Clear Lake Park near Dallas, Texas and an epic train display
Today we’re looking at Clear Lake Park near Dallas, Texas and some of the nifty things there are to do in the area. As you might expect near a big city, the list of activities is endless and you can find just about anything you want to do, eat or see.
Clear Lake Park near Dallas, Texas
As usual, Peggy found a winner in Clear Lake Park. I believe we paid about $30/night and while the information we had in advance indicated that we would have water and electric, once we pulled into the site we found full hook-ups. That was great.
Located right on the lake shore of Lake Lavon not far from Dallas, Texas Clear Lake Park is comprised of 23 sites. Many of these sites feature a large covered patio area with a picnic table and barbecue grill.
All the sites have a view of Lake Lavon which is absolutely enormous and home to a lot of water-born fun including boating and fishing. All of that sort of thing.
Another really unexpected feature of Clear Lake Park is the cemetery! There are certainly a lot of RV parks where people are dying to get a reservation but this long-term type of stay is a bit much.
Seriously, according to one friend of ours Texas had a lot of private cemeteries and the state has simply taken them over through the passage of time. Interesting if it’s true.
You can walk around in here and there are grave stones that list people having been buried here well over 100 years ago but also some more recently deceased individuals as well. If the lake was something you enjoyed while you were alive I guess this would be a good place to stay once you no longer are.
The sites in the park are certainly spacious and lengthy - you could get just about any rig you could imagine in here. But the pavement on some of the sites, including the site we were on, was absolutely terrible. It was beyond needing maintenance and was more just destroyed.
In fact when I was backing the trailer in, I was literally concerned about the broken pavement pieces hitting the underside of the trailer. Yes, it was that bad.
It all worked out and we got to catch up with some old friends and meet some new ones. Further, our day trips were pretty great.
What we did - day trips
A friend we haven’t seen since 2009 suggested a great place to eat (more on that in a minute) and, after a terrific meal, Peggy and I got on our phones to see what was around. I had heard that there was a trolley or rail museum and I’m always up for seeing trains.
What I found was TrainTopia and Peggy saw how excited I was about this so off we went.
TrainTopia is a gigantic G-scale train layout that belonged to Steve Sanders. His vision was to recreate places he loved in the Southwest and did so with impeccable precision. There are representations of old Dallas, New Mexico and Colorado on the gigantic layout.
There are 638 pieces of rolling stock on the over 114 scale miles of track. A computerized control system means that the curators can run the trains around without having to worry about them crashing into one another.
The attention to detail and all the little things on this layout are simply incredible. Not only are the displays remarkably realistic but there’s a good bit of whimsy thrown in for good measure. For example, in the section of downtown Dallas there’s the Munster’s car as well as a Chrysler Turbine car.
There’s a flying saucer in the mountains over New Mexico (of course there is) and the drive-in movie theater is actually showing movies.
In fact there’s so many small details in this giant space that there are four scavenger hunt games you can participate in just to help you find some of these details. I really enjoyed doing this as much as I enjoyed watching the trains.
Another nifty thing here is that the lighting in the room changes so that night falls on the railroad. When that happens many of the automobiles on the roads turn on their headlights and street lamps and signs light up as well. It’s pretty impressive.
There is so much to see here it was absolutely time well spent and I think young and old would enjoy this incredible display.
Behind the Frisco Discovery is an enormous collection of real trains as well. There are tours of these trains, but not while we were here. Oh well, just another reason to go back.
Where to eat
When you’re in Texas and an old friend wants to go to lunch and says he knows the best barbecue in the area, you listen. That barbecue was in The Colony and known as Hard 8 Pit BBQ.
Just walking into this place you see all the smoke pits smoking the meats and the smell is as incredible as you would imagine. You get your meat by the measure so you can have a pound of brisket if you’d like, or a couple of ribs. There’s smoked sausage, chicken and bacon-wrapped shrimp and jalapeños as well.
I wanted to try it all so I got some brisket, a couple of ribs, a couple of bacon-wrapped shrimp and some cherry cobbler.
Joe, my buddy, wasn’t wrong. The meats were just absolutely incredible. Tender, flavorful, perfectly cooked. This was pit barbecue perfection.
I also liked that the meats weren’t slathered with barbecue sauce but there were two kinds of barbecue sauce in heat pans throughout the restaurant if you wanted to do that. There were also bean pots with all the beans you could eat.
We liked the food so much that we went back for dinner. Why wouldn’t we?
Another adventure took us to McKinney, Texas. This is one of those towns that was built in the 1800s whose downtown had become run down and neglected and now is back and going strong.
There are a ton of shops and eateries in the old and stylish buildings, one of which is called The Yard. This place is aptly named because it’s more outdoor dining than indoor.
The Yard is sort of a sports bar but not really. We sat in the enclosed portion of the restaurant and I ordered a brisket melt, some of their home-brewed beers and Peggy got shrimp tacos.
The kitchen in this place is on point as our food was delivered almost as quickly as our beer. I liked their IPA quite a bit as they call it a “mid coast” IPA so not necessarily east coast, not necessarily west coast.
The brisket sandwich with the melty cheese all over it was quite good and Peggy declared her shrimp tacos to also be delicious. I can’t get over how well run the kitchen in this place was.
We also enjoyed walking around McKinney with its old-time buildings and shops.
Something Peggy really enjoyed is seeing the “tree sweaters.” These are knit covers for portions of the trees around town and she had read about this in a book. Here she got to see it with her own eyes. It is certainly different and rather nifty and it seems like these are knitted right onto the trees.
Conclusions
Clear Lake Park isn’t really that close to any of the things I mentioned but isn’t horribly far from them either. We thought it was a nice stay although they really, really could use some work on the surfaces of the camp spots.
Still, I would go back and you know I’d be back at Hard 8 in a heartbeat. Thanks, Joe, for this awesome recommendation!
