Bouton Lake Camping...

 We headed out last weekend for a couple of nights camping at the old Bouton Lake Campground in the Angelina National Forest. It's a free area with no hook ups so we took our generator and depending on where you look they list 9 or 11 undeveloped campsites. It would be a pretty busy place with this many camps but there was only one other tent camper and we were at opposite ends from each other so very nice, private and quiet.     

 

Cathy warned me no photos on this trickle of a slough crossing but I think I made her log walking look pretty graceful. We were on a walk to the Neches River. The old trail, which I have walked back in the 90s with the St. Patrick's Scout Troop used to have 19 bridges on it's route to Boykin Springs and then on to the Old Aldridge Ghost Town but this section is no longer maintained all the way to Boykin and best I could tell just makes a loop back to the lake.      

Looking up the Neches River I thought about the history of the area. One document recorded the "patent" of the Bouton oxbow lake in 1854 as a place where the developers of the land's resources had big cook outs and fishing trips. There is much recorded about Old Fort Teran, the timber and sawmills, the river boat traffic and the quarry of stone for Sabine Pass Jetties, seawalls and the Rayburn Dam but little mention is made of any Native American occupation of the woods where there is springs, lakes and probably plenty of catfish. bear and deer.  Bound to have been Indigenous people out the wazoo who enjoyed easy living.     

An old aerial photo I found online from the 1930s shows great swaths of clearcut land. The forest is nice and clear with easy hiking and some nice big trees. Reportedly along the trail near some old Temple Inland land there are cypress trees 1000 years old. 

There are catfish in Bouton lake and while there is a slough where with about a 6' rise the river and lake would probably communicate Texas Parks and Wildlife does add hatchery fish every few years.   

On the way in and out of this campground you pass the Blue Hole which I remember first visiting in the mid 1970s as a woods hippie hangout. Seems I remember the last time I was there, I do not recall the date, there was lots of trash floating in the water. It's now got a fancy gate and many improvements and photos show it to be much nicer than in the past but out of my price range these days. 

This makes about 12 camping trips this year divided between the old Rpod (the buyer of which has remodeled with nice improvements) and our new Wolfpup which we bought in July. The solar power and the generator has encouraged us to make more dispersed camping trips than before and with the cool nights we enjoyed the heater which was very propane and generator efficient. 

One difference in the two campers is that the old one hauled 33 gallons of water and new one holds 26. Being dirty stinking hippies we never felt like we were using much water but with the smaller tank we have ran out a couple of times. Turns out for some reason the Wolfpup line comes without a water tank vent hose hooked up which reduces the capacity to 22 gallons. It's an easy mod, length of 1/2" hose and two clamps to attach the tank to the vent that I may do before beach camping season rolls around again.