Saturday 9 April 2022
Today's agenda was driving. No, not to our next destination. To a Nature Center--Big Thicket National Preserve. Which is, apparently, managed by the Park Service. There's no entrance fee, though.
We went to the Visitor Center first. They had restrooms--nice--and some really well done, expensive-looking Big Thicket exhibits. One f them, a table with a thick laminate that looked like water surrounding the top parts of an alligator and a water snake. I'd like that in my living room. They had a fifteen minute video about the Big Thicket but we had dogs in the car and didn't want to leave them for long.
We should have walked the nature trail there, but instead we went on up to the Pitcher Plant trail, a .5 mile boardwalk through a bog. Three-quarters of the way around, when we'd almost given up looking, there were the Pitcher Plants!
No birds there, so we went on to the Birdwatcher's Trail which supposedly had good views of the sandbars of the Trinity River. it was out on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere--although people's "houses" (aka mobile homes with improvements) were along one side--but eventually came out to a lovely park service sign--
and a parking area overrun with poison ivy. Ed parked with my door exiting right into it. And me with hiking sandals on!
No matter, I waded through fearlessly. (I'll be sorry tomorrow. Or not. Sometimes poison ivy fails to affect me, while other times it gives me the miseries for weeks. We can but wait and see)
Zack hiked the trail like a trooper. Again, no birds, but after a long time of hiking toward the noise of a chain saw in the distance, I looked at the GPS map on my phone and decided that we weren't far from the floodplains of the river. So we went on. It was probably no more than a half mile out when we saw the chainsaw wielder--a couple of guys in a flatbed boat out in the creek cutting away a snag. They were at Menard creek, not the river proper, but you could see it nicely in the distance.
Wouldn't it be a blast to float down, all the way from Lake Livingston dam where we were the previous day on down to Trinity Bay. Possibly one could even cross the strait between Bolivar Peninsula and Galveston Island and end up in Galveston.
That would put us in water which had traveled all the way from the creek behind my house to the ocean. And that would be cooler than the law allows.
I've lost track of which day was the momentous one, so it was either this one or the day before that I saw a WORM-EATING WARBLER! I've wanted to see one of those for forever!
Here's the trail I was on--took a picture at the turn to remind me which was was back.
They don't eat worms for real and I don't understand the origin of the name, but they're a really cute little warbler that skulks around in the dense undergrowth of wet woods, which is where we were. I remember exactly where, too--on the bike trail, we took the right-hand fork and walked just a little ways, intending to backtrack and cross the lake. The trail was going downhill pretty steadily, so I wanted to see if it ended up at a creek. It didn't, but at one point I stopped and realized I was surrounded by birds. The Hooded Warbler song, which I'd begun to recognize, was all over and I got a glimpse of the singer--cool. And then suddenly there was the Worm-Eating Warbler, right in the bushes in front of me. I didn't have my camera or my bird book, so I had to wait to get back to camp to ID it. But the good thing about male warblers in the springtime, if you get a good enough look at it, you're sure. Unlike sparrows which all look like little striped brown birds and are a beast to ID at the best of times, with warblers, when you're sure, you're sure.
Hooded warbler (picture from allaboutbirds.org) https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Hooded_Warbler
Worm-eating warbler (picture from allaboutbirds.org) https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Worm-eating_Warbler
Night walk recap: in future I want to write a few notes about the nighttime feel of each place we stay. So here goes: Double Rim Recreation Area.
It's Saturday night and kids are yelping and squawking over at the late, but when I walk far enough away I can barely hear them. Instead I hear the treetops talking and swaying, ever so slightly. Below is a confused buzz of every type of night bug--it makes for distracted walking--distracted, but somehow peaceful. It's a clear night and there's a big chunk of moon in the sky, but stars can barely be seen through the tall pine trees. I can't make out a single constellation in its entirety--just bits and pieces of the big dipper. But I know it's there.
I walk on the asphalt and it's wide and smooth enough that I don't need a flashlight. Most people have lights on at their camp sites, but there's enough undergrowth and the sites are spaced widely enough that they're not glaring in my face and making it hard to walk without a flashlight.
It's a nice walk, but I don't expect to come here again. It's of the "okay" variety--neither great nor horrible; nothing to come back for.
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