Piney Woods

We planned to honor the kids' wishes and spend the day at the beach in Galveston, but Galveston was insanely windy and due for storms so we stayed closer to base camp and toured Huntsville State Park.  We were shown around the nature center by Park Ranger Jessica.  The kids silently avoided eye-contact, but buzzed about and examined everything.  They enjoyed looking at turtles, snakes, plants and butterflies, but their favorite was a baby alligator that temporarily inhabited a small aquarium filled with small fish and aquatic plants. 

 

The ranger was about to cancel a scheduled wilderness hike, but weather maps from our cell phones indicated we had a couple hours to spare.  The incoming weather scared everybody away, so we enjoyed our own private tour.  Norah and Justin scouted for berries, pine cones, fungus, moss, lichens, spiders and butterflies, but soon our path was crossed with by a very large female water turtle heading into the forest to lay her eggs.  Jessica played to her audience and prompted the turtle to demonstrate her natural defense mechanism much to the kids simultaneous delight and disgust.

The kids kept good pace, but spent a large amount of time on our shoulders, particularly around the water's edge where they were constantly on lookout for "crocodiles".  Jessica made a series of valiant efforts to explain that alligators were in fact the local reptilian residents, but the kids had their own opinon about that- something that never changed throughout the entirety of vacation.

We wound through trails under the pines, and clip-clopped on boardwalks over the water grasses. We all found the Piney Woods region to be beautiful, serene, and photogenic.  At the end of the trip we let the kids put a sticker on the Piney Woods page of their Wilderness Passports and headed back to the cabin.  The day was declared a success when, not only did they both fall asleep on the way back, but then ASKED to go to bed that evening!