Feet up at Caddo Lake, plus mosaic car art

Exploring Saw Mill Pond at Caddo Lake State Park, downtown Jefferson, and mosaic art cars in Uncertain, Texas.… Read More

The post Feet up at Caddo Lake, plus mosaic car art appeared first on Digging.

January 22, 2026

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For my final post about Caddo in East Texas, let’s head to Caddo Lake State Park.

Saw Mill Pond

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We visited Caddo in mid-November to see the bald cypresses in rusty orange fall regalia. One afternoon we drove to Caddo Lake State Park for an easy hike, picnic lunch, and boardwalk stroll at Saw Mill Pond.

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Prior visitors had etched their names onto a metal post, their rusty scrawls echoing the orange cypresses.

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Canoeists threaded through bottle-trunked cypresses in the pond.

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Where else but Caddo can you paddle through a forest?

Jefferson

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Another day we visited the small town of Jefferson, about 20 minutes away, to explore and have lunch.

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We poked around downtown and admired its New Orleans-esque architecture.

VW car art

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For our three nights at Caddo, we stayed at Spatterdock Guest Houses in Uncertain. Owner Dottie Carter, a 3rd-generation Caddo resident, is a mosaic artist with a yen for VW Beetles. Several of her art cars are displayed on the grounds, covered bumper to bumper in mosaic tile.

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The cars are parked in cathedral-like carports.

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Here’s one called Volksfroggen.

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Green plates cut into pie sections make clever lily pads.

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This car is covered in frogs, frogs, and more frogs.

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Each car is an amusing work of folk art.

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Walking to the lake, we also passed a metal monkey on a bike…

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…and a menacing alligator.

Caddo Lake

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The lake here was hiding itself under a layer of bronze cypress leaves. When we first arrived, we wondered if this was water or a walking path through the trees. Oh, it’s water.

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