Brazos Bend State Park - March 2013

At the beginning of March we had a Saturday with no soccer and no baseball (it was the weekend before Spring Break), and we were trying to think of something fun we could do with the kids.  We decided on Brazos Bend State Park, which is just outside of Houston (Houston is about a 2 1/2 hour drive from us).  We had heard it was a great place for seeing alligators, and if you know any of our kids (or Daniel), you know that means it was right up our alley.  We decided to make the trip a little more exciting and drive down on Friday evening and spend the night in a hotel (because hotels are right up there with alligators on the excitement scale in our family), and then wake up early to head on over to the Park.  Daniel’s brother Anthony lives in Houston, so he met us for dinner on Friday, and then joined us the next morning for our alligator adventure, too.

It’s silly that I have waited a month and a half to blog about this, but here is what happened – at the beginning of April I sat down to blog about the month of March (because that’s usually how I do it), and then I thought, “oh, wait – I can’t blog about March until I blog about Brazos Bend, and I took so many pictures it should probably be its own post.”  So I got all set to start a big Brazos Bend post, when I realized that all of the pictures I had taken there were dated wrong – somehow when I had uploaded my pictures from my camera I had switched the option to label each picture with the date it was uploaded instead of the date it was taken.  I started going through and manually changing the date on each picture (and regretting that I had taken so many) and when I was done I looked at a few more from March, and realized that all of those pictures were dated wrong, too! 

So instead of blogging, I spent all my energy and blogging time fixing all the dates.  And I guess after that I just ran out of steam and gave up on blogging altogether.  A couple times during April I would think, “hmm, have I done my March post yet?”, and then I would remember, “no, darn it – I still have to finish that Brazos Bend post!”  And then I forgot that the reason I had stopped doing it was because of the dates (which were now fixed), so I convinced myself there was some big overwhelming reason that I wasn’t doing it – like it was going to be a super complicated post. 

But today I realized how complicated can a post about my kids and alligators be?  So I decided it was about time to get it done with.

Here is Rachel playing at the playground near a parking lot at the Park. 


When we first got there, I didn’t realize there were going to be actual alligators all over the place starting immediately – I thought we’d have to go on big long hikes and search high and low for them. So I was pretty surprised when we walked down a path right by the playground and all of a sudden saw 3 alligators.  I thought the first one I saw was maybe an alligator statue because it was sitting so still.  I thought, “oh, maybe they put little alligator statues right by the path to show that this is a neat state park where you might find alligators.” 


Not statues:


Also, alligators are not the only fun animals in Brazos Bend.  Here is Daniel showing Cynthia two snakes that he spotted on the edge of the bridge.                      


Everyone was looking at the alligators, and being the expert wild-life spotter that he is, he recognized that it looked like a good area for snakes, so he started looking around.  These two were right below his feet:

And if alligators and snakes aren’t your thing, there were also lots of cute turtles:

And cool looking birds:

But mostly just lots and lots of alligators:

Rachel and Lizza up on a lookout platform:      


Looking down at all of the alligators below:                                                        


Our family:                                                       


The kids with Uncle Anthony:                              


Henry trying to pose in front of an alligator (you can see one out there in the water behind him), but right before I took this picture he fell and landed right on his face and got a bunch of dirt and sand in his eye.


Cynthia posing, with an alligator in the water behind her:                                                    


Creepy looking swamp.  The kids kept asking “would you rather” questions, like, “Mom, would you rather walk through that swamp (which was on the left of the path), or swim through that pond (pictured above)?”  I chose swimming through the pond, but they all said that was a bad choice. 


Big frog:


The kids with Uncle Anthony on a big log (poor Henry’s eye was still hurting):

Jumping off:


Daniel demonstrating the more awesome way to jump off a big log:

After seeing that, Tristan decided it was worth climbing back up for a re-do jump:

Anthony, Henry and Cindy examining a bug:

After we walked all around the pond in the first area, we drove to another little area and ate a picnic lunch.  Then we set off on another trail to find more alligators. 


Henry petting a little baby alligator:

Rachel picking flowers:                                                          


Looking for things:

Trying really hard to find a snake that Tristan had seen in the grass.  He startled it, and it went off into the water.  They searched and searched, but didn’t find it again.  I loved seeing Daniel and Anthony out in the wild looking for animals together – it was so easy to imagine what they were like when they were kids (basically just like Tristan and Oliver). 


I think these were the final two alligators we saw.  Daniel and the kids were keeping track, and we ended up seeing more than 50.  It was a perfect day full of alligators.  


Our cutest little alligator hunter, ready to head back home to Austin. 


The end.