We left Lubbock Saturday morning and after a relaxing time with family and a let down park visit on the way, we decided to extend our road trip home with a dog leg over to Wichita Falls. This park is similar in size to previously visited Lake Colorado City and looked to be a good candidate for a daytrip. We had high hopes to recoup an enjoyable park before returning home.

We arrived just in time for a late lunch and quickly got settled at a lake side picnic table. We looked over the maps planning our activities for the visit and thought starting with swimming might be fun as we were already seated at the swim area. That was quickly vetoed, however, as we ate our lunch and I watched a ski boat and jet ski continuously enter and exit the swim area regardless of the “no boats in the swim area” signage. Humans. 🙄 Ashlyn instead settled for getting her feet wet. Weston, Archer and myself passed on another muddy lake. She said we didn’t miss much lol!

From there, we drove around to the “Prairie Dog Town” and tried in vain to spot prairie dogs. While the mounds/holes are scattered all over the park, your best bet for an encounter was supposed to be in their designated town. We did find all of their holes stuffed with bread slices…regardless of the signage stating not to feed them. Humans. 🙄

We then drove over to the western corner of the park where an under road culvert allowed access beyond as the boundary narrowed along the lakeshore. The kids were thrilled to walk through the tunnel, but had little interest exploring further on the shadeless trail.

Our last stop before calling it good was the operational oil pump jack smack dab in the middle of the camping area. Slightly unexpected!

We enjoyed ourselves more at this park than the previous one. I still don’t care to camp here. It’s a small park and virtually no shade in the mesquite mixed prairie environment. The water would provide a cool down, but I guess I’ve prissed myself beyond mud bottom lakes, Haha. We learned that we may have been missing the prairie dogs because of the heat, so its hopeful that humans haven’t messed that up. I tend to be quite the Girl Scout in state parks and when I see so many instances of disregard for the rules, it really diminishes our overall experience. Onward to #34!

-Lindsay

Along the way on our first visit to Lubbock this year, we decided to throw another state park in. Lake Colorado City was an easy choice being located off of I-20 west of Abilene. I booked one of their lakeside cabins looking forward to an easy over night stay and built in AC haha. We arrived right before the 3:00 check in time and were happy to see we were driving though a deserted park! The cabin area was nice and clean, but I was surprised to see 12 units clustered around 1 bath house. I think that would’ve been rough if many cabins were booked. From the outside our cabin was neat with it’s stone exterior, large parking area and picnic table on a covered patio. The kids were excited about the bunk beds on the interior, but I was ultimately disappointed by a lack of what I felt would’ve been “getting our money’s worth.”

 

Once we got the cabin settled the best we could, we walked down a short path to the edge of the lake to see what swimming there would be like. While the area didn’t look ideal for swimming, fishing might have been pretty good!

 

We wanted to get some swimming in before dinner, so we drove to the beach swim area and were happy to find it empty except for another couple. I quickly passed on getting beyond ankle deep in the muddy water, but the kids were happy to swim out and throw mud globs at one another.

 

After showers and dinner, we were done with heat but wanted to stay up in an attempt to catch some stars. We played Uno for a while, and then drove around as the sun set checking out amenities.

 

As luck would have it, the skies clouded up and a full moon prevented our star show, but we did see a cool lightening show in the distance at a 10 pm bathroom run. Sleep that night was rough on the provided vinyl mattresses in a cabin that didn’t really cool off till 2 am.

The next morning, we marveled at the still full moon setting and started packing up. The park only has one 1 mile trail that tours the edge of the lake and we didn’t feel a need to hike it haha.

It’s no coincidence this post is short and not full of photos. This park was a disappointment for us. Maybe the fishing is great? We saw 2 people fishing. The nearby town of Colorado City was 75% closed down and vacant and probably saw it’s hay day when I-20 didn’t by pass it. Maybe the park went down with the city. But we were on our way to play with cousins and are grateful for the streak of amazing parks we’ve seen before this one.

-Lindsay

During a recent trip to Galveston chasing mystical blue water, we decided to kick off our fall season of state park touring with a park on the southwest side of Houston. Numerous factors made it personally undesirable for camping. Namely, the presence of over 300 free roaming alligators! Not to mention, the swamp environment and close proximity to Houston attracting crowds. We were also grateful to not have Sally on this particular trip, let’s not add to the crazy with alligators about! So while Mommy had her apprehensions, the kids were ECSTATIC. They wanted to see all the gators, snakes, and frogs…oh my.

 

We arrived a little before 11 on a 103 degree day and decided our objective would be to see as much as we could, as quickly as we could and in as much shade as we could find. Armed with our camelbaks, we started out with a 1ish mile trail that circled the optimal alligator viewing area. The adventure worked out in our favor! We saw ONE alligator and he stayed in the water. If you zoom in on the middle of the photo where the kids are looking at the water, you can see his head out of water not 10ft from the bank! That’s a close enough encounter!

 

A viewing tower along the trail provided a break in a shade, a chance to catch a breeze and a look out over the wetlands.

 

While on a bathroom break, we noticed a posted schedule of events for the day at the nature center and had enough time to make a Ranger Chat about snakes. Fun! We so rarely visit parks on the weekends and since that is when most of the events are scheduled, we hadn’t participated in many yet. This experience did not disappoint! We learned so much in addition to up close encounters with live non venomous snakes. Fun fact, there are 70 different species of snakes in Texas. 11 of them are venomous. 8 of those venomous snakes are rattle snakes with their telltale (punny) rattle for identification. That leaves a mere THREE snakes in the entire state to learn for proper good snake/ bad snake identification. Copper head (with Hershey kiss shapes along its back), cotton mouth/water moccasin (with a zoro mask across its eyes), and the coral snake (the tri color of black, yellow and red). The rest are constrictors and while they can bite, are non venomous and some even eat other snakes! What?!

 

The end of the chat consisted of getting to touch and see up close 6 different snakes and then the kids got to pose with a 6’4″ rat snake!

 

The rest of the nature center was fun on its own with numerous items retrieved from the park and put on the display. Including baby alligators that were hatched onsite and cared for before releasing back into the wild. Ashlyn was brave enough to pet one!

 

After our break in the AC we crossed the road and checked out the George Observatory that is managed by the Houston Museum of Natural Science. Unfortunately, it was under renovation and we did not get to go inside, but it definitely sparked an interest in finding one to go inside sometime.

 

The Brazos River runs along the eastern border of the park and we found a half mile roundtrip trail that gave us a view and just like that we wrapped up our experience at Brazos Bend State Park.

 

This park is huge. There were numerous trails we never even saw and 2 other ponds/lakes amidst the swamps lands we didn’t check for alligators either. We really lucked out on the lack of crowds while there as well. All of the parking areas were large and obviously equipped for the masses. While we stand by the don’t-need-to-camp-there thought process, we were bummed to not get a better look at the observatory. Perhaps, if we find ourselves passing through again, we’ll duck back in.

-Lindsay