Texana Park

So I read several blogs where the ladies take pictures of their wonderful walks. Past canals, beautiful old buildings, quaint little towns, wonderful fall foliage, babbling brooks. You name it and there is a beautiful pictures of fabulous walks. I look around me...and I see cement, old houses, empty lots. Not a lot that is pretty. Now, I do have the bay and it is beautiful and I love being this close to it. But it doesn't change. It pretty much looks the same and I have to go through the boring neighborhood to get to it. I have longed to have a little wooded area to wander in. Or a quaint town to take a stroll through. I thought I was doomed to just walk the cement walking path by the bay. But wait....the other day I remembered the place where we used to go camping. It has walking trails...yes, even through a woodsy area. Even with some wildlife. I thought YES that's where I'll go. I even had a fleeting thought that the family would like to come with me. Do I dare ask them? Nay. I will Tell them. And that is just what I did. I told them on Friday that we would be going to Texana Park to walk the nature trails. And guess what? I didn't hear a grumble one. Well, maybe a teeny-tiny one from my husband. So off we went today just after lunch. And oh. my. goodness. I had such a great time. We all had a great time. The weather was perfect. Sunny and in the 60's. And, and we got to see some wildlife. I am one happy Momma.

Right of the bat we saw this little guy. So I knew possums were pretty stupid but this guy ran around in circles just trying to find the bushes to get away from us. Poor little thing. Of course H wanted to bring it home. NO.

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There were gobs and gobs of Yaupon trees with the beautiful berries. I just learned that it is a holly and that you can make tea from the leaves but DON'T eat the berries....they will make you sick. The scientific name is actually Ilex vomitoria. Says it right in the name.

There were these two interesting trees. The top one was just kind of cool looking with the leaves growing out of the cut top. The second one? I haven't a clue what was going on. My husband said that it was probably damaged in some way and grew like that or it was some kind of fungus. Don't know but it was really cool looking.

  

And look. there is actually some fall foliage here in South Texas. There wasn't much of it but it sure was pretty. I just loved it surrounding the little bridge.

We saw some lovely bugs and the beautiful McCartney(Chicasaw) Rose. There were just a handful of of flowers for pops of white here and there. I remember picking these fuzzy black caterpillars up as a kid...it wasn't until recently did I learn that the can sting you. Not once was I ever stung by one. I guess I was special...bahahaha. And this little green guy was awesome. I wanted to pick him up but knew I would never reach him before he hopped off. Makes me think of Disney/Pixar's A Bug's Life.

There's part of the fam in the back ground. I just loved the arbor affect of the trees. I should have made them stop and taken a whole bunch of pretty pictures there. And of course here is the ubiquitous photo of the shoes and leaves :)

 

And then we saw these. I got so excited. I was hoping we would catch a glimpse of a deer. Just a glimpse would be nice. Just a teeny-weeny glimpse and I would have been happy. But no.....we didn't get a glimpse. We got this.......

This silly little thing. When we first saw her we must have stood still for about 15 minutes thinking we would scare her if we made a noise. Nope. She came right up to us. Followed us for nearly the whole time we were on the trail. She would wander into the bushes and we would think she was gone and then here she would come trotting up behind us. So sweet. And a little cheeky too. Seems like she was giving us raspberries with her tongue.That's H in the white and S in the red. They would both die if the new I put their pictures on here. Actually they would both die if I told them I had a blog. Yea, my little secret. They don't know about this blog. They would most probably make fun of me...good naturedly of course. H kept saying that she really was a Disney Princess because the got the deer to follow us :)

And this was the final shot not long before the trail ended on the campground road. So beautiful. I just love Texas!

I made the family make a promise that we would do this at least once a month...weather permitting. It will become known as the Texana Pact of 2014. Hmmm, maybe I should write something up and have them all sign it. Yeah, I just might do that...