VAN PLUS STREET ART EQUALS POTENTIAL

Not necessarily realized potential, but potential.  I don't want to take yet another set of boring pics of my van simply parked in front of street art, duh.  I'm trying to create moments that actually make sense, with the van in the art.  But you have to remember that making a 10-foot-tall, 23-foot-long whale of a vehicle appear like it actually belongs in any given scene is not an easy thing.  Especially when one is surrounded by homeless handout petitioners, relentless street hustlers, other gaping groups of touristy people waiting for their turn to snap a pic, and various and sundry other distractions and impediments.

Here are a few shots from my first such attempt in Houston's Old Chinatown this morning.

It's parked right under the concrete awning, like the awning was made to fit the roof.

This was one of the original Houston murals that started the craze.  It's a bit faded by now, and doesn't lend itself to easy composition. 

The shape and color of this building with the inset black echoes the inset black of the van windows, but I haven't figured out how to frame it yet.

One of my favorite reflection shots. 

Another reflection, off the rear windows this time.

Not much artistry in this one, but OMG - an astronaut cuddling an armadillo with an oil derrick reflected in his visor - who could resist such Houstoniana?!

Interstate as pillow for that medusa head, perhaps?

Anyway, more for me to noodle on, the next time I feel like taking an early Sunday morning jaunt downtown.

STEPHEN F. AUSTIN STATE PARK

Stephen F. Austin was the sixteenth Texas state park I visited, and it was by far my least favorite.  I would recommend it only to those who either (1) want a limited generic car camping experience, or (2) those who are using its group camping facilities for a primarily social (rather than nature-based) experience, or (3) those who happen to be passing through the area and need a place to stop for the night, and can actually get a reservation.  Let me explain.

First of all, many of its facilities were closed as of April 2016.  The original map you see on the Texas Parks and Wildlife website doesn't reflect current conditions the way this annotated in-park version does.  The bridge is out on what had been the only road into the park, which necessitates a detour along a poorly developed public road, which is also on the verge of being shut down on account of general disrepair (embankments and bridges are eroding and are in questionable structural condition).  

For reasons that are not clear, the number of closed campsites is also very high.  There was no visible defect or problem apparent as to why these would be closed when our entire state park system is not able to even remotely meet public demand for access.  

Are you detecting a pattern yet?  

While we all realize that unfortunate events do sometimes happen, at a certain point we must admit that we are entering this kind of territory:

Stephen F. Austin, You Had One Job - to provide the public service of being a reasonably accessible park.  If you close campsites, trails, and roads, what exactly is remaining within the context of that function?  

I assume that some of the issues with the park derived from the 2015 Brazos River floods, but it seems like we are now entering bureaucratic excuse-making on flood-derived damages.  The worst of the flooding was almost a year ago.  The interval needed for "repairs" will soon be measurable on a geological time scale.  

It's not just the closure dysfunctions that lend a lack-of-cohesion feel to this park.

According to local signage (which is only partially correct as it oversimplifies the situation), the park is divided into a recreational component and an historical component.  Except the two are disjointed and you have to take a car to get from one to the other.  Or presumably cross a golf course on foot, and wouldn't that be fun.  

In the absence of cohesion and presentation, the whole park experience is basically lost, and one is instead subjected to some grass, trees, parking spaces, and public utilities.  Perhaps my expectations were set too high because I had just camped in the wonderful and far-better-maintained Brazos Bend State Park six days earlier, but I really did not enjoy this place.  Nevertheless, I got out on the trails to take a closer look.  Here is what I found.

View of one of the campgrounds at 5 p.m. on a Friday with all campsites reportedly bought and paid for, to the point where none were available for booking (nor does this park have any overflow facilities).  The problem with state park reservations is that they need to be made so far in advance that there are a large number of no-shows when the day of reservation finally comes, because peoples' situations have changed in the intervening time.  But the reservation system doesn't seem capable of re-selling those empty spots, resulting in a financial loss for the state and an experiential loss for Texas citizens.  

I will say one thing about the park - I have never in my life seen so many raccoon tracks.  How this area can support that density of animals is a mystery.  Are they scavenging trash from the nearby neighborhoods and golf course?  

Although both Stephen F and Brazos Bend are both situated on the Brazos River, ecological differences are readily apparent and likely owe their existence to the parks' respective positions farther from and nearer to the Gulf coast.  Stephen F is more piney, and widow-makers such as this one were abundant.  

Wildflower assemblages were also distinct in each.  

Stephen F's bottomland trails had an other-worldly appearance, as the forest floor was scoured out by floodwaters.  Muck was everywhere.  Some of the children who were staying in the park with their families gave up on their shoes and were going barefoot through it.  

You can hike all the way down to the edge of the Brazos; the question you'd have to ask yourself is, why would you want to?  It's too deep for wading, not fit for swimming, and it's an awfully large and potentially dangerous powerful river for paddling, unless someone was in possession of a good level of skill.  And catfish are not my thing (that's the primary catch for anglers).  

This bottomland was also the only place where I've ever seen poison ivy growing in standalone tree form.  It was everywhere.  

Mounds of riverine debris were pushed up far into the surrounding forest.  

Proceeding to the historical area (by vehicle, of course), it occurred to me that Stephen Fuller deserved a monument just for surviving the mosquitoes in this terrain where he set up his colony.  Again I am no doubt spoiled, but we have an extensive system of mosquito control in urban Houston areas - we have to, or else we'd be up to our ears in subtropical diseases.  The same is not true of outlying areas, and it can be a shock to encounter the incredible density of mosquitoes found there.  

The historical area is well-kept, with displays and interpretive reconstructions.  I got there too late to see the small visitor's center.  

As the old saying goes, "You never know until you go."  I went, I saw, and I will henceforth leave these lands to the ghosts of Texas history.  I left the park near sunset and drove our Airstream Interstate to an alternate destination that offered better hospitality and cohesion.   

LAKE HOUSTON PARK DAY TRIP

Having recently repaired a few issues with our 2007 Airstream Interstate which we purchased in September 2014, we were anxious to finally hit the road this past weekend and do at least one overnight so we could further test all the vehicle's systems.

Correct.  If you buy an Airstream Interstate, it could be argued that you end up with one that was created for you, as our repair sequence of posts suggests.  

Alas, we were too late to get reservations anywhere local (I forgot that Tuesday is Veterans Day, a holiday for many workers who would extend their time into a long weekend for travel purposes).  Not wanting to resort to Wallydocking (it just did not seem auspicious for our first overnight!), we decided we would take our AI on a simple day trip instead, a trip to this park.  

It was renamed Lake Houston Wilderness Park shortly after Texas Parks and Wildlife Department divested it from their system in 2006, turning its administration over to the City of Houston and Montgomery County.

Map image courtesy of Google.    

Eerily, you can still find a lot of original references to Lake Houston State Park (LHSP) on the internet, including the original official map.   

Lake Houston Park was, and still is, the best-kept outdoor secret in greater Houston, as this Chron article attests.  Years ago, back when it was still LHSP, I knew every inch of it, backcountry camped in every inch of it (in fact, my husband proposed to me there).  The state of Texas never devoted sufficient funds to developing it, and 99% of those reported 22,000 annual visitors never really left the day-use area (imagine a 5,000-acre park with only 22,000 visitors inside a city of 6.5 million people - it boggles the mind).  Even though Houston is now in the process of upgrading park facilities, it still hasn't reached a tipping point of public awareness.  I have mixed feelings about that.  

Here is our travelogue for this simple yet unprecedented day hike.

You'll notice on the Google grab above a road called "Five Mile Road".  That's because it really is five miles from one end of the park to the other.  There's nothing else like this tract of land in Houston.

We decided that we would take a deep breath and hike all the way south to Lake Isabell, a small cypress lake near the San Jacinto River.  It's almost a ten-mile round trip from the park office, and I rarely walk it (mostly bike it) because it takes at least an hour and fifteen minutes of brisk walking each way.  But it was a beautiful day with perfect weather and we decided to go for it.   

Five Mile Road is not well-traveled.  We did our trip on one of the most beautiful Sunday afternoons of the year, and saw only one other person for the entire ten miles of the road.  

One emerges from the long tunnel of trees only to be greeted by this astonishing sight.  The lake appears to be man-made (it is surrounded by pushed-up levees) but it has had many decades to naturalize.  

There is a small, old dock jutting out into the lake.  It used to be T-shaped but we saw that the T-cross had floated to the opposite side of the lake.

In another week or two or three, the cypress will complete their fall color change, and this entire scene will become a riotous orange.  

We fired up our Jetboil and had a fine meal of freeze-dried grub, which has come a long way, quality-wise, in the past few years.  

One of my favorite things to do is to trek slowly around the perimeter of Isabell, because the light and color palette changes dramatically depending on which direction you are facing.  This effect tends to persist regardless of the time of year or stage of foliage.  Here on the far south side looking north-ish, cool tones will predominate.

On the north side looking south, one catches more of the western sun and the golden tones emerge.  

There are things to see at all scales.  Here, American beautyberry in close-up. 

Not sure that I've even seen this thorny species before.  

Water bugs exploiting surface tension.  

After we had our lunch and our slow jaunt around the lake, we settled back onto the dock for a nap to recharge our batteries prior to the trek back north.  We were at the lake for several hours and not another person came by.  My husband and I had camped near this end of the park years ago while it was undergoing the state-to-city ownership transition, and we lamented that our days of routinely having Lake Isabell all to ourselves would surely soon come to a close.  If this past Sunday is any indication, that day has not yet arrived, and here we are seven or eight years later.  

View from the nap:   My guess would be wood ducks, but I did not have my long lens with me.  

On the five-mile hike back to our little RV, I must admit I was dragging.  I am physically fit, but no longer accustomed to 10-mile hikes.  So I would stop periodically to rest and smell the flowers.  

Houston:  It sucks during the summer, but this is what it looks like in November.  I believe it was snowing in Minneapolis as I was taking these photos.  Seriously.  

Deer season began at the start of this month, and what sometimes happens is that deer flee into the park, taking refuge in a place where hunting has historically been limited to only a few days per year.  They were everywhere.  

Top of the mushroom to ya.  

One of the season's final firewheels.  

Driving the 60 miles back to our home in north Galveston County, Houston skyline at sunset.   

In case you'd like to see a video that covers much this same trek, I will leave you with an offering from local Master Naturalist Ken Kramm.

Link (for mobile devices): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXIRddzCndc 

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