Home of the American alligator, lots to see here.
After all the axle excitement it was nice to relax at this state park, in the middle of nowhere, in Needville, Texas. Huge camp sites, lots of space and lots of very green grass with all the rain they’ve had this year.
Very peaceful and quiet here and on the days that the sun came out, lots of trails to hike and plenty of wildlife to see. There are about 300 alligators here (note that until they get to bigger than 8 ft, they are only considered as “food” for the adults, and are not included in the count of 300 .... if you counted the smaller ones, the number would be huge), and on the one day the temperature got up to almost 80F. They were everywhere, soaking up the sun. All kinds of birds too.
Since we’d never been to Galveston before, we took a drive (about an hour) over to the island one of the days we were here. Unfortunately it turned out to be a cold, grey rainy day so we weren’t weren’t blown away by the beach scenery or the town. We’ll have to give it another visit, some other time. It’s still pretty stark looking from all the damage done by Hurricane Ike in September 2008. Don’t even have any pictures worth sharing.
The park wasn’t even 1/3 full during the week so we thought we’d see if we could extend our stay through the weekend but no luck. Turns out that the park’s proximity to Houston (about 1/2 hour away) makes it VERY popular with the scout groups and the locals on the weekends. The ranger told us it was fully booked on weekends until May.
Oh well, I’m sure it’s not nearly so peaceful and quiet then (think 100s of little boy and girls scouts running around) so it’s good that we’re moving on.
Check out some of our pics from the park.