A Hike at Brazos Bend State Park

I LOVE hiking at Brazos Bend State Park. It's a little less than 30 minutes away from my house and is a great place to camp, hike, geocache, see the stars at the observatory, picnic, fish.....it's just a great place.



On a hike a few months ago we got to see a lot of nature! This butterfly was so pretty. Unfortunately it seems to be eating on some poo. Gross! Hubby took all the pics. :)

We went on a pretty long hike and stopped for lunch at some picnic tables. This sign just cracked me up! LOL I love the little guy flying through the air.
Brazos Bend has some HUGE oak trees. Some are estimated to be over 200 years old. Here is one of the smaller ones. The largest ones are near the nature center. I am so glad that the large ones weren't destroyed during our last hurricane. I'll have to post some pics of that storm. It was scary!

Dueling cicadas. These are the shells that the grubs leave behind when they hatch into loud flying insects.

Ah, the happy Texan family. If you look in my left hand you will notice something that is necessary on Texas hikes: a sweat rag. It was a very warm day. I think I could have baked cookies in my backpack.

Giant man eating spiders were also out everywhere. They are commonly called banana spiders but they are actually harmless Golden Silk Spiders. There is nothing quite as freaky as walking through one of their webs. But Momma Happy Texan can do a pretty good dance if she thinks one of those is on her face. Lots of laughs from Daddy Happy Texan.

Now the real reason folks come to Brazos Bend: the alligators! We came across these guys threatening each other. They didn't fight though. But they sure were puffing up and threatening each other and putting on a good show for us spectators.

Moor hens are everywhere out here. They are so cute. :)

Here is a cute little ibis. They're everywhere out there too. Lots of birds including the elusive downy woodpecker.

Do you think this is close enough? This bad boy was laying right by the trail. He was between 11 and 12 feet.
I don't think we were close enough before. How about now?
He got tired of us taking pictures and decided to get back in the water. The gators are pretty used to tourists taking pictures. You can walk right around them when they are laid out across a trail. The park people told me if they hiss you have gotten too close. No one has hissed at me yet. :)

Another gator we saw......

And one more swimming around......

Gators are everywhere in the water but not near the camping areas. We went out to a pond at night once and shined a light out there and you could see hundreds of red eyes glowing. Pretty creepy. I wouldn't want to go swimming out there! But they are fascinating to watch.