January Road Trip to Cameron

The first Saturday morning of January was a good day to go on a short road trip. We weren’t interested in our normal activities around town, especially with so many post-Christmas shoppers and back-to-school preppers. So we headed toward a town that my friend Cheryl took me too last year. I enjoyed it and I thought Dale might as well.

After grabbing coffee at our nearest Starbucks, we headed east toward Granger Lake. We’ve never checked out the campsites there so we thought we’d do that first. We first check out Willis Park, then Fox Park. Both are US Army Corps of Engineers parks, which meant we could use our America the Beautiful Pass to get in. Both of them are very like Cedar Breaks or Jim Hogg Parks on Lake Georgetown, with each site having power, water and a covered picnic table. The shared bathrooms were old, but functional.

For my own future reference, I’ll note our findings. Many good sites at Willis, with backwater view and some have trees, but not all. Decent sites include 1, 4, 9, 11, 15, 17 (has some shade), 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 26, a lot of these have shade.

Taylor Park was closed for hunting so we went to Fox Park to look at their RV sites and such. It’s very similar to Willis with sites that back up to the lake. There’s some good overflow parking for visitors. There are some decent sites along the tree line too, particularly sites 6, 10, 12 (nice and big), 16, 18, 20, 29, 33. There is a swimming area nearby, but we weren’t able to get in to see it.

We left Granger Lake and continued east. We went through a little town called San Gabriel, then crossed over the historic Worley Bridge. We stopped at San Andre Cemetery and looked at some of the grave markers. Directly across the street from the cemetery was a historic marker for an old Franciscan Mission.

There is something very relaxing and enjoyable about country drives. Not only is the scenery interesting, it is a good to time to chat about everything and anything. Our drive seemed to be following the San Gabriel River and the El Camino Real de los Tejas, which is a historic route used by Spain to colonize what is now Texas.

We arrived in Cameron in time for lunch, so we went to the same little restaurant that my friend Cheryl took me to, it’s called Tex Miller’s. It reminds me so much of a burger joint my grandmother used to take us to in Henderson, Texas that was called Mac’s. It was a greasy, old joint just like this one. A cheeseburger, bag of Lay’s potato chips and a bottle of Coke – the perfect meal!

The other stop I wanted to make was the old county jail, which was located just off the old town square, near the railroad tracks. Fortunately for us it were open for guided tours until 3 pm, and it was about 2:30. We received a personal tour of the historic, very well maintained, 1895 Milam County Jail.

After the tour we grabbed a Blizzard from the local DQ, and then headed back towards Georgetown. We got home just about 4:30 pm. It was a very enjoyable day!