Geocaching – Page 10 – State of Wilderness

Ray Roberts State Park – Isle Du Bois Unit

It was a wild wet weather weekend.
Yet, there we were, tent camping in the midst of all that. Because we’re nature freaks.
No, really, it was because it was a weekend we could not miss, being the first Mega Event (a geocaching event drawing more than 500 particpants) in Texas since GeoWoodstock IV back in 2006. And, because it was the Texas Challenge, an annual competition among regions to see who can find the most caches in a four hour window. We go every year.
This was my fifth time to compete in the Challenge, and it might have been my best year. My oldest son did the competition with me, as well as a mom and teenage daughter that live relatively close to me. The four of us found 22 caches in that time frame, and hiked almost the entire time.
Here is my son along the trail:
He did pretty good with the hike. However, the weather was not our friend this weekend. It started raining about one hour into the four hour time span, and did not stop for about 24 hours straight. His hands got really cold, and he began whining about this about halfway through. He was a good sport though and kept up with us right until the very end, when he decided he had enough and headed to the first aid station about 15 minutes before us.
Our team won this year! We had a really good strategy for communications and technology. We also had this really awesome group of cachers that totally kicked ass and scored 35 caches each, and there were 7 people in their group. The winning region is determined by the team that has the highest average score per player. The bottom 20% of scores are tossed out, and individuals can earn bonuses by being the first to find a cache, and also the team earns bonuses for finding their “evil hides” – really hard cache hides that take an eagle eye to spot.
Here is our winning team (SouthEast Texas region) before the event started. Our team colors are pink.

The trails in this park are really nice. It seems small on the map, but when you are on foot, it seems to go on forever. Some portion of the trails are paved, but then there are several smaller footpaths (or game trails?) that go off of them. The scenery was awesome…however, it was impossible to get pictures during the Challenge because we had to move so fast and there was no time for idleness. Afterwards, it rained so much and was so cold that we could not go back out to explore. Plus, there were activities for the event, and dinner.
My idea of using our campstove to prepare hamburgers, skillet potatoes, and beans was out of the question, so we headed into Pilot Point for dinner (and to sit somewhere dry and warm for a while). Who knew Pilot Point was Texas horse heaven? There are 25,000 horses and 300 ranches in that tiny town – 7 horses per person in that town! It was really a pretty drive around town.
The park hosts a lot of deer – whitetail I am fairly sure, although they could be mule deer. What do you think you see in that first picture? We saw some but saw evidence of a lot more. Coyotes could be heard singing at night and at sunrise. There were some very noisy ravens. I had to take this picture as it was the overriding nature theme of the weekend.
Both mornings, I was up before the sunrise, listening to the birds wake up and trying to distinquish which ones they were. This birding thing is really hard for me sometimes! I think I saw tufted titmice as the sun came up Sunday, and saw some cardinals. There were other birds but I did not identify them.
We had about an hour in the morning Sunday where it cleared up and we were able to get packed up. Then we were in this big rush to get home so we could unload and get dogs and all this. I really wanted to get pictures of wildflowers and saw some cool ones on the way up there, but we were in too much of a rush both times. We want to go back out for a leisurely drive Sunday and see them, hopefully in nice weather this time.
Here is my parting shots – the best nature shot I got all weekend, and me with the “trophy” of the weekend – the infamous “Golden Ammo Can” – and our team captain.

Country Drive: Fulshear to Bellville and Back Again

WIldflowers are starting to come out, the weather is fabulous in Texas, and these two things inspire us to get out and explore. Armed with cameras, binoculars, and the GPS, we set out this Sunday morning to celebrate God’s glory in what J calls his church – Nature.

We are having a coffee issue at the house, so our first stop is at the Essence Cafe in Fulshear. This is a full service dining cafe, but you can get orders to go, including delicious frothy sweet frappucinos, which we did get, and gourmet lunch boxes, which we didn’t. The lunch boxes may be an idea for the future, though: chips, cookie and a drink as well as your pick of gourmet sandwiches such as Country French, Smoked Salmon, and the like.

After this, we headed north up 359 to I-10, then a little west towards Stephen F. Austin State Park. We didn’t enter the park proper, but we drove right past the historical area commerating this public figure of Texas statehood, which was befitting since this weekend was the 176th Anniversary of Texas statehood. We should have stopped to pay our respects, like many others – the parking lot was nearly full – but we didn’t, thinking we might come back around. Instead, we got out nearby in a pull out for the Brazos River to let the dogs out for a romp, and find the Brazos River Run cache.

We were seeking birds, butterflies, and flowers today. Didn’t get any pictures of the first two but we did see quite a bit. The birds spotted were the usual suspects: doves, chickadees, wrens, cardinals, pyrrhuloxia, grackels, sparrows, blackbirds, turkey vultures, and a few gorgeous red tailed hawks that we watched circle about with our binoculars. I cannot even claim to be able to identify the multiple butterfly species we saw. Here are some of the plants and flowers that caught our eye:

Butterweed, surrounded by annual phlox

Some may be interested to learn that phlox engages in an interesting genetic interplay in Texas, by which the plant blooms red in areas near Austin in order to naturally prevent two species from interbreeding. See more info on that here.

Here is my favorite wildflower:

I really enjoyed the sweet acacia (species above) trees today on the horizon, although this species is apparently considered a trash tree. The little gold pom poms on the branches are really pretty close up, and the splash of color on the branches broke up the barrenness of the scrubby Texas plains.

Another sight that I found enchanting was the forests covered with a layer of buttercups shining in the sun. Here is J getting the shot I wanted while I took his picture from in the truck. J is the photographer, I usually want to just tell him what I think he should photograph. I’m the “artist”, he’s the “medium”. He would prefer not to get in and out of the vehicle, though, so lately he has been telling me how to take the picture, mechanically, so I can do it myself. I took all the pictures in this blog myself, mostly with his camera.

We had a great time exploring, and even hid a couple of caches while we were out there, and made plans for where to go next time we went that way. Next drive, though, I want to go further north, so we can capture some bluebonnets with our lens.

Bear Creek Park and Some Fun-gis

Monday was a holiday for me, but not for J. The kids were still gone, and I had no idea what I was going to do with myself. I considered some more mundane pursuits, but ultimately decided I really wanted to play outside, after spending most of Sunday indoors.

So I posted a thread on the Houston Geocaching Society forum, and next thing you know, I had the company of two fun guys on a Monday morning, and we set off to explore the inner boundaries of Bear Creek Park.

Bear Creek Park is on the west side of town, and boasts 2153 acres of fields and forests. It is a multi-use park, with soccer fields, equestrian trails, and even a little mini-zoo, with a small collection of exotic animal exhibits.

We started near this cache I had found years prior, and then walked back into the forest and in a huge circle for about an hour and a half, finding five caches. We were roughly near the equestrian area. This park is in a flood plain and with all the recent rain, it was downright swampy back there. Good thing we all had boots on. The water was ankle deep in places.

The caches near here named little piggy 1, 2, and 3 were very cute. There was a lot of bird activity going on, but I forgot the binoculars. Mossies were terrible.

There was a lot of fungus among us.

After this, we decided we were tired of the sloshing about and headed for what we thought was a drier series of caches: The Elements Series. This is a series of 100 caches along a reservoir, each highlighting a different periodic element.

We found about 15 of them, and would have found 20 except the water was too high, and the caches were now watercraft-accessible only, unless you wanted to swim with the snakes. This took us another couple of hours.

I saw many signs of wildlife out this way, but no actual animals except the birds. The bird activity was gratutious. I think I even spied a loggerhead shrike from a distance. At one cache, we spooked a flock of vultures that was about 50 members deep.

Fresh deer scat:

The feral hogs have obviously been wallowing out this way, and left deep impressions on the sides of the reservoir.

(and…the rest of the story will have to continue after a game or two of Uno with the boys and bedtimes)…

Simonton After the Storm

I thought we were headed to Lake Jackson today.

But last night, the long rumored storm that was coming finally hit. Or should I say this morning. About five am, we were listening to the wind and rain pounding the side of the house and talking half coherently about how bad it was supposed to be, and I was realizing that we were probably not going to the bird sanctuary and hiking today like we planned.

But we can’t stay inside long. We just aren’t made like that. So as soon as the rain stopped, around 10 am, we headed out to Simonton to check on some caches we placed out there last week.

This is the path near one of them, the third of three in a short series highlighting different views of the Brazos River.

Simonton is a sleepy little town about 12 miles from us. The city hall and fires station are about the tiniest ones I have ever seen, and mostly it is a farming community. There are some unique businesses around the area, and a lot of country roads. We like to drive around out that way looking for hawks, and lately we’ve gotten into hiding caches out there as well.

Usually the FTF (First to Find) competition is very steep in this area. When a new cache is published, you can be that within 15 minutes, the FTF hounds will descend upon it like vultures. But for some reason, this one has not been found yet. Perhaps because people assumed that the guy who went out to find the other two found it as well? He didn’t, because he slipped in the mud and it was raining and he didn’t look very hard. But it is there. Really close to here:

I am trying to figure out what plant that is with the pink buds, but that might take me a while. I am not very knowledgeable about plants and I don’t have a reference book.

The Brazos looked higher, but not by much, but the gullies and fields were full of water. Retention ponds were doing their jobs well. We think the sky must have dropped 6″ inches of water between last night and this morning. We stopped by this place below, were on the way out, we saw a woman and a child standing with umbrellas. In their place now were water birds, thinking this was a lake shore and not a sidewalk I guess.

The birds flew away as we got closer, so the perception of the water height is not as strong in this next picture, but you can see the egrets here:

This area is actually Fulshear, which lies between Katy and Simonton. We had breakfast there in the morning, at a place called All Stars, which has become like our favorite mediocre diner. It’s close and convenient to our country explorations.

Tonight we are headed to a geocaching meetup in the forest at night, in an area that is prone to flooding, so this should be interesting. We bought big galoshes in anticipation. Hopefully it will end up being something worth writing about as well.