WALTZ ACROSS TEXAS, PART 2: McKINNEY FALLS AND LAKE CORPUS CHRISTI STATE PARKS

I managed to squeeze in a couple more state parks before my first annual pass expired.

Do you reckon I got my money's worth?!

Here's a few pics of this quick near-loop around the state of Texas.

Upper falls at McKinney Falls State Park.  I'm originally from eastern Canada and I've never gotten used to the depths of Texas winters - we have all this gray-ness and brown-ness but none of the benefits of snow.  I have to consciously work at appreciating the outdoors at this time of year because frankly it's rather ugly compared to when everything is alive.  

The main McKinney visitors and interpretive center is still off-limits after being flooded more than 3 years ago.  The wheels of bureaucracy grind slowly, indeed.  A flagship park such as this one, right down the road from Texas Parks and Wildlife state headquarters, and they cannot manage to get it repaired.  

Here's a short video that explains the extent of that flood, which put about five feet of water inside that building.  URL here in case the embed does not display correctly on your device.

The area surrounding the lower falls is particularly distinctive in its geology.

The broad expanses of exposed bedrock have a moonscape quality.  

Picturesque, but not peaceful.  The roar of the lower falls was deafening at close range.  

I hiked around the entire park on this gray winter day. 

It's an urban park and unfortunately, development is encroaching.  The other side of that sign bears dire warnings that uncontrolled entry into the state park is not permitted.  

My customary back-door shot from my campsite.  Shades of gray.   

From Austin I proceeded southeast to Corpus Christi, although not by freeways.

Technological gizmos be damned.  So far, this is the best way I've found to navigate back roads without actually having a navigator.  There's too much information and too little ergonomics associated with every electronic version I've found to date.  If I simply write it out the night before, highlighting the route numbers, I can glance at it in less than a second for confirmation while I'm behind the wheel and going 70 mph.

Even with this, the electronic navigational options still bit me on the rear end at Step 7.  The e-map did not reveal that there's no clear signed connection between 359 and 1068 and as a result I got onto the nearby Park Road 25, which didn't show up on my app map, which I think originated with Tom Tom or one of those large-scale providers.  

Sometimes I wish I had a camera up there, so that I could navigate low-hanging situations without having to repeatedly get out of the vehicle to inspect.  After getting onto said un-reported Park Road 25, I had to pull over to re-orient myself.  No reading electronic maps while driving - that's even more dangerous than texting-while-driving because it requires a greater mental dedication.  So I pulled over at a birding parking lot to read my phone, and then had to carefully re-extricate myself out from under these branches.  It was a great reminder of just how fast conditions on the road can deteriorate in the absence of reliable navigational aids.  

Anyway, following that extrication, it was on to the park, which in itself was difficult to find because road signs alternately referred to it a "state park" and a "state recreational area".  Those different names can refer to different locations depending on the situation, and so it was confusing.

State parks, state natural areas, state historic sites, state recreational areas... the terms don't all mean the same things with respect to amenities such as camping.  

It was a weekday in winter, so Lake Corpus Christi State Park (not recreational area) was only about half full.  I had site #23 which had a nice unobstructed water view. 

The obligatory back-door pic. 

This is not really a hiking park - it's a water park, a lake-access park.  Hiking is really limited to two trails, the longer of which is called Catfish Point Trail, which is still quite short.

Visible at lower right.

Lo and behold, even though it's not a "hiking" park per se, I managed to come face to face with this critter which is more typically found in remote locations, if it is found at all (they are legendary for their shyness and avoidance of humans).

A mountain lion, probably young. Blurry because it was gone too quickly for me to get a clear shot.  

The moral of that story is that you never can be sure what you'll see, or where.

I hiked around the entire park and the Catfish Point trail twice, in order to get a half-decent walk out of the deal.  And I got to see a great sunset along the way.

As the sun gets lower, the non-colors of winter get more varied and bearable.  Sun in front of me. 

Sun behind me.  If that's an osprey out there, it's the blackest one I've ever seen.  Typically they are more mottled and brownish.  

Speaking of water birds, these guys were just foolish.  As they took off, you can see from their trace that they almost smacked into each other... twice.  Once in the foreground and then not having learned their lesson, they almost did it again as you can see in the background.  

Reliably, many deer came out near sunset.

They don't give a flip.  Nobody shoots them in state parks, or state recreational areas.  

This is quite possibly the most attractive picture ever taken of toilets and a trash dumpster:

I went out on the fishing pier for a more complete view of the sunset.

And it did not disappoint.  

On the way back home, I had one of those irrational mid-life crisis cravings for barbecue, which meant I had to drive all the way from Corpus to Alvin (Joe's BBQ - no website!) to meet the need.  I stopped in Bay City for a snack to tide me over, and discovered this gem of a roadside park.

It's called Le Tulle Park and it beats the hell out of pulling into a Super Walmart for a leg stretch.  

During this trip, I also got to test out our half-finished lithium battery retrofit for the first time, and the 12 volt portion worked perfectly.  I don't have any blog posts on that system yet, but here's an interim teaser (yes, I did re-install the closet floor, front, and door for the duration of this trip).

Stay tuned for the final description of that project, our biggest Interstate-related undertaking to date.