State of Wilderness

Attwater Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge

The sun is rising over the Katy prairie, and a slightly chilly breeze greets the couple of dozen nature enthusiasts huddled in a group at the front of the parking lot for the visitor’s center. The group is waiting for vans to come pick them up, vans that are driven by wildlife biologists who know where to take the groups to have the best chance of seeing the Attwater’s prairie chickens.

This time of the year is exciting because it is when the prairie chickens are engaging in their ritual courtship behaviors. From February to May, the males try to attract a mate by “booming”, which is a process in which they inflate their air sacs and then deflate them (making the sound) while doing a little dance, sometimes charging at other males. This courtship peaks in April, which is why the NWR hosts their “BoomingNBloomin” Festival annually around this time.

We were in attendance this year, getting up early on a Saturday morning to get out there within the one-to-two hour time period that the birds are the most active. At the booming grounds, a viewing platform is temporarily placed to allow the groups to get up higher to see. Many birders have brought their long lens to shoot the birds with, while the biologists and other “guides” have set up scopes for people to get a better view. There are two trucks with antennas on top that are picking up signals from the radio collars that the female birds are wearing. This helps biologists track their breeding habits to help guide decisions on how to best help these birds.

Jason tried his hand at “digiscoping” in this picture below. Digiscoping means to combine a scope with a digital camera/phone camera to enhance the digital image. It takes a little bit of practice to make it work best.

We did get to see about a dozen of these endangered birds in the group that could be observed from the viewing platform, and then one lone chicken later, perched on a McCartney Rosebush, that was being quite the ham as we rode back in the van to the visitor center. He seemed to be showing off for our group. It was quite exciting to see so many birds considering that there are only about 90 or so of the birds left in the wild. It is one of the most endangered bird species in North America.

Just around a hundred years ago, the Attwater’s prairie chicken census was around a million birds in a habitat that ranged from Louisiana to all of coastal Texas. Their habitat shrank significantly due to land use changes, such as development and urban sprawl, conversion of fields to rice and bermuda grass productions instead of grassland, overgrazing by cattle, and invasion of non-native species of plants. From what I read on a poster at the festival, the population then further declined as a result of the movement of fire ants into their habitat. Fire ants eat insects that the prairie chicken’s chicks need for subsistence.

During our van tour, we saw several wire enclosures with dark netting across the top. These were acclimation pens to house captive-bred prairie chickens in before releasing them into the wild. Several zoos are participating in conservation efforts through breeding programs to help bring these birds back, including the Houston Zoo. We actually had one of the keepers in the van with us, who wanted to come out and see the end outcome. The biologists have done some experimenting to find out the ideal amount of time to house the captive bred birds in these acclimation pens to let them get used to the prairie before releasing them, and the time period that results in the lowest mortality turns out to be fourteen days. At the refuge, they also help the birds out by growing a rotation of crops that are helpful to the birds and allowing limited cattle grazing to help the land. They also do controlled burns to get rid of invasive plants.

As part of the annual festival’s activities, we also participated in a bird walk after viewing these birds. We had seen some huge white tailed hawks and little Northern Bobwhites from the van as we drove back, and during the walk we also saw Lincoln’s Sparrows, Barn Swallows, Purple Martins, and Upland Sandpipers (in addition to common birds that I don’t even record, like cardinals and mockingbirds). One interesting fact that the biologist who conducted our walk pointed out is that the Upland Sandpiper is also an endangered bird. He pointed out that more people go to a Texans football game than there are Upland Sandpipers left in the wild. Most of the population was wiped out by hunters after the passenger pigeons were disappearing, and the species has never been able to recover.We also saw some Black Necked Stilts and Scissor Tailed Flycatchers on the drive back. This brings our species count for the year up to 92.

The walk was not all that “birdy”, but it was really nice to be outside walking about the prairie. Many flowers were in bloom (which probably explains the “Bloomin” part of the festival name) and one of the men in our group kept pointing out the names of them as we went. It was interesting but my mind did not keep track of the information enough to recall it now.

The middle of our walk brought us to a horseshoe lake, and it was very peaceful out there. The breeze was gentle and it was quiet. I sat for a bit inside the bird blind, watching coots and grebes out on the water. For a short time, I visited with my friend Allison that I know from geocaching, who was also at the festival and participating in the same timeline of activities as we were. I got her phone number in hopes that we can plan an activity together, now that I know she also enjoys things like this.

Sebastian mostly slept in the stroller during this part, although he had been active earlier in the trip (practicing walking up and down the observation platform incline, and mooing at the cows in the nearby fields with me). He woke up when the walk ended, as we reached the open bay of a maintenance building where the Friends of Attwater Prairie Chickens group had information displays and fund raising sales set up, as well as free refreshments. We enjoyed talking to some older men that were a part of the group, after asking them about how to get to the Texas-Monthly famous Austin’s BBQ joint in Eagle Lake.

We stopped there on the way home and got enough BBQ for lunch and to have for dinner, and also found a geocache on the way home. It was a very enjoyable morning out at the preserve, located about a 45 minute drive west of Katy.

Normally, the van tours to see the prairie chickens run once a month, and people can do a car tour route to look themselves. The best time to view the chickens is around sunrise or in the hour after, like we did on our trip out there. I would recommend planning to stay for a half-day and taking a walk out there as well, or planning trip around the festival, which is usually the second weekend in April.

Here is more information on the National Wildlife Refuge:

http://www.fws.gov/refuge/Attwater_Prairie_Chicken/about.html

Texas Geocaching Challenge: Brenham

20160311_135322 — Neat Structure in Firemans Park

They say all you need to geocache is a sense of adventure and a GPS. These days, with the advent of the smartphone, you really don’t even need that GPSr. I think that sometimes we geocachers get so caught up in the game, in the numbers, in the bragging rights and competition, that we forget what got us into geocaching in the first place: that sense of adventure, a desire to explore our surroundings, to find something we never noticed before.

This sense of adventure is probably one of my defining character traits, and I brought it with me to the Annual Texas Challenge (and Geocaching Festival), which was held the first weekend of spring break in Brenham this year. I had taken the Friday off work to spend Thursday night through Saturday night in Brenham to participate in as many of the events as I was willing to sacrifice other time for (I had left my family behind for the first night).
Part of the reason I wanted to go up on Thursday night was to experience the Antique carousel at Fireman’s Park. It is such a cool story to think about how a group of citizens just found the horses abandoned in a field in 1932. Now that is a real cache! They managed to get the city to purchase the horses from the landowner and refurbish them for the delight of generations of people in Washington County. After some research, it was determined that the horses on the carousel were made sometime in the late 1800s. The carousel has been through some owner changes and refurbishments since, but the city continues to keep it going for all to enjoy.
Despite the fact that we couldn’t actually RIDE the carousel horses (for kids only), it was still pretty awesome to sit in the bench seat or stand next to the horses and ride this ancient carousel. We had an ice cream social that night, complete with a barbershop quartet, which most people were too busy talking to listen to. However, the best part of the evening for me was when the whole event was over and all had left the pavilion except a handful of us core folks, and yet the barbershop quartet was still there singing, just for fun, practice, or for each other. They were singing a beautiful rendition of “Bridge Over Troubled Water” that I was particularly enjoying when it was time for me to go, but memory of them singing that song is a little bit of a treasure.

The next day I had no particular plan except to show up, so in the morning I found a few places and had a coffee from the little coffee bar in the Pomegranate store/Funky Art Cafe that literally made me happy, and that I will look for in all the other coffee shops I go to in the future. I went to Fireman’s Park and watched Gary and his group assemble “cows” made out of plywood cutouts for a “milking” contest at the park before going for a ride with a couple I had met a few years back (Sue and Ron) to find a few caches with “Nashville Joe”, a guy who is a full-time RV-er, a lifestyle which I found fascinating. The caches we found were not that interesting in themselves, but they were near these juxtapositions of civilization and nature that kind of reminded me of what geocaching is kind of like, the mix of modern technology with bliss in nature.
We got back to Fireman’s Park in time for me to find another couple to hang out with, Kenny and Kelly, but as we were preparing to go to lunch, we also needed to find Donna and Lola, who had the coins I needed for registration. We all ended up going to lunch together at a place called Must Be Heaven, at which I had a delicious muffuletta sandwich. This restaurant is like an old fashioned soda fountain but has lots of healthy options for those on diets. I enjoyed it, but I am not the only one, because it has 4.5 stars out of 235 reviews on tripadvisor and is rated #1 out of 63 restaurants in Brenham. We also later had a dinner at Yumm! Eats and Sweets and Andrea’s Taco Shop, and a lunch at Smitty’s Cafe. All in all, I found myself pleased with all our culinary choices in this town, and I would say exploring new restaurants is one of my favorite hobbies.
Afterwards, I rode along with Donna and Lola to work on some lab caches. Lab caches are special finds set up for certain events, and are only available during a specific time frame. You don’t log them on the regular website, and they won’t show up on your list of finds, but they will count as a number for your find count. Instead of finding a container, you find a specific thing in a location, details of which are giving on the external website link, and you log each one by typing a code word into the website for each one. I worked on the lab caches with these two girls and then later with Jason and Sebastian, and here are some pictures of what you might find at the location. Through the lab caches, we had the following experiences over the weekend: discovering a sweet shop called Bliss that sells gourmet cupcakes and truffles, walking through Washington on the Brazos State Park down to the Brazos River and observing how high it was at this time, buying ice cream cones at a classic old grocery store/bbq shop at the corner of a dirt road, pushing the stroller through Main Street in Chappell Hill and checking out the shops, being the only visitors at a quiet old museum and a park in Independence and letting Sebastian run around and explore.
These were some of the best times of the weekend. Memories of these experiences are the real treasures we find while geocaching.
We also worked on finishing our Birthplace of Texas GeoTour, and by Saturday midday, we had completed enough to claim our geocoin that you earn for obtaining 25 points on your passport. Points can be earned by finding the geocaches as well as eating, shopping and lodging in Washington County (but you have to turn in your receipts to prove purchases). Jason had wanted to help the scoring team get set up with another computer and do some other misc things, so I put Sebastian in the stroller and walked from the Chamber of Commerce to the Visitors Center down in the old-fashioned downtown area to turn in our passports and pick up our coin.

20160311_112512 — One of the ammo can trophies won in the Texas Challenge on display at the Visitors Center

After we picked up our coin, we had fun exploring all the little antique shops and art galleries. One of my favorite finds during the hour or two my baby and I strolled down there was this stand of cool little stuffed animals made out of alpaca fur. They were so soft and neat looking and I contemplated buying one for Sebastian, but in the end decided they were a little too pricey (but so adorable).

Over the weekend, Sebastian explored natural areas and items, discovering things like the magic of dandelions and the boldness of older kids. He helped us find actual geocaches, sift through antiques, and learned about cisterns at a little historical area that we found walking about downtown. He had fun all the places we went, and so did we. For this reason, now Brenham will be dear to my heart, the same way Bastrop became after the Challenge that was hosted there in 2014. We have been back to Bastrop quite a bit since, spending weekends and money there having further adventures, and I feel like we might do the same in Brenham in the future.

For this reason, I think that a geocaching event is more than just claiming a smiley, getting the icon on your profile. It is more than the people you meet, and the other caches you find in the area. Just like geocaching is mostly more about the journey than the actual destination/find, this weekend was more about the exploration than finding hidden containers. In a way, the whole town was our “cache” – a treasure trove, a place where valuables (like the neat little alpaca toys, great coffee, all the fun places we discovered together) are stored.

I didn’t compete in the actual Challenge this year, but I had more fun than I usually do, less pressure, and more time to just explore. There has been talk (usually from my husband) that maybe we should do away with the competition aspect of the Challenge, as it just brings out the worst in people. Maybe after this year, they might, but I think in the future, I am going to approach big events like this with the same attitude of exploration, and find all the neat little gems about the town along the way.

Here are some other scenes from downtown Brenham:

20160312_124324 — Under this fake rock lies a geocache

20160312_123528 — Sign we found in one of the restaurants

Hundred Acre Woods

“You can’t stay in your corner of the Forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes.”
― A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh

This past weekend, we did go to others, specifically our friend Misti and her son Forest to explore, like Winnie The Pooh and his friends, the Hundred Acre Woods.

Ours, however, is a real place, made up of grass and trees and little dirt trails that beckon one to come explore them. All the side trails eventually lead back to the blacktop of the Cypresswood Hike and Bike Trail system, which runs a possible additional nine miles.

The trails were developed with bikers in mind, rather than hikers (especially those with babes on their back), and there were interesting obstacles and challenges.

Up, down, around and back again…this is how our hike felt to the legs and to my spirit. Despite the new development of this little section of property that lies just west of the Cypress Creek YMCA since the donation of the land from the Houston Endowment to the Precinct 4 Parks Department in 2013, some of it was ground I traveled in my former life.

Before Jason and I were together, I didn’t live that far from here. Sometimes I would come explore out here with my dogs, trail “running” or just exploring. I recognized the section of creek crossing where large blocks of concrete, like graffiti covered tombstones, jut out of the culvert. There was a familiar pipeline crossing Cypress Creek at another point, a point on a landscape I remember, but the trail seemed like an unfamiliar new friend. It was bittersweet in a way to remember that other time in my life, reflect on the way life had changed since then, and yet marvel at the improvements.

Although the Precinct 4 website states that this preserve contains two miles of trails, we ended up walking almost three and a half miles. The extra steps might have been from the walk from the backside of the YMCA, though I could see later that there was closer parking. The YMCA soccer field was a nice spot to let the boys explore their walking legs, though – despite the fact that they seemed more interested in the parking lot and the wire rope fence. These two boys (about seven months apart in age) hopefully have more nature exploring to do together in the future, as they both have parents who enjoy the outdoors. This park is a great place to come back to sometime to do just that.

Weekend At Foxfire Cabins: Garner and Lost Maples State Parks

It’s early morning, and already baby is experimenting with natural elements. He is checking out the properties of rock, wood and leaves. Each new treasure he finds is tested for weight and depth, and sometimes, if he can manage it before mama catches him, taste and edibility. The morning light is fine and crisp, and the sound of birds fills the air around us, including the cooing of the doves enclosed in the aviary.

There are other sounds, too. Above us, the older kids are playing on the new playscape. They have some complicated game going on involving light sabers and nerf guns. A kitty or two stops to sit on the picnic bench nearby and watch the children play. This is how morning begins on a relaxing weekend at Foxfire Cabins.

Jason and I had stumbled upon this collection of cabins right near the entrance of Lost Maples State Park a few years back, and had spent a night or two there when we didn’t feel like dealing with tent camping but wanted to enjoy the hill country. Since then, we have tried to go back a couple of times (most recently to celebrate my 40th birthday), but had to cancel our reservations. This time, we finally managed to get there, with a best friend’s family in tandem.

This first morning’s adventures took us to Leakey first, a town about thirty minutes to the west via Hwy 337, referred to by motorcyclists as part of the “Twisted Sisters” or “Three Sisters” route. “Oh great,” my friend’s husband said (sarcasm unclear), “Keely’s bringing us out to dig in the dirt for an hour”. And, we paid to do that, ha! I had given in to my middle son’s latest obsession and looked online for a place for us to go arrowhead hunting, finding an affordable option at Sam’s Digs at the Frio River Landing. For $5 a hour, we had all the dirt we could dig through, and could keep whatever we could find. One of my friend’s son found an arrowhead, and I found a huge “Frio” that Sam and his cronies there at the park made a big fuss over. Despite my son’s interest in this, in typical fashion he didn’t stick with the hard labor needed to find anything (like our trip to Crater of the Diamonds) and wandered about instead trying for a lucky surface find. For the money, though, it was a good deal and something we would try our hand at again.

After this, we caravaned south to Garner State Park, a popular park in the summer because of the historic dance, but a lovely place to visit no matter what time of year. We had a picnic lunch at the edge of the Frio River, then made a decision about a hiking trail to pursue. Jason had his heart set on the challenging Mt Baldy Trail, so we agreed to try it. I had tried this one back when Kaleb was a baby and AJ was about six, but had to turn back around because it got too tough with the baby in hand. This time, even with the Osprey baby carrier, there was a time coming down that the only safe way to approach the trail with a baby was to do a hand off, person to person, down the slippery and steep incline. It wasn’t a long trail, but it was steep, and all had a sense of victory after reaching the summit and then making it back to the parking lot safely.

After this, we completed the Hill Country Square that we had started this morning: Vanderpool west to Leakey, Leakey south to Concan, Concan east to Utopia, Utopia north to Vanderpool. We ended the night with a fajita feast courtesy of our friends, and like the night before during our burger fest, we wandered freely between the two cabins.

At some point, my best friend and I were sitting between the cabins with my oldest son, looking at awe at the multitude of stars we could see from this location. It felt like we could see the whole Milky Way, and we identified which constellations we could and watched for shooting stars as we talked.

In the morning, we got up and baby resumed his experiments, trying to touch and throw all the leaves, rocks and sticks he could find. My friend’s family played a little round of basketball and the kids continued their complicated Star Wars themed game. After we were all packed up and fed, we went next door to Lost Maples and hiked a few miles round trip to “Monkey Rock” and back. On the way home, we all met up one last time at the Old Spanish Trail Cafe in Bandera, a place where one could eat a down home country lunch buffet, where pancakes were served all day, and where, if you were interested, you could sit in a bar stool saddle.

It was a perfect weekend with friends, and I am already dreaming of the next time we can do this. I don’t know if it will happen again this year, but perhaps next year we can come out in the fall when the leaves turn, or in the summer when Sebastian is old enough to come with us tubing on the Frio and Medina Rivers. When we come, we will most likely return to Foxfire, a place that will always be dear to us, a place where I hope we come back to time and time again.