpointers website, and his street directions were perfect.
The highpoint is along the Hardin-Liberty county boundary, which runs diagonally through this townsite; we'd be approaching the highpoint from inside Liberty County. Fuqua, so much as we can tell, is a collection of dirt bull-dozed roads laid out in a grid, and the trees cleared for homes. There is no master development; presumably you buy a plot of land and develop it as you see fit. I'm not a proponent of home-owner associations, but in this case they could use one here. The development, such as it is, is a motley collection of blank sites, trailers, lean-tos, simple pre-fab homes, and a handful of nicer well-constructed homes. Unfortunately, too many sites just piled high with trash. Being kind, this has to be one of the ugliest places we have ever visited, Maybe the rain and gloominess added to the mood. That aside, there was the highpoint to go git.
As for the highpoint: we followed Bill's report and found the area with no problem. Rain started to dump on us pretty good while we were there. I parked along the road and took a GPS reading to place us on the county line. From the road we then made two quick entries into the thickets, just enough to place us within the contour. Satisfied, we got moving, managing the now muddied roads with care before exiting back onto the highway. I didn't know what to call this place, whereas Beth creatively came up with Scaryville Mud City.
From here we entered into Louisiana and had a merry time. A week later we were back in Texas:
After nearly two weeks on the road, Beth and I were getting ready for the long drove back to our home in Arizona. We had spent a week in Louisiana, starting today at Lake Claiborne State Park, where we spent the night camping at their fine sites. The plan today was simply to pile on a whole bunch of miles westward, with a vague plan to be on the west side of the Dallas-Fort Worth megalopolis by day's end. I hoped to make short detours along the way to bag a few more highpoints. We looked at two in Lousiana: Bossier and Caddo Parishes, the two most northwesterly parishes in the state. We had to pass on Bossier due to the high number of hunters we came upon while driving in the area, while on Myra Mountain in Caddo Parish, Beth stayed in the truck and I made a wan attempt to hike the half-mile amid brush to the highpoint, turning back when I came upon what looked like a decrepit residence ... the kind I don't want to chance finding out about more. We did manage to have a bit of amusement visiting the Louisiana - Texas - Arkansas state tricorner before entering into Texas.
We had good luck with the Cass County highpoint, located on the county's west side in the Cusseta Mountains about 7 miles west of Douglassville. We found the local county roads easy to find but bumpy to follow. The top of the range features some communications towers so a decent dirt road goes all the way up. We drove on up, parked and went into the brush and trees a bit to seek out the highest point. We found a few candidate areas and called it good after a few minutes. The weather was kind of cool and breezy anyway. The whole journey took about 45 minutes and that was that. The rest of the day was spent getting as far west as Mineral Wells, where we stayed the night.
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(c) 2004 Scott Surgent. For entertainment purposes only. This report is not meant to replace maps, compass, gps and other common sense hiking/navigation items. Neither I nor the webhost can be held responsible for unfortunate situations that may arise based on these trip reports. Conditions (physical and legal) change over time! Some of these hikes are major mountaineering or backpacking endeavors that require skill, proper gear, proper fitness and general experience. |