Enchanted Rock State park

Monday 11th April 2023

Enchanted Rock State park

We needed somewhere to break the 700 mile journey between Brazos Bend and Big Bend and Enchanted Rock State Park was recommended in the National Geographic guide to State Parks. It is one of the few places that we planned to stay for only one night, but we would have been happy to stay for longer. The park is located about 50 miles west of Austin, Tx and turned out to be really lovely. We arrived in the early afternoon and I had vowed that I would spend some time relaxing and taking things easy, but as ever, as soon as I saw the local surroundings I was hot-to-trot and keen to climb the Enchanted Rock. Gloria opted to hang out in our beautiful campsite and I set off to hike up the ~500 foot high monolith. In some ways it reminded me of Ayers Rock in central Australia, albeit a little less dramatic. Gloria and I were fortunate to be able to climb Ayers Rock in January 1990, before it was closed to honor and respect the local aboriginal culture. Both are former volcanic domes that have survived, where the surrounding countryside has eroded, and they both have tremendous views across the flat landscape for miles around. The hike up Enchanted Rock was hot and a little tiring, but technically very easy. There were many other parties, both young and old, making their way to the top. It was really worth the effort.

Later in the afternoon we took a more gentle stroll around the park, saw some new birds and ate a fine meal of Ramen noodles with pulled pork and the last of our homemade roasted tomatoes! The following morning we were up at 6am in the dark, took advantage off the showers and were on our way before the sun came up.

Mike

A party returning from the summit. I take all photos in RAW format so they can be color, B&W or anything in between! I liked this one better in B&W.

A view of the bald granite

Enchanted Rock

Lower down in the park, looking out towards a subsidiary peak

“God Bless Taxes”

Blog Sun 9th - Mon 10th April 2023

“God Bless Taxes”

We were driving along the highway when Gloria remarked: I just saw a flag that said “God Bless taxes”. That seems like a strange sentiment for  a place like Texas. Oh, yeah, Texas …”. We both thought was hilarious how the transposition of two letters from mis-reading the flag lead to such a wild thought. The night before we were sitting at the campground table when we were again laughing our heads off like a couple of primary school children. During our birding exploits we have been making good use of a fantastic birding App called Merlin that is provided free by the Cornell Ornithology Lab. It’s really helpful in many ways, including identifying birds from their song. It will also play birdsongs … but this has a tendency to happen when the phone is in your pocket. This reminded me of an old rhyme from when I was a young kid that goes: “Aunty Mary had a canary up the leg of her draws. When she farted, out it darted, like racing horse”. Needless to say, despite being in our sixties, we found ourselves in stitches thinking about this. A friend of ours at Brown University once commented: “You guys are weird”. He probably wasn’t wrong! 

We spent the afternoon of Easter Sunday and the following Monday at Brazos Bend State Park about 50 miles southwest of Houston, Texas. This is an absolutely amazing place. There are three types of ecosystem: coastal prairie, riparian hardwoods and wetlands. The park has some of the best wetland birding we have experienced anywhere, surpassing even the Everglades in terms of the number and concentration of wading birds. We used our bikes to travel around the various trails through different habitats, occasionally parking them and walking, sometimes just pushing them along as we looked for birds. We have often equated birding to being like an Easter Egg hunt and this seemed most appropriate for this weekend.

As well as lots of wild areas to explore with a great system of trails, we were also impressed that the park has some of the most beautiful picnic areas for day-use. On Sunday there were hordes of people who came out to celebrate the holiday and it was such a lovely atmosphere. One complete stranger asked us if we would like to join his party for some watermelon! 

Lake Faust Pointe was interesting but a little bit of a struggle with all the flooding and bugs. Brazos Bend was pure relaxation with a beautiful park and warm, dry and partly sunny weather.

Mike

p.s. This is the first blog post that we have written and posted at 70 miles an hour! Gloria is driving and we are on route to Big Bend NP and don't expect to have cell service the next several days

The following bird photos were mostly shot with a very big telephoto lens (500 mm, F4) and in some cases in conjunction with a 1.7 multiplier. With such great equipment you would think it would be easy to get good shots, but it really isn't. I have a ton of respect for professional nature photographers.

The view from an observation tower near 40 acre pond - Brazos Bend SP

White Faced Ibis

Common Gallinule (Moorhen)

Snowy Egret

American Bittern (this is only the second time we have ever seen this secretive bird ... and we have seen four over the past two days)

Cattle Egret in flight

Yellow crowned night heron

Black Bellied Whistling Ducks

A flower ... duhh! (no idea what sort)

Lake Fausse Point State Park

 Lake Fausse Point State Park

April 8, 2023

The drive from Grand Bay, AL to Lake Fausse Point State Park was relatively short by recent standards (240 miles) and would have been fine except for three things. Firstly, we ran into a massive rainstorm just west of New Orleans that resulted in stressful driving and delays due to accidents. Secondly, after leaving the motorway we followed the GoogleMap directions for 12 miles through the saturated countryside before coming to an unexpected impasse due to a bridge over a bayou being closed. We got some alternative directions from a helpful local man, but this involved retracing our route back to the motorway and then heading west for a further 7 miles. Finally, when we exited I-10 we found the road we wanted to take was blocked by flooding. Initially we were routed away by a policeman and pulled into a gas station to figure out what to do. Here we met a lady who said she had just driven through the flood in a regular car with no problems. Throwing caution to the wind we headed back and proceeded to drive through the deep and fast flowing water under the highway. We got through okay, but I suspect it was touch and go and we were lucky (stupid) to have tried. Anyway, we made it and the rain continued to hold off as we arrived at Lake Faust Pointe State Park .

This busy campsite was right next to a portion of the lake (we think).  Once again we were the only people in a tent! All the other people were in campers varying from modest to gigantic.  Also many of them seemed to know loads of the other “campers”.  It made me wonder if we had stumbled into the middle of some family reunion! 

After setting up the tent and having some lunch, we decided to go for a walk on the “island”.  Our first foray was thwarted by running into a family who seemed to be melting down over the prevalence of mosquitos.  As we had not brought any bug repellent with us for the walk, we returned to our camp-site and armed ourselves with both repellent and head nets.  Thank goodness for the latter or we would never have finished the walk.  Our intention was to do the longest loop, however, after a short time of battling the bugs, we opted for the medium length walk.  A few paces further on, we were forced to don our bug nets.  Subsequently, we were able to concentrate on avoiding the puddles and listening for birds.  The vegetation was nearly as thick as the insects, spotting birds was fairly difficult.  

After dinner, Mike walked back to the bayou overlook on the same trail.  I elected to read my book at the campsite.  Once we were both settled into the tent, it started to rain quite heavily.  After several hours, the rain finally tapered off.  A cup that we had left on the picnic table had about 2 inches of water!  

Determined to get an early start, we went back to the “island” to do the short walk.  The flooding was remarkable.  Several times we had to detour well off the path to avoid water deeper than our boots.  This experience made us think that the long walk wasn’t a good bet.  We decided to go out in the car and explore the area.  With a little bit of difficulty (no cell phone reception so no Google maps) we drove a loop through the countryside around the park. It’s hard to avoid the sense that southern Louisiana is more water than land.  The lake for which the park is named is quite large.  As we drove, we found swamps, levees, streams, flooded fields.  Certainly the recent heavy rains would have made a contribution to this impression, but, water seems to be everywhere.  

Later in the afternoon, Mike decided to walk the “big loop”. I elected to take a walk down the park road to some cabins.  When Mike got back he was more or less completely soaked from the shins down.  His boots may never dry out.

Today we drove to Texas.  Our route took us through Houston (if we had been able to take the toll road we would have looped around the outside.  Houston is a really big city. I was too chicken to drive that section (or any section today!).  The park  is called Brazos Bend state park.  We’ll tell you more about this wonderful location later.

Gloria

This shot shows the "footpath" from the shower / toilet block to the children's playground...at least 6 inches under water! We had to ask to switch our assigned campsite because the tent pad was only a couple of inches above water.

A typical view in this area of the flooded wetlands. Massive levees (maybe 30 feet high) separate large bodies of water from each other.

There are alligators and poisonous snakes everywhere!

Swamp Lilly

The swamps are actually beautiful ... if it weren't for the bugs!

Coastal Alabama

 Blog Thur 6th - Fri 7th April 2023

Coastal Alabama

We have spent the past two nights at an AirBNB in Grand Bay in the southwest corner of Alabama. It’s not that we wanted a break from camping, but rather that we needed to break up the journey as we head west and had read that the nearby town of Bayou La Batre was worth visiting and . There don’t appear to be many attractive campgrounds in this area so we decided to book a cottage through AirBNB. It has been a good opportunity to re-organize our gear and plan the next stages of our trip, and we have enjoyed visiting the area.

Yesterday we had a splendid day driving out the Dauphin Island, which is approached by a long causeway and spectacular bridge. It was a beautiful, hot and sunny day and we enjoyed looking for birds and paddling in the ocean. We returned via Bayou La Batre, which appears to have a large and active fishing fleet (shrimpers). I think this may be the place where the scenes from Forrest Gump were filmed, when is off working on a shrimp boat. We tried to buy some shrimp, but the minimum size was 5 lb pack and we really don’t have the means to store what we wouldn’t eat that night, so we had to pass. We got back to the cottage in the late afternoon and spent the rest of the evening trying to rationalize our gear storage and plan the next stages of our journey.

One of the biggest differences on this trip relative to 1987 is how busy the National and State Park campgrounds are. When we made our previous tour we didn’t book anything in advance and had no problems securing a campsite when we arrived at any park. In planning this vacation we made a rough itinerary but hoped to stay flexible and take things as they came. I have a tendency to over plan  and wanted to be more spontaneous. In retrospect, this was a mistake and we should have decided on our key locations and booked them months in advance, as soon as the on-line booking systems would allow us. It is now spring, whereas it was autumn last time, but my suspicion is that the parks are simply a lot busier than they were 35 years ago. Over the past ten days it has become evident that can’t just turn up and expect there to be space. In many cases we are already too late to book some of our target destinations. For example, we were unable to book a site in the Chicos campsite up in the mountains of Big Bend National Park, but were able to book in at the Cottonwoods campground down by the Rio Grande on the west side of the park. For Arches National Park there doesn’t appear to be an open campsite within fifty miles on the dates that we plan to visit, which is still a month away, so we have booked a “site” to camp in someone’s backyard in Moab through AirBNB! Even towards the end of our trip, two months in advance, we can’t get a site in Theodore National Park so we are going to stay in the State Park nearby.  As you may have gathered, I spent much of the evening time at our AirBNB trying to match up our desired schedule with availability, figuring out options, and essentially locking down campsite and the occasional AirBNB for the remainder of our trip. I think we are mostly in good shape but it’s been quite a production. So much for spontaneity!

Mike

Boardwalk at the Grand Bay Wildlife Management Area. 

The Gulf of Mexico beach at Dauphin Island. There was also an equally lovely, but calm bayside beach 

Al the houses on Dauphin Island were built on stilts. Considering the land is barely above sea level and this area is vulnerable to hurricanes, it's not surprising.

One of the less attractive features of our AIrBNB cottage was that it was 100 feet from this railroad track, and trains would come rumbling through with great regularity!

At Fort Mountain State Park in Georgia

Blog Post April 4-5, 2023

At Fort Mountain State Park in Georgia

We awoke on Tuesday to the sound of rain hitting the tent.  Once we stepped outside, we realized that it wasn’t actually raining.  The fog was so thick that condensation was dripping off the trees in a rain-like fashion.  We were somewhat surprised by the fog!

After a damp breakfast, we decided to drive to the start of a walk that would take us to the “wall” near the top of Fort Mountain.  This 930 foot wall zig zags below the summit of the mountain. It’s made of piled rock and is believed to have been constructed by Native Americans about 2,000 years ago.  The original purpose of the wall is unclear.  Interestingly, there are several other stone structures found in the southeastern states.  Some of these are walls but others are cairns, mounds or enclosures.  Legends abound regarding the people who built the wall at Fort Mountain but nothing is really known. As we walked along, the fog lifted off the top of the mountain.  Even better we were able to get some cell reception.  The forecast predicted clearing and a warm afternoon.  

Later in the day we walked a path around the spring-fed pond before returning to our campsite.  This turned out to be beautiful and we saw a lot of birds. A hearty lunch led to a slightly less ambitious afternoon!  We did hatch a plan for the next day.  The drive to Bayou le Batre, Alabama would be 430 miles—probably more than 8 hours.  So we planned on a 4:30 am wake time with a target departure of 5:30 am.

Today, Wednesday, started at 4:30 am!  I for one was not exactly bright-eyed and bushy-tailed!  Despite packing the car and tent in the dark, we were on the move by 5:15 am.  It’s really dark at that time!  Not to mention that it must be rush hour around Atlanta at that hour of the morning.  I wasn’t driving but I was freaked out—so many trucks, so much traffic all moving super fast.  Whoa! This brings me to the odd thought I had while we drove in the greater Atlanta area.  Traffic is like a big school of fish—everyone is swimming along smoothly.  Suddenly, some fish get spooked and the whole school darts off in a different direction.  With traffic, it’s similar.  Someone gets jittery, applies the brakes and suddenly the whole roadway is full of break lights and a big slow down results! (This is what happens when I have to get up too early in the morning.) 

To our surprise, we entered the central time zone shortly after crossing into Alabama.  Probably we should have realized that this would happen... Our long day got a bit longer. We arrived at our AirB&B at noon.  At this point I’m too tired to figure out how long the drive took—we leave that as an exercise for the reader.  After a few hours of birding at some locations in Mississippi (!) and a nice dinner at a restaurant, we are quite tired!  Tomorrow it’s off to explore the gulf coast of Alabama!   

Gloria

The view as we approached Fort Mountain State Park

A foggy morning indeed! (B&W)

Sitting on a plastic bin bag to have breakfast

The walk up to the summit of Fort Mountain

Centipede ??

One of many beautiful little Iris in the woods near the summit

Walking round the edge of the spring filled pond (iPhone)

Perfect reflection in the misty dead-calm (iPhone). By the time we finished walking around the fog had cleared and the sun was out.

Drugs and Guns: Refill or Reloads - We’ve got you covered.

Drugs and Guns: Refill or Reloads - We’ve got you covered.

3 April 2023

One of the great things about making a trip like this is that you see so many different parts of the country. As we were driving up to Hanging Rock State Park, I was struck by how beautiful the surrounding area was and how attractive the local villages appeared. When we arrived at the park I immediately felt that this was a wonderful place. Move on a couple of days and we are now driving through the western part of North Carolina and the contrast could not be more stark. Admittedly it was raining, but the sense of foreboding that we felt as passed the Nantahala National Forest was almost tangible. Steep sided, gloomy valleys are dotted with decrepit houses engulfed in vines. Once past the national forest, the road is littered with billboards advertising a side of American culture that is so far removed from my own experience. “Pray for Peace, but prepare for the worst” alongside the picture of an automatic rifle. “Drugs and Guns: Refills and Reloads - we’ve got you covered”. I personally think this one-stop business is missing a trick. If I were stopping by for my anti-psychotic meds and 0.762 ammo, I’d really appreciated being able to pick up a six pack and a pint of whisky at the same time.

Step back a day … We had a great time at Hanging Rock SP. I would give it 5 stars. We climbed the peak for which the park was named, toured the area where the Civilian Conservation Core (CCC) were based when they initially created the park, and walked to a couple of waterfalls. Gloria was interested to read about the CCC contribution because her uncle Raymond spent some time with this group prior to WW2. The program was initiated by President Roosevelt in response to the great depression and was responsible for a tremendous amount of conservation work, not to mention the positive impact on the lives of those involved and their families. The program was closed in 1942 as America entered the second world war and we figure that none of the people involved will be alive today.

I should mention that we experienced extremes of temperature whilst staying at Hanging Rock SP. When we arrived it was in the 70’s oF, but with a pretty strong wind. During the night the temperatures steadily steadily dropped under the clear skies, and by morning it was so cold that I lit a camp fire prior to starting the morning coffee. It warmed up considerably and we were fortunate to have cloudless blue skies.

As I write this we are in Fort Mountain SP in northern Georgia. We’ll be here two nights before making a long drive down to the coast of Alabama. We haven't had cell phone service at either of our last two campsite so there may be a delay in posting this.

P.s. Did you know there are 33,000 post offices in the USA (we were happy to find one yesterday to post a letter). There 380,000 churches. 

Mike

I’m not always great at taking people pictures, but I have vowed to make more effort on this trip. Along with a couple of landscapes, the following set of pictures show various people enjoying Hanging Rock State Park.

What the sign doesn't say is that the serious injuries and deaths occur when reluctant climbers are pushed too hard by their partners !

The view from the top was spectacular. Although hard work, the hike up is fairly short (1.5 miles) and is very safe ... unless you start scrambling around at the top with a camera.

Another hiker (Joshua) admiring the view.

Enjoying the lovely lower cascade

Photographing the falls

One happy father and his son, who seemed enthralled by the cascade

Posing for a photo ... but unfortunately not for me so they aren't looking at my camera!

Hanging Rock State Park

 Hanging Rock State Park

April 1, 2023

Rain was our bane,

Noon brought our boon!

Yesterday morning we drove from the Maryland portion of Asssateague Nat. Seashore to the Virginia portion near the Chincoteague Inlet.  We were rewarded with seeing a large number of shore birds to add to our “big year” list.  Departing around noon, we drove to Kiptopeke State park near the southern end of the DelMarVa peninsula.  

We had visited Kiptopeke from the water in 2021. A harbor of sorts has been created by sinking a number of old Liberty ships (from WW2).  We found our campsite, showered (hurray!) and went for a walk (bird-watching) before starting to prepare dinner.  In keeping with the forecast, the rain began after seven pm.  Thankfully, we had eaten and washed up by the time the sprinkles began. Preparations for an early departure were accomplished without getting very damp.  One of our campers elected to have an early night while the other worked on photos seated in the car.  

Somewhat reluctantly, we crawled out of bed this morning and were able to get the tent packed away.  A short shower of rain meant that the fly-sheet was pretty wet, but it wasn’t raining as we sorted out coffee and sandwiches for lunch.  We were on the road shortly before 8 am. Driving across the Chesapeake Bridge and tunnel was made more interesting by a high wind advisory.  It was an excellent day not to be on the boat! We drove west through Virginia and then south into North Carolina.  The trip was quite long and we experienced a few hours of rain.  In the afternoon, the rain stopped and the sun came out. 

This park is in the mountains and is known for it’s hiking trails.  It’s pretty with some good views. The campsite seems lovely. We will find out more tomorrow.

Gloria

Abstract photos are my absolute favorites. The following shots were taken at the kayak rental concession down on Chincoteague Bay near our campsite. They were taken in the 15 minutes or so prior to sunset. the light was fabulous and they were all generated using focus stacking techniques.

Sunset from the kayak rental concession at Assateague Island national Seashore

Our next door neighbors in teh campsite at Assateague Island National Seashore. To this point I would say RVs and Campers out-number tents 100:1

Great Egret in Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge