This morning, I didn't get up and hit the trails like I usually do. Instead, my wife had decided that for fun, we would all go to Brazos Bend State Park to see the beauty of the nature there, specifically the dozens upon dozens of alligators that populated the park.
They've limited the capacity of the park...who knows why, it's gigantic, and you'd have to purposefully try to get within 20 feet of someone you didn't come with much less six feet...so you have to purchase your tickets online. We learned that the hard way a few months ago when we tried to go and were turned away after driving an hour to get there.
Only this time, the online ticket buying backfired in a different way. Since we paid for our tickets, we had to go, even though Tropical Storm Beta is just out at sea and the whole sky was rapidly clouding over. We did have sun in the early morning, at least, so we hit the road, and went to the park.
I hiked my usual 45 minutes and then some while we were there.
The clouds moved in quickly and blotted out the sun, and it began to sprinkle a little as well. It wasn't too bad for the most part, but it did get bad enough that we decided it was time to turn around and head back to the car.
Back in 2018, I went here with my oldest son before he graduated. It was just the two of us, and none of the others in the family had seen it yet. While we were there, we saw dozens of alligators. Here's some of the pictures we took:
With the sun hiding behind the clouds today, however, the gators weren't so keen to be out and about. We walked all of the same trails that me and my son had walked in 2018, but the outpouring of alligators was nowhere to be seen.
We saw only one very small gator wallowing in the water beside the trail while we walked around the park.
It was better than nothing, which was what I was expecting we were going to see by that point of our hike, but I felt bad for the family who hadn't been there before and didn't get to see what me and my son had seen last time around.
We did see a lot of spiders though. Huuuuuuuge spiders. The were hanging out in their gigantic webs that they'd spun between the trees along the pathway, and they were the size of my hand.
This particular spider looks like he's seen better days. I'm pretty sure spiders are arachnids, and that they're supposed to have eight legs not six.
Anybody know what kind of spider this is?
One last picture to share with you. I got this really great picture of a bird, I think it's an egret, eating a dragon fly that it caught.
By the end of our time hiking around Brazos Bend, it was raining hard. We had to give up on our planned picnic lunch, and eat it in the car while we drove home.
The drive home was a white knuckle affair the entire way. The rain was making conditions absolutely miserable and dangerous. I could barely see where I was going the whole time. I was ready to drop to my knees and kiss the ground when we finally pulled into the driveway at home, and I was officially safe and sound.
It took me way longer than usual to get the rest of my stuff taken care of. I did my second workout, the yoga routine at about 10 PM.
Sorry the picture sucks so bad. Not only was it really dark at that time of night, but I can never manage to get the camera situated to a point where I can see my whole body during yoga. I'm always stretching up high and stuff, and my body tends to reach out of frame. I'll get it sorted eventually though.
I drank the last of my water, a whole quart, right after this, which meant I was going to have to wake up in the middle of the night and pee like a striped racehorse, and that I did.
I took my progress picture just before hopping in bed. I read my book in bed as I went to sleep, and I managed to conquer another day of 75 Hard.
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