Brazos Bend State Park

Here is our campsite....nice and level

One of the cute little baby alligators!

Yikes! This is a Western Pigmy Rattlesnake! Glad he's not running around!

Warning sign! They also tell you if you have a dog, keep on a very short leash!

Doesn't this look peaceful! (Great Egret)

This is the path we walked on where we spotted the alligators!

I think this was the largest of the three alligators we spotted.
(we weren't that close, across the pond, but I zoomed in and then croped the photos)

This alligator was in close proximity to the other alligator

Can you see the turtle?

This one is a little harder to capture on camera even though we were closer to it! We didn't want to get too close!

We left Galveston Island on Sunday and headed just 60 miles northwest to a state park not far from Houston. Brazos Bend State Park is not like any park we have ever stayed at. Wayne and Julie told us about this place and suggested we might enjoy seeing all the wildlife here, and in particular, the alligators. Brazos Bend is a paradise for nature lovers. They have a nature center here that is run primarily by volunteers, so we headed there first. They had several venomous snakes and some baby alligators there. We even saw a tarantula. All these critters were live, so I'm really glad they were in glass enclosures. The baby alligators were adorable. They were born in August. We talked to the ranger there and he suggested which trails to take and where to look for alligators. Not only are there alligators here, but all kinds of wildlife.

We went on a couple of different trails. The first one we saw mostly birds, but we enjoyed the scenery. It was so peaceful walking on the paths and just being surrounded by all the sounds of the different birds. We stopped home for lunch and then headed out on another trail, where there were supposed to be alligators. We were told they like to come out on the banks of the pond and lay in the sun. Since it was a sunny day, we had hopes of seeing at least a few. We didn't have to go far and we saw two in fairly close proximity to each other. One was fairly large and the other one was huge.

We headed back to our truck and saw another couple headed out on the path we just came from. We told them about the two alligators we found, and they told us about another one not too far from where we were. I'm sure we could have found more, but we figured three was enough for one day.

We had a nice time today. We also are enjoying our campsite here. This is very peaceful, and our campsite is very spacious. We are just relaxing tonight and getting ready to hit the road tomorrow. We will be headed to Canyon Lake and staying at a COE park there.