November 17, 2015
Picture driving south from Houston, America’s 5th largest metropolitan city with over 6.5 million people, traffic on I-69 is bumper-to-bumper and yet just 45 minutes later you feel like you are on a different planet. Welcome to Brazos Bend State Park!
As mentioned in our last blog, Brazos Bend State Park is a coastal wetland so buckle up and let’s take a tour in a little green gator.

Oh by the way, that’s 40 Acre Lake on your left and one big Southern Life Oak with lots of Spanish Moss just in front of us.

Another view of 40 Acre Lake with lots of lily pads (above) and tall grasses (below).

You see signs everywhere about staying at least 30 ft. from an alligator. Ranger Jacob was asked what we should do if we see someone getting to close to a gator. He replied, “There’s no law against being stupid.” Oh wait! There’s one that I discovered only a few feet away. I was glad that I was driving my gator. I bet you’re confused. How can you stay away from a gator while riding a gator? It hurts the brain just thinking about that.

Just a few minutes later this guy showed up. Will I guess it could have been a girl but I wasn’t going to check. I was glad he/she was swimming in the opposite direction.

Brazos Bend State Park is pretty diverse. Look to your right and the view is a lot different.

Just off of the main road into the park is a good example of a swamp. Swamps have trees where a marsh has grass. The green algae is an important food source for the fish and birds of the area. Algae is a living plant.

Brazos Bend attracts more guests than any of the other Texas State Parks and to keep it running it takes quite a crew of committed staff and volunteers. You are lucky that someone was around to snap a couple of action pictures of one of their new volunteers. Yes that’s me on that Zero Turn lawn motor. Better give me lots of room, I’m no professional. 😉

I’m helping to refurbish this fishing pier. Why is it getting so hard to stand up after being on my knees?

Bye you’ll,
Cliff