We moved to the Houston area on 3/1 and stayed six days at Brazos Bend State Park. In addition to birding/walking, we visited a cousin in nearby Katy and also met son Jeff at Houston International Airport (IAH) during his four hour layover as a UPS pilot on a trip out of Louisville, KY. I have told you before about how busy Texas was and came across a statistic that explains why. From 1997 to 2017 the Texas population increased 48 percent from 19 million to 29 million residents or nearly 470,000 near residents annually. The traffic is simply unbelievable! The 67 miles trip from IAH to Brazos Bend ended up taking 3 hours when traffic became bumper to bumper at 10 PM in downtown Houston.
Houston was the mostly easterly point on our Texas trip and we have started our trip towards home and are currently at Goliad SP southwest of Houston.
Here are some pictures from our Brazos and Houston stop.
Brazos says there are 300 adult alligators in the park. This one decided to take a snooze on the trail and we had to backtrack.
Baby gators stay on the back of the mother to prevent large fish and other gators from eating them. Loons and other birds do the same. This a picture with baby alligators on top of mamma gator.
Jeff flies the MD-11 aircraft. With clearance from security, we were able to visit the airplane during the layover. The cockpit sits 19 feet above the ground, and the main landing gear is 39 feet behind the cockpit. During some turns the cockpit is over grass and terrain to keep the gear on the taxiway. The flight from Louisville brought in 150,000 pounds of UPS cargo/packages.
Jeff by the MD-11 as ground crew start to load aircraft.
While waiting for Jeff to arrive, we visited the Mercer Arboretum on the edge of the airport. It was a real quiet oasis around the very noisy and busy airport.
Beautiful flowers at the Arboretum
Vic at the Arboretum
No post is complete without a bird picture. This is a Carolina Wren. It was busy building a nest in the tongue of a 5th wheel camper owned by couple from near Aberdeen, SD. We had the same thing happen to us years ago and we carried the nest back to SD. Wrens build false nests to confuse predators.