Saving the best for last - Brazos Bend

Although we've seen so many beautiful, interesting sights on this trip, we each have a special list in our minds - a list of favorites. The first addition to my list was Brazos Bend. Alligators Galore. Walking with Alligators.

Brazos Bend is a Texas state park, just southwest of Houston. It is in an agricultural area, with farms and trees. But in the park are lakes with dirt roads and trails around them. There are lots of alligators in these lakes, and in the late afternoons, they like to haul out on the banks lining the lakes, and sun themselves. People are welcome to walk wherever, right past the gators, often with just a few feet of separation! They have never had an incident between gator and human (see their factoids, etc., here: http://www.brazosbend.org/animals/factsheets/Alligator/alligatorfacts.pdf).

I absolutely love looking for gators! (again, the Easter Egg Hunt Syndrome...!). So come see some of my new friends!

First, we stopped at their nature center and got to pet baby gators!!! Can you believe this little guy is all of 7 months or so old?!!! They grow very slowly - maybe a foot per year (up to 6 years, at which point they apparently tend to grow in width faster than in length). Isn't this baby a total cutie?!!

And look at all these adorable babies just dangling in the water in their little aquarium!

Gator skeleton.

OK, to really see some of these subjects, you will need to left-click on the photo and enlarge it. So, now can you find the gator in this picture?!! He/she's right in the middle!

Here, I had walked around one side of one of the most popular (and populated?!) lakes to the lookout stand. In this photo, I'm at the top of the stand, looking at the road at the far side of the lake, a road I walked a few yards on before chickening out and walking quickly back. The accepted practice is to just walk alongside the gators, and with a bit of trepidation, I was good with doing that - as long as the gators were pointed TOWARDS the lake and AWAY from the road/trail, and as long as their eyes were closed. However, on this one road, right at the beginning, I went by three good-sized gators that were either pointed towards the trail or paralleling it and largely had their eyes open. I was watching them very careful and my palms were no doubt sweating! I finally decided that, no matter that other people seemed to be OK with doing this, I couldn't! At least not with those awake, ready to go gators!!! They just didn't strike me as nearly sleepy or lazy enough!! So I rather quickly made my way back to the lookout. More on the return journey later...

This place was also awesome for birds and bird photography! Mr. Great Blue Heron was intently stalking his frogs and fish or whatever (baby gators?!), and apparently I wasn't bothering him much - and neither were the gators! It was so funny watching him in this one area (where he was farther away than in this photo). He was too far away for me to tell what was going on exactly. But he was standing in the water, near the edge of the lake, where I knew many gators were hanging out too... Anyways, every now and then he'd leap up like he'd been bit by something... But then he'd just settle in again - for a few minutes... And then jump again... ?!? (maybe some of the baby gators were fighting back?!)

Synchronized swimming?

Our dogs attract almost as much attention as the gators! (and no, we didn't take the dogs on the gator walk! In fact, I mostly did that one by myself, while Bill hung out in the truck and read - I did drag him out for a short walk to see how cool it was afterwards though!) It's funny how many people we've found on this trip who are fascinated by, but sort of scared of, the dogs. It seems that most people only have little dogs - medium to large dogs have been fairly rare sightings on our trip!!

Gallinule - there are a lot of them here, but the coots still rule! Way more of the mud hens.

Do you see him/her? Well, good! But imagine if only the eyes and nostrils were sticking up? Or maybe nothing! Doesn't mean he/she's not there!! And yeah, that's some kind of green plant that covers the water's surface (duckweed maybe? or "watermeal?"). This one was just a little bitty gator - maybe 2 1/2 ft long.

Now this guy was a lot bigger! But boy did he look comfortable! Or maybe dead! A lot of them look dead they're so lazy-looking! But I saw his eyes open now and then when I talked to him and stuff. The green duckweed line on them always cracks me up!

He was pretty obvious in that last picture, eh? But how about in this one? Even though he's not underwater at all, it's amazing how he can blend!

And cute turtle guy. And here there's reddish-brown stuff on top of the water - don't know what this is...

Cute babies!!!! Maybe a year old? They looked to be about a foot long.

Could this be Momma? Just peacefully snoozing on the bank. She/he never opened her/his eyes while I was around. But then again, I steered clear - if those were HER babies...!!??!!

And this one was right next to the trail - pointed AT the trail as you see! And with mouth open. I read where that means they're too warm and using their open mouth to cool off.

oops, guess I (or someone else) got too close - time to go back to the water. Mostly the gators ignored people and slept through the invasions, but if they did really notice, they always went towards the water. I just felt safer not pushing it!! If you enlarge the photo, you'll notice the green slime line on his/her mouth! Too funny! Like a green milk mustache!

There's that mustache again! And what a smile! Still overheated, I guess.

What a good looking gator! Man, I just love these guys!!!! They're so cool!

And the funnest thing is to see them pick up and walk! They remind me of the Citroen cars (never saw one, but Bill has described them to me)!

And I'm not sure what this guy is. Sure behaved like a heron or egret - maybe a juvenile form of one of those (maybe a juvie little blue heron?)? Anyone out there know for sure?

OK, we're back to that lookout now (sorry, some of these aren't in the order I would've liked, but it's too much of a pain to reorder them!). I'm at the top of the lookout and spy these two girls walking along the trail (middle of photo). What a set-up. See those shiny dark things on the bottom, left of the trail? Yup, two gators, and one of them is really big. Now it looked to me like those girls had no idea they were there...

Getting closer. Much closer...! Just toodling along, happy, oblivious.

And ta-da! Whoa!!!! They didn't notice the gators until they were almost on top of them! But boy did they notice then! You should've seen them jump! And then this one poor girl looked like she was going to faint! I wouldn't be poking fun at them, but I was amazed at how they weren't paying any attention whatsoever!!! And they couldn't NOT know they were in Gator Land. There's a big sign right out front that tells you BEWARE OF GATORS!!! As far as I could tell, unlike the girls, the gators were unimpressed by it all and didn't react a bit!

Looking the other direction from the lookout - this is the path to continue going around the lake. And I started out on it to return, but... OK, now we get to the part where I get to poke fun at myself!!! ;) When I went this way, I ran into yet another gator pointed at the trail, and awake! So I decided oh heck, I'm going to just return the way I came. Chicken!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh yeah, right! Good luck! Those two big gators that startled the two girls? Yeeeeah, they're still there. And that one guy is soooo big. By now, I'd had enough adrenaline from walking with the alligators all afternoon that I couldn't quite stomach going by them by myself without anyone else even in sight! So I waited. Till a couple other folks showed up, hippy-hopping down the bunny trail. And then I let this poor other photographer guy take the inside track, while I, Braveheart, took the outside track!!! Man, what a weenie, eh?! ;) Sorry folks! But hey! Let's see how close YOU want to walk to these guys and how many you can walk past and for how long you can remain in the close Company of Alligators?!

Another cutie heron type - a yellow-crowned night heron.

I just liked the reflections.

OK! Here they are - the stars of the show (from the OTHER side!)! These are the two guys right next to the trail - that tripped up the two girls and that yours truly did some fancy footwork to avoid. And you can see that one is pretty darn big - Bill says he was about 12'!!! That's about as big as the boys generally get!!!! But look how well-behaved he is. Quite the gentleman. And I think they are actually. The American alligators don't really go after people. Unless the people are asking for it (like walking right next to them...?!), or are dumb enough to go swimming in gator ponds, etc.!

The big picture. (You can see the lookout tower in the background) This was when I dragged Billy back with me. He just HAD to see these awesome creatures up close too! It was such a thrill for me. Not much is that exciting that often in life... Bill enjoyed the walk too - I'd say he thought it was worth it!

Spooked coots walking on water! I loved the way their footsteps parted the red plant material on the water's surface.

The path back to the car. What a day! It was by far my favorite day of the trip up to that point - and still one of the top 5 for me so far (and we're currently in PA and have seen A LOT of neat stuff!!). However, not for the faint of heart or for those that are snack size...! ;)

So there you have it. That's it for Texas! (finally!) Now, on to Louisiana...!