August 2010. We are here, so let's be friends.

The first thing I noticed was the baby. The baby was making some curious, unsteady motions across the concrete floor of the immense ramshackle barn that sits in the back of the Lakeview Park & Beach, an RV park north of Eunice on Highway 13. A young man, maybe the father, reached out to the baby, who was distracted by the band in the corner sawing away on fiddles, squeezing a beautiful din out of accordions. The baby was justifiably transfixed. Couples stepped into the clockwork cycle of a Cajun waltz careful to give the toddler a healthy berth until the young man swept the child up in his arms and joined the fray.

Things happen differently in RV parks. People who RV strike a curious balance between private and public, piloting these twenty-plus-foot mobile cabins around for weekend jaunts and summer vacations. My dad was an RV guy. Every summer we would pilot our 23-footer across the plains to Colorado, up the Blue Ridge Parkway, up to places he’d been before, with the kids from his first marriage many years before. More often than not, we would pull into one of these places and my dad would fall right into a rekindled friendship with someone he met at this very campground decades past—one based not on work or background or social circles, but instead based on simple simultaneous presence. We are here, so let’s be friends.

Some of my fondest memories are at these parks. I remember seeing a family of bears outside one near Silverado, Colorado. The same in which, in the post campfire dark, among the din of tree frogs and cicadas, I managed my first real kiss off a girl from Denton, Texas, whose dad also had a taste for the mountains. What I’m saying is: you make friends fast in these places.

Compared to some of the primitive campgrounds I remember, Lakeview is pretty swank. Owned and operated by Eunice natives Lance Pitre, Laura Pitre Rodriguez and Bonnie Pitre, its 95 tree-lined sites are spread out among the 42-acre park. A few one-bedroom cabins are being added to the property as well. There are playgrounds, a fishing lake, a cool, freshwater beach, even a laundry. All it is missing is a coffee shop, but then a general store is also in the works, so who knows? Lakeview really has everything, but it also has something special in its barn dances on Friday and Saturday nights.

Add Comment

Name

Email (will not be published)

Personal Web site/Blog URL

Subject

Comment

Enter the letters you see in the image.

Click to get a new image.