I’m not saying that I reached a state of true panic, but I was relieved when, just around the next bend, my wife stopped dead in her tracks and pointed down the trail.
“Of course. The deer knew the way,” she said, as if that explained everything.
When you walk the Thicket, you should put up for the night there. It’s another excuse to get lost. The drive to the nearby resort, the Chain-O-Lakes, is less than as the crow flies—understandable, given that the directions we had were: “It’s just off Farm Road 787, down a piece from Romayor, take a left where there is a left …” Crows know better.
With perseverance, though, we finally found the place. Now, a travel snob might be inclined to call this collection of rustic cabins a bit corny. (They are indeed strung along a chain o’ 15 lakes.) But it’s as beautiful, peaceful, and safe an eco-resort as I’ve ever seen. Each cabin has a balcony that hangs out over what seems to be your own private bayou, where, by the way, you can canoe, swim, or, as I did, dawdle away the afternoon looking for a gator to harass, like that loudmouth Aussie does to crocodiles on Animal Planet. Alas, all I spotted was a family of turtles begging for a portion of the bag of Cheetos that I was, for some reason, devouring as if it were my last meal, and a squirrel who sauntered in as if he owned the place and jumped on the bed like a house cat—neither of which responded to loudmouthed harassment. But I still considered it time well spent. That’s the true measure of a “resort,” after all—someplace where idling is magically transformed into something worthwhile.
The resort’s Hilltop Herb Farm Restaurant wasn’t built with high style in mind, either. Its sturdy blond country furniture and equally sturdy blonde country waitresses, its buffet of gleaming silver service that reminded me of something I saw once at a low-budget wedding reception (was it mine?), gave us pause. But we knew better. The Hilltop, in fact, had a longstanding, albeit underground, reputation in Texas for honest, humble nouvelle food well before a lot of citified places decided that nouvelle was a marketing model.
The gumbo we had one night was spicy and so thick with roux that you could almost chew it; a salad of fresh greens topped with a rich basil buttermilk dressing was a meal in itself. Whipped potatoes with scallions, sour cream, and garlic seemed plush, and complemented a rare roast sirloin that had been rubbed in thyme and oregano straight from the garden out back. Cutting-edge food? Not on your life. But it was fresh and somehow muscular, and that it was served in the middle of nowhere made it even better.
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