Daily Archives: November 8, 2013

November 8, 2013 Houston, Texas

On the way to Houston we stayed one night in the Sam Houston National Forest at Cagle Campground.  What a nice campground!  We had a large site with a concrete pad and full hookup.  This is not what is usually available in a national forest campground!

We arrived in Houston 01-IMG_20131108_195417for a 5 night stay at a private campground about 13 miles outside of the city of Houston.  It was a nice site with a concrete pad and full hookup, but without the space, trees and privacy we found at the national forest campground.  It also had some traffic noise from the interstate close by.  It seemed more like a concrete jungle after the state parks we have grown accustomed to camping in.  After dealing with the mud and dirt from all the rain in Dallas earlier in the week, the concrete pad was nice, but we would have really liked some trees and grass!

On Sunday we drove into Houston to visit our friend Priscilla and her husband Roy.  We met Priscilla when we lived in Northern Virginia and she is now living in Houston.  It was SO good to spend time with them!  We had a great meal at a barbecue restaurant and after eating they gave us a nice tour of Houston and Rice University campus.  1-P1030167

 

 

 

 

 

 

02-P1030171Monday we drove 45 minutes to Brazos Bend State Park to do some geocaching and orienteering.  It is hard to find permanent orienteering courses and we were pleasantly surprised to see they had one in this park.  While driving in we noticed signs saying the area had alligators and venomous snakes.  We drove to one lake in the park and walked around and to our disappointment we didn’t see any alligators.  We pretty much decided we wouldn’t see any that day because the lakes were way down from the ongoing drought in Texas.  We decided to find two geocaches near an observatory in the park.  As we parked our car we encountered two elderly ladies who calmly and nonchalantly told us they had seen an alligator on the trail near a small bridge over the water.  We thanked them for telling us and thought they surely had seen an alligator in the distance sunning on a far bank.  To our astonishment as we walked down the path we came upon a huge alligator estimated to be 7 or 8 feet long five feet away from us.   04-P1030175We figured if those two ladies could get by him alive, so could we, so Bill told me to give him the camera in case we had to start running.  He took my hand and led the way as we slowly and carefully walked past the alligator.  If truth be told, he had to slightly pull me past the alligator because my feet were not so eager to walk past the creature.  We found our geocaches and then headed back down the trail thinking we would once again inch our way past Ally Alligator.  To our amazement, in the short time we were gone, the alligator stretched his body across the trail, blocking our way.  06-P1030182Since it didn’t look like he was in any hurry to get on his way, we had to find another trail back to the car.  Bill and I both agreed this was the closest we had ever been to an alligator of that size….a once in a lifetime experience when you least expect it!  Never thought we would leave Florida to have a close and personal encounter with an alligator in Texas!  On the way to the car we saw another huge alligator on a small island in the water and a little baby alligator sunning on a rock in the water.  We also saw many turtles, a bunny, and a lot of birds.  05-P1030179 09-P1030185 07-P1030183 10-P1030186 08-P1030184

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

While orienteering later in the day we saw another 7 foot alligator on a bank across the lake, but he dove into the water before we could get a picture so we had to be satisfied with one of him in the water as he swam away.  11-P1030188We came home tired and happy from our fun and exciting day in the park!