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