Living and working in the city is nice and I do like how lively the night can be. But there are times when you just want to get away from the hustle and bustle of the city and just escape. Some of my my other off road buddies was thinking the same thing.

The original plan was to head into the trail head on Friday late Friday afternoon. Unfortunately some of my friends have kids, and with the school schedule it would bad hard to make the 8hr drive into the Ozarks.

We decided, on Friday, to all meet up at Caddo Lake State Park. This was halfway point from Houston to the Ozark National Forest. The really nice thing about camping is how relatively cheap it is to reserve a camping spot. Plus the money goes towards the park maintenance. This this state park has paved roads into the campsite and very RV friendly. Very clean and organized, but I still prefer the ones with dirt.

The people with no kids were the first to arrive. The weather called for a cold front which brought rain the whole day. When we arrived the rain had just stopped thankfully.  Started to get the campfire going because damp wood does take a lot longer to warm up.

Daylight was getting low, and I had to start prepping the food. I offered to cook on the first day, but the only issue was the meats I had in the cooler was still frozen. The current 40F temperate wasnt making it easier to defrost the meats. I placed the meats on top of Ryan’s 4 runner. The engine was still decently warm to thaw the meats out.

It got dark pretty quick, but my headlight made it easy to see what I was cooking. I’ve learned in past camping trips to cook simple, one pot type of meals. Pre cutting the food is also important. Food and cleaning is messy if you do all the chopping at home before the camp site.

I cooked up some spaghetti tacos. It’s a spaghetti with taco seasoning hahaha. Not the best combo maybe, but its all one pot and not requiring a lot of work. You got the protein, carbs and veggies. Pretty simple.

No camping is complete without a camp fire. Patiently waiting for the others to arrive…

More to come.

Special thanks to Ryan Magahis for some the pro photos!