Truck Camping In The Sam Houston National Forest

Good morning! Welcome to Dude RV, and I really appreciate you stopping by and spending a little bit of your Sunday morning with me. I have journeyed south. Trudy needs to have, she's got an appointment. Got a little work to be done. For those of you who are curious, we have, I think it's called the Forever Warranty with Demondtron RV in the Houston area. So anytime, I've got a running list of stuff. And because of the COVID situation, materials are not all, or parts are not always readily available. And so the last time I was down here in, I think it was September, October, we've ordered parts. And now those parts are available, and I've added to our list. So Trudy's going to be serviced, and that means Lightning's going to, I'm going to be doing some F-150 RV camping, truck camping in the Sam Houston National Forest again. And right now, I'm, I don't even know this campground existed. I missed my turn for Cagle Recreation and had to find a place to turn around, and I saw a sign for Kelly's Pond Campground. This is in the National Forest. It's not, you know, what you would consider a developed campground, but there's some picnic tables back up here. There's a vault toilet, a multi-use trail so you can bring your motorized bike out here and get on that trail, or there's a hiking trail. Apparently there's lots of hiking trails in the Sam Houston National Forest. And then there's Kelly's Pond. Do a little fishing in Kelly's Pond. You do need a fishing license for that. The best of my knowledge, you don't need reservations to camp at Kelly's Pond Campground. Well, tonight I'll be at the Cagle Recreation, sleeping in the oh-so-comfortable bed of Trudy Thunder, and then tomorrow night I'll be in the tent. Let's go see if we can find some more stuff in the Sam Houston National Forest. I didn't, I didn't really come equipped for this little bit of an adventure that I'm on. I was out scouting out my campsite for tomorrow in the Stubblefield Lake Recreation Area, Stubblefield Lake Campground, and I was looking on Google, and I saw I'm looking for a route back to Cagle, and I did not want to go all the way back into New Waverly, so I decided I'd take the forest road. I'm deep in the heart of the forest. Let me show you. So those loggers are not actually clear-cutting. From what it looks to me like, they're selectively removing some of the loblolly pine, and doing it as non-invasive as possible, I guess. I don't know. I don't know much about logging in the National Forest. Anyway, we'll keep driving. I had no idea about the Sam Houston National Forest. I didn't know we had this kind of public land. Check out this little pond. I guess it's a pond. Swamp. I don't know what you'd call it. Mosquito heaven. So I'm learning as I go. We are in the east trail system of the Sam Houston multi-use trails. You've got several different types of trails that crisscross the National Forest. Currently I'm set up down here at Cagle, and right now I'm here, and I came in from up this on this road here, and what I'm finding is these multi-use trail heads are actually, it's okay to camp here. You can camp for free at the multi-use trail head, and there are several different trails that meet up, that meet here in at this multi-use trail head. It costs you five dollars to be on the trails, but there's no fee for if you want to camp here at the trail head. Now it's 100 percent primitive camping, but if you have a van, you could camp here in a van, or a Class C, or a motor home. The road in has been very, it's RV friendly. I would have no problems bringing Trudy down here so far. I wouldn't want to go fast, but it's good. Let's go find some more stuff in the National Forest. Since we're camping in the Sam Houston National Forest, I think it's only appropriate that we pay a visit to the Sam Houston statue, see what we can learn, learn a little bit more about the man himself. So let's, let's go check it out. The artist, David Adleckes, Adleckes. This is the head of himself. So Big Sam is 77 feet tall. The world's tallest statue of an American hero. That's a big man right there. How far back do we have to go to get a good shot? Let's see if I can get him in the palm of my hand. He's standing on my hand. We'll put him on the back of the hand. All right, let's go see some more stuff. Since we're camping in the Sam Houston National Forest, and this, this video is about camping in the Sam Houston National Forest, I thought it only appropriate if we stopped by and visit, meet Smokey the Bear, because Smokey and you can prevent forest fires. That is a sculpture by Larry Gardner, 2011, 2011. And then there's another one over here honoring the firefighters, smokejumpers. That's, that's pretty cool. So he's honoring the Native Americans. 300 hand-cut feathers on each wing. That's pretty impressive. Let's do a walk around on that. Ah, I see. When, so when you look at it from this side, it's, it is a Native American. And when you look at it from this side, it's a modern fire, forest firefighter. Now that's pretty cool. That's pretty cool indeed. If you have a horse or, or horses, and you like to go horse camping, equestrian camping, they actually have the, in the Sam Houston National Forest, there's an equestrian parking area. And last time I was down this way, I think it was in November, there were a lot of deer hunters camped in this little area. And they actually have accommodations for cleaning field dressing deer. That's what that hangar is right there. As far as I can find out, the ranger station visitor center was not open. And I don't see that it, it cost anything to camp here. That's $5 if you're going out on the trail, but I don't see anything about camping overnight. There is a QR code that we could scan and buy our pass. We shall go and see some more. Let's go see some more stuff. Well, here we are at the Stubblefield Lake Recreation Area. We're in site number 24. This is a primitive campsite, campground, like Stubblefield Recreation Area. I, um, I like it. It's, it's, you know, you've got some, a place to park and I could actually, I'm pretty sure I could fit Trudy in there. Campground, it might be a little tough turning around and we'll see that. You'll see that in the scooter tour. There will be a scooter tour. So we have the ubiquitous lantern hook, so we'll be able to camp in total style and comfort. A picnic table, a fire ring with a charcoal grate and a tent pad. It looks like we have a pretty healthy ant population. So before I, before I pitch a tent, I'm going to put down some triazoside and see about getting rid of them. I don't want to sleep with them. Let me get, get things going here and we'll check back in shortly. This visit to the Sam Houston National Forest has, is, this video is being sponsored by Ampcore and Booz RV. Oh yeah, there's one more. We don't want to forget. Amp Road and, and Set Power. So we have Amp Road here. That's for my CPAP tonight and then Set Power. That's supper and beverages. Most of the products that I use have been purchased through Amazon. I am an Amazon influencer and I have an Amazon page where all the products that I have, that I use and endorse can be found on that page. There are actually categories, lists, as Amazon refers to them. There are product lists and one of those is truck camping. That's where you'll find the tent and the battery bank and everything else I'm using on the click chairs. All of that stuff can be found on the Amazon page. I'll put a link in the card up there and there's always a link in the description. Every video it's in the description down there. It'll take you to the Amazon page. If you make a purchase, I make a little bit of money and that really helps pay for fuel and supports these trips. We're out in the woods now. Actually the main entrance is right over there. Not much back here. Stay tuned, more to come. Stubblefield Lake was constructed by the Civilian Conservation Corps way back in the New Deal era, 1930s. The end of the Great Depression. Actually at the height of the Great Depression. It's a forest service campground. It will cost you $15 to camp here and for that $15 you get lots of beautiful pine trees. There's a dumpster. There's a place to fish. There's tons of hiking trails and most important, most important is the hot showers. There are two restroom facilities. You get a flushing toilet and a hot shower. If you need to charge your phone, there is a 110 socket in the restroom. All right, let's go see some more stuff. Stubblefield Lake Campground is actually on the Lone Star Hiking Trail. You've got signposts telling you how far it is to each destination. So if you're going to hike the Lone Star Trail, you might need a place to spend the night. This would be a good place to do it. Let's go find some more stuff. If you have a group of people that want to join you on your Sam Houston National Forest adventure, there's actually a pretty spacious group campground here at Stubblefield Lake. There's water, several places to put tents, and there is a covered pavilion. It's all right here by Lakeside. Stubblefield Campground is first come, first serve. What that means is there's no way to make reservations anywhere. There's not any way to make reservations. You show up and if there's a campsite available that you like, you occupy it in some form, and then you come over here and you fill out a deposit envelope with your money. Now if you don't have a National Parks pass of any kind, it costs you $15. If you have a pass, it costs you $7.50. I didn't bring any ones. All I had were fives, and so they got a little extra money from me. What a rip-off! I'm happy to pay it. We've got to support the National Forest. One thing you want to keep in mind, there's lots of snakes out here. Snakes of all variety. I have Verizon self-service, and I've got two bars of 4G. I can make phone calls and check my email. I won't be surfing YouTube tonight, but that's all right. I'm here for the experience for you. All right, let's go find some more stuff. And that, I believe, is Stubblefield Lake. One of somebody, the last time I was camping, or posted the video from camping in the Sam Houston National Forest, suggested that I come over to Stubblefield because they had just rebuilt this bridge. There's actually handicapped parking on both ends of the bridge, and fishing on both sides of the bridge. So we'll cruise down here and see if anybody's doing any good catching any fish. They must not be biting. Oh, you did? How y'all doing? Wonderful, thank you for asking. There's a boating lane, and there's no fishing. You're good. Y'all doing any good catching fish? A couple. Couple? Some people are catching some fish. Others, not so much. All right, let's go see some more stuff. If $15 is too much for you, or $7 to camp is just really not working for your budget, just on the other side of Stubblefield Lake, on the other side of Stubblefield Lake from the campground, is what I presume is a hunting camp. It looks like it's kind of the LTVA, the long-term visitors area. Some of them look very long-term. All right, let's go see a boat ramp. For my boat ramp fans, you'll be happy to know that Lake Stubblefield actually has a boat ramp. I don't think you're going to put a great big monster boat in there, but apparently some people are putting some smaller boats in there. There's another sign about the red cockaded woodpecker. Cockaded, cockaded? The red cockaded, cockaded woodpecker. I don't see any. I don't see any. They're hiding from it. I saw a little red coming, and that ran them off. I just had a conversation with the campground host here at Stubblefield Lake Recreation Area. Very interesting conversation. They don't close the gate, they being the forest service or whatever government entity operates this campground. They don't lock the gate. They're not concerned about it, and from what he's been told, they really don't care about the campers in the national forest. They view the national, the acreage in the national forest is perceived as a revenue stream from logging. They don't care about the recreation aspect of it. That's just, it is, it's just here. Therefore, they don't put forth much effort or resources to keep things up. So there's a lot of drive-through traffic, especially on the weekends at night. Occasionally you'll see law enforcement, he said he's complained enough that law enforcement is showing up more and deterring, curbing that non-camper visitation. He said he really thinks it's mostly just teenagers looking for a place to hook up. I don't know. Anyway, I'm gonna cook some supper. Sun's gonna be going camping video up at Texoma, you saw me cooking up breakfast on the portable griddle that I have created. Multifunction grill and griddle. I didn't create it, I just put the two parts together. Anyway, I'm gonna cook up some breakfast and then pack a wet tent. Stay tuned, I'll give you a recap as soon as I eat breakfast. The one big drawback to tent camping, rain. Actually, rain when you're leaving. So just got breakfast cooked and it started clouding up and it come a gully washer. It's a good thing I had moved my stuff off the table. So I packed up a wet tent. I have to dry that out tomorrow or when I get back to some place that's dry. Let's talk about Stubblefield Lake Recreation Area. I really like this place. I'm gonna get in the truck so we don't get wet. Lighting's worse in here, but that's fine. So with the exception of planes flying over last night, it was quiet. There were not any, there was not any car noise. The campers that are here in the campground were, everybody was quiet. With the exception of a possum or a skunk sniffing around beside the tent last night was uneventful. And I'm happy to report with the Ampro battery pack, so I did a test. I didn't let you know that I was doing this test, but I did a test with that battery pack. So I brought the 110 brick. I turned off the humidifier and the heated hose. This morning I had 57% of the battery left. So I think if I'm using the DC brick without the humidifier and hose, I think I could get three days out of that Ampro battery pack. That's really good. I'm excited about that, but that'll be on the Amazon Influencer page. Sheffield Lake Recreation Area, if you enjoy tent camping or primitive camping, I think this is a great place. The bathrooms are clean. The park host was a very, very nice guy. Not a lot of traffic. Now, granted, remember that this is the middle of the week. So today's Wednesday that I was told by other campers as well as the park host that on the weekend, this place is always full. And it's first come, first served. So keep that in mind. And with all that being said, I think we're done here. Hey, I really appreciate you sticking with me up until this point. If you enjoyed this, found it informative in any way, please give me a thumbs up and blast me out across your social media. If you've not already, I'd be honored if you'd consider clicking on the subscribe button. And for those of you who have been following along, it's your fault I'm camping in the rain. Thank you for following along. I'm not upset about the rain at all. We need it so bad here. And for my patrons, thank you. You rock. All right. I'm gonna go find some place to dry out my clothes and my tent. Y'all come back now, you hear?