Back to Texas – Part 8

Brazos Bend State Park: Feb 25 to 27

When I left you in the last post, we were heading out of San Antonio eastbound on I-10, with Sande driving. It was a sunny Sunday morning (almost three weeks ago now), and we had country tunes blasting on the stereo. After about 30 miles, we cut off on Alt US-90 through the town of Seguin, which has a rather-bigger-than-life-size sculpture of a pecan in front of the old County Courthouse. We passed through here on our last trip to Texas two years before, but I still took a photo of the “world’s largest pecan.”

At Gonzales, 30 miles further east on Alt US-90, we pulled in to the Walmart to pick up some groceries and a few other things. We realized that the store just didn’t have some of the things we wanted and others were in quantities that were too big for our fridge, so we ended up getting only a belt for me, a sundress for Kinsley, a small pecan pie, and a battery for our digital thermometer. Well, it was actually three batteries, probably enough to last us for the rest of our camping lives.

We kept motoring east through Shiner, which has a large brewery that supplies good beer to all of Texas and beyond. We’d been through here in 2019, so we didn’t bother stopping. Just before Hallettsville, we slowed down when we saw a large painting of Jesus in front of some slightly shabby wooden buildings. A hand-painted sign said “Drive Time is a Great Time for a Little Prayer ” and another “Pecan Grove Apparition Park.” Sande swerved into the gravel parking lot.

We discovered that this was an old roller skating rink, constructed in 1945, and that the Virgin Mary had appeared here at some point in the last 80 years. There was a shrine to the Mother of God, with dozens of photos and testimonials, bouquets of artificial and real flowers, and some burning candles. We also found the stations of the cross, crudely depicted, along the entrance to the outdoor roller rink, which was intact but no longer in use. A sign in the shrine said that the anniversary of the apparition was celebrated at this site the second Sunday of every September at 3 PM. If we’re ever in the area on that date, we’ll be sure to check it out.

In Hallettsville, we walked around the town square and took photos; the Lavaca County Courthouse is one of the most impressive we’d seen in weeks. We then headed to the city park, where we made sandwiches for lunch, after which we went to the Brookshire’s grocery store on the north edge of town to pick up what we’d need for the next couple of days. Then it was back down to Alt US-90 and onwards to the east. Just beyond East Bernard, Sande turned southeast on Farm to Market Road 1875, a rather narrow roadway with bad pavement and no shoulders. At Needville, about 15 miles on, we joined state highway 36, and the road got better. Another 10 miles and we turned left onto the road to Brazos Bend State Park.

This park is still within the prairie that we’d been driving through all day, all open ranchland with scattered oak trees. But it encompasses three or four small lakes and a large cypress swamp lying just west of the Brazos River. It is only about 40 miles from the Gulf of Mexico, so the climate is almost tropical. The park is known for its birds, alligators, and snakes such as cottonmouths, copperheads, and corals, among others. There are two campgrounds and a number of hiking trails. We’d booked a site for two nights.

We checked in, found our site, and connected up the water and power. By 4:30, we were enjoying beers in our camp chairs beside the van. The temperature was still in the high 20s and would go down to only 15 overnight. We made a dinner of penne with tomato sauce, barbequed Texas smoked sausage, and salad. After eating, we had a video call with Amy and Kinsley (who would be leaving for a week in Cuba the next day), then played some Scrabble and read before turning in.

On Monday morning, after breakfast, we unhooked the van and drove to 40 Acre Lake trailhead parking lot. We packed our binoculars and the 300mm zoom lens for our camera into our backpack along with the water bottles and granola bars, since we were hoping to see some wildlife along the trail.

The path circles the lake, with the lake on one side and swamp on the other. It was still misty over the lake and the swamp. On the first leg of the trail, we saw only egrets, some sort of duck, and large black birds that looked sort of like the anhingas we knew in Florida—they perched in the trees with their wings spread out to dry. At a junction, we climbed the observation tower, which gave us a panoramic view over the park, acres of swamp and water with ranchland off in the distance.

We decided not to take the trail through the swamp to Elm Lake, but rather to continue on around 40 Acre Lake. We met a young couple, who asked whether we’d seen any alligators; they hadn’t either. But we’d hardly walked 100 meters when I spotted a young gator, maybe 4 feet long, lying on a log. Within a similar distance, I saw two more, both about the same size. And then, when I stopped to take a photo of an egret off among the cypresses, I noticed an orange and brown and black snake coiled not far from my foot, just off the path. There were still lots of birds on the lake side of the trail.

When the Lake trail ended, we crossed the Park Road and started on the Prairie Trail. This wasn’t nearly as interesting, since for the most part it traversed open fields. We saw animal trails through the grass, deer and coyote tracks in muddy patches, and some scat on the path, as well as some pretty big ant hills beside the path. Other than a few birds off in the distance and some horses at the edge of the prairie, the most interesting thing we saw was Fred way across the field in the parking lot. We figured we’d walked about 2.5 miles in total, not a lot, but good enough.

When we got back to Fred, we drove over to the Park Store. Sande looked at the souvenirs on offer while I showed my photos of the snake to a couple of park rangers. They said it was a broad banded water snake, which is not venomous but still might bite if startled. We bought a Lego alligator for Kinsley and a post card to send to Kieran for his birthday (sadly, they didn’t sell stamps and we’d forgotten to bring the ones we had from our last trip, so we couldn’t mail it from the park).

Back at our site, we headed over to the comfort station, where we both had showers. It was now 26 degrees and humid, really quite pleasant. Sande took a wrong turn coming back from the shower, and ended up taking a walk all around our campground. When she got back to the van, I was having a nap, so she read her John Prine biography until I woke up. After lunch (pastrami and Swiss sandwich for me and an apple, tortilla chips, and hummus for Sande), we seem to have just lazed around the camp site, Sande writing in her diary, both of us probably reading.

We made rice and chicken curry for supper. I made the mistake of adding yoghurt to the curry while it was cooking, and it curdled, but it was still quite delicious. We had the pecan pie with vanilla ice cream for dessert, which was even better. Being able to keep ice cream in the freezer is definitely one of the great advantages of camping in Fred. Again, we played some Scrabble and read in bed before turning out the lights, definitely something that is becoming a bit of a ritual.

In the morning, after a cool, quiet, and very dark night’s sleep, we had our usual breakfast and packed everything up. I filled our fresh water tank to about two-thirds, since we would not have any hook-ups for the next 2 or 3 nights. Before leaving the park, we dumped our waste tanks. We were on the road by about 9, headed east and south, towards Galveston.

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2 thoughts on “Back to Texas – Part 8

  1. needtea99

    John Prine – my favorite!

  2. Francis

    Doesn’t seem the Vatican invested a lot of funds in keeping up the apparition site : )

    And who knew Mary had a thing for roller skating….Holy Roller.

    Life’s weird. And thanks for keeping us informed.

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