This time we brought my son and his fiance. They’ve never done a camping or caching trip with us so it was fun to bring them along! After driving around Livingston with the trailer in tow we ended up choosing to set up camp at Stuart Lake nearby instead of inside the grounds of Livingston.

The guys decided to have a friendly competition to see who could start the fire first with what they had on them…guess it depends on what you pack. LOL!

Jared got it going first, but I think he kinda cheated… ;D

Along the way during our exploring of Livingston we found a crabapple tree! I took a few fruit to see if I could seed them. ( 6 months later, a few sprouted but I lost them )

Sometimes you find cool little places along the way like this.

The main excitement was finding the old “Ice house” that we had been told about by one of my blog readers! (Thanks!) It was such a cool place to explore and take shots of.

Lots of cool graffiti out there…

Also took a peek into what I presume they call the tunnels. Went quite a ways back and was luckily dry that day so was easy to explore. (We’ve gone back since and not good when wet after so much rain)

We found a cool looking ‘fruit’ (not edible!) and found out it’s called and Osage Orange or Hedge Apple. The tree was prized in Native American days for use for bow making. The wood is extremely hard and strong.


Outside entrance

We also found the entrance to an underground area where bats live that is also the home of a cool geocache. Here is a little toy soldier hinting/pointing the way.

And we also found lots of other foundation work and left over history from this area.

We also made a stop at Camp Claiborne on the way home to see if we could find a geocache that had eluded us for a while near the Officers Club and rec pool.

Finally found that sucker!! Yay!

It had a cool travel bug in it so we took it and sent it to a new home later at Sam Houston park.

We also stopped to grab a geocache along the way home in McNarry, La and had to walk across this old pine tree to get there.

All in all a fantastic time. Definitely a place we will go back to time and again to explore.

All of the shots from that trip can be seen here :