It has been cloudy for the last 2 mornings, but not Sunday morning. We finally got a pretty sunrise at Magnolia Beach on this cool, windy, morning.
We lounged around for about 4 hours, taking a nice stroll along the beach. The campers were packing up and pulling out, one after another. There were more seagulls than people on the beach today.
If we didn't have a reservation, which we rarely make, we would have stayed here for a few more days. The second celebration of our anniversary was wonderful, but it was time to move on.
We traveled 113 miles to Quintana Beach County Park. We are camped on an end site, number 35. The gulf is about a 200 yard walk across the dunes.
We can see the huge ships being escorted with tug boats through the Freeport Harbor Channel from our campsite.
Lauren and I took a 1.5 mile stroll around the campground, along the beach, and along the jetty. The beach is a natural beach. The beach is narrower but the waves are much bigger than Magnolia Beach.
Ferny Kat was ready for some outside time as soon as we got here. Of course, she came back out when we returned from our walk. She enjoyed the green grass and the Grackle watch until the cool wind sent us inside.
Monday morning we went to Brazoria NWR. They had a nice memorial water garden dedicated to the volunteers in front of the Discovery Center.
We were envious of the volunteers that are allowed to work outdoors here. Maybe one day we can get back to the Crane Refuge.
We saw plenty of waterfowl and gators on the boardwalk leading to The Big Slough Trail.
We enjoyed our walk along the trail seeing more waterfowl and a few butterflies.
On our walk back across the boardwalk, we found momma gator and her babies. One of the babies was laying on momma's head.
We took a ride along the Big Slough Auto Trail, seeing lots more waterfowl, lots more gators, a few songbirds and a few hawks.
After we left the refuge, we checked out the Bastrop Bayou fishing area, and again were envious when we saw the Volunteer Village for Brazoria NWR across the road. It looked so nice.
We had our tail gate lunch at Surfside Beach, looking at our camper across the jetty. We took a short ride on Surfside Beach then made it back to camp.
After we got back to camp, we did a 1.7 mile hike to Quintana's Neotropical Bird Sanctuary and to the beach. The bird sightings were few and far between at the sanctuary. It should be picking up in the next week or so when the migration begins.
We did a little bit of people watching at the beach, then relaxed for the rest of the day at camp.
Tuesday, we went to San Bernard NWR. We saw the usual waterfowl and lots and lots of alligators on our drive along the Moccasin Pond Loop. The gators came in all sizes.
The Bobcat Trail was a nice trail, meandering through the woods and along the sloughs. Again we saw a few birds, lots of waterfowl, and gators.
We ate our picnic lunch at the boat ramp at Cedar Lake Creek Trail.
On our way out of the refuge, we saw a Raccoon standing in the road.
We also saw some Caracaras as we were bouncing down the washboard dirt road back to the pavement.
We took a walk around the jetties when we got back to camp, seeing a few shorebirds. The Red-breasted Merganser was all dolled up, out in his breeding plumage.
Wednesday, our adventure today was to check out Brazos Bend State Park. You know it's been a good day of critter watching when we take over 600 pictures between the two of us.
The state park sign has a picture of an alligator, which was the theme for the area. This is another place that the gators are in abundance. It's almost as many in this area of Texas as they have in Florida along Alligator Alley, Only here, there is no fence between you and them. Just saying.
The Plant Slough Foot Trail had a few butterflies and birds that kept our interest.
The interest in the critters was more intense when we got to Elm Lake and saw turtles, shore birds, and of course alligators.
These turtles were having a hard time on one of the logs. They looked liked they were in a logrolling competition. The log kept rolling and they kept falling off. Finally the larger one won!
We had our tailgate lunch at the 40 acre lake observation tower trail head, watching the Black Vultures sunning in a dead tree.
We saw a gator near the viewing platform before starting our walk. When we went out to the platform, he was asleep. After we got to the platform, we turned around and saw him awake. He would open his mouth and show off his teeth. I can now say, we have seen the inside of an alligator's mouth, and it was in a good way. Although, it was quite intimidating to walk back past him with his mouth open.
The trail to the observation deck was awesome. We saw lots of water fowl, Nutria, and Bitterns. Some of the Nutria were youngsters and so cute.
It was windy at the observation tower, so a few pics and down we come. There were all kinds of water fowl to take pictures of, including the Rosette Spoonbills.
There were alligators and then more alligators. Every now and then, I would get concerned because they were so close to the path. They didn't seem to mind. Not even Momma Gator with her babies nearby. Needless to say, we, or at least me, didn't let our guard down.
While I was skedaddling away from Momma Gator and her babies and Lauren was taking pictures. We had 2 Bitterns fly a few feet from us. This is definitely the closest I've ever been to a Bittern.
We got about 4.5 miles of hiking in and had no gator attacks. It has been a spectacular day!
Thursday, we took a ride to Galveston Island and visited the state park. It was a hazy kind of day and we were in a lazy kind of way. After all, yesterday was a big day of nature chasing. We enjoyed the trip taking a few pics along the way.
We took a stroll around camp, checking out the cannon and the beach when we got back.
Our last day at Quintana on Friday, was a laid back kind of day. We ate breakfast around 11 am then got Amber loaded up for her ride home.
The only reason we left camp on Friday was to top off the diesel After we returned, we took a walk to the sanctuary and the beach. The sanctuary had a little more bird activity today. The Green Herons were mighty pretty perched in the tree.
We walked back along the beach, and I finally got my toes in the water. The water was cool, but so refreshing, on this, the warmest day we have had since we got here.
