Lyod Park, Grand Prairie TX
Loyd Park is a county managed park that was originally built by US Army Corps of Engineers when Joe Pool Lake reservoir was created. The sites are very large, with concrete pads, covered picnic pavilion and grills.The park covers close to 800 acres, has a boat ramp and hiking and biking trails. We love it! It’s far enough from DFW metroplex as they call it here but still close to restaurants and only 30 minutes from historic Dallas downtown.
Tom needed some work done on the truck, so we visited local Ford Dealer to take care of it. Everyone was nice and helpful, I was impressed. One of them gave me the scoop on the park, including the fact that since it is ACE park, it is only managed by the county and there’s some legal difficulty in selling it to private entities. Hopefully that will still be the case going forward, as this is a wonderful resource for the people in the area.
I’m enjoying our stay here, our site is wide open with plenty of breezes off the lake. After the tight quarters in Shreveport, this is great. There are lots of birds around, egrets, herons, cardinals, sparrows, some even visit the open around by our trailer. Since it’s rather hot (mid 80s with lots of humidity), we are putting our bikes to use. It’s nice riding around, checking out the boat ramp and all the boats and jet skis coming in. Though during the week, it is rather quiet.
We visited downtown Dallas, primarily to see the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza. It was very well put together, going through JFK’s family and early years, his policies and vision, and then the assassination and the investigation. I was focusing on his legacy - civil rights, space and technology and civil engagement, rather than thinking about how his life was cut short.
This is a very developed area, with lots of highways, housing developments, malls that are like small towns. I would say though that though everything is pretty new, it has a bit of cookie-cutter fill to it. We’ve been warmed to avoid the highways during rush hours, I can see why since even during the day there’s plenty of traffic. The park is an oasis in all that.
On one of our stops, we decided to grab a quick lunch at Mo’s Italia Express . Since it offered pizza, Tom asked about Texas vs NY water used for pizza making. Of course, we got into a long conversation with the manager/chef on New York, New Jersey Italian food transplanted to Texas. So he gave us freshly baked garlic bread and home made marinara to try, needless to say it was wonderful. The lunch we ordered was great as well.
We are off to west Texas tomorrow for short stay, got to try some chili.
