See Ya Later Alligator... (Lame, I know)

We took a quick overnight trip to Brazos Bend Texas State Park. It is all the splendor and glory of the flat marshes of Houston that you would imagine.

I was quite excited about this one for two reasons.

1. We were staying in a screened shelter. Meaning no tent set up, or crawling out of the tent in the middle of the night, no zipper issues.

2. This was a December trip. Meaning no sweating my ass off in the middle of the night trying to sleep in 70+ degrees.

The shelter was kind of cool. We brought in our air mattresses, pillows, blankets... And put them on the cold hard concrete floor. I thought that a pile of blankets and quilts would simulate a mattress. WRONG! I instead slept on a very firm simulated soft surface. I hadn't realized how much a thick pillow matters when your bed has no give for your personal curves. So, I ended up using a pillow on top of the duffel bag that had my clothes in it.

I would say the one big drawback to the shelter was the bugs who call that structure home when no one is in it. We got to say hello to large black cockroach. If you live in Texas it is no surprise. These buggers love to live in walls and come out when it is dark. Luckily they are just gross rather than painful.

My excitement for a cool December trip was also squelched. I should have realized that Texas refuses to be predictable from a weather perspective in the fall. We had a low of 70 degrees making the ceiling fan in the shelter a sleep saver.

The park itself is huge and has a lot of flat ground hiking. I am sure we will be back there to see more of the trails. We did a short hike in the morning. I am completely out of shape, so the three miles or so were quite trek. The kids wanted nothing to do with the trip so they were ready to leave before we set foot on a trail.

We did an out and back that included part of the Elm Lake Loop and the Spillway Trail. At the end of the trail was a three story wooden tower built to let you watch the alligators in their natural habitat. Of course you could see nothing but birds, mostly ducks, scampering across the waters. We did see one alligator, live and in person, maybe thirty feet away as it ran into the lake we were walking past. See animals in nature has always been a treat, but this time, when the animal is an alligator, that really looked like it could take me down... I wasn't such a fan.