Urban Hike

Joe and I head to downtown Houston for our second hike. It was the hike and bike train along Buffalo Bayou below downtown. This is a relatively new trail that is lined with lights that range from blue to white depending on the moon phase.

It was only a two-mile hike, but there were a lot of "hills" and stairs! Below are the stairs up to UH-Downtown. This is where we went up and crossed over to the other side. UHD has a lot of cool architecture. It is metal art deco. These metal towers by Wortham Center are lit at night. Each have a different theme. This was Texas agriculture. Yea kayakers! We saw many people braving the bayou. The renovation with 23 access points to the trail and a new boat launch has tried to get more people down to the area.

This was the best art work we saw. Metal canoes at several of the major entry points to the trail.

We did not see much wildlife, just some ducks, but we heard (and smelled) bats.

60 Hikes Within 60 Miles of Houston

Joe has moved to Houston! Yea! I celebrated by buying the book "60 Hikes Within 60 Miles of Houston."
We ventured out on our first hike to San Bernard National Wildlife Refuge on Saturday. I forgot my camera, so I will rely on Google Images to illustrate our adventure.

At the park, there are three trails and an auto tour to look at birds. We drove by the recommend trail and thought it would be too boring and hot. It was on top of a low levee with only one tree in the distance. We decided to tackle the wooded trail to look for some shade. We only got a few feet in when we saw....

Yikes! These are Banana Spiders or Wood Spiders. They are large and scary. At first there was only a couple on the sides, so I agreed to venture slowly on the trail, only with Joe going first and me holding on to his backpack cringing. But, there were just too many around. I could not handle it anymore and made him go back. We knew where to duck on the way back to get around the spiders, so we thought. We then realized how many more that we didn't see on the way into the trail. Eeeeek! Can you imagine that smacking you in the face!

The other problem was the mosquitoes!I had never seen so many. Every time we stopped to move around a spider web. We were swarmed by thousands of mosquitoes. I have to recommend BullFrog mosquito repellent/sunscreen. I didn't get one bite!

We ventured to the second trail that was by the river, but there were spiders there too. So we went back to the first trail that the book recommended, and it was great. Very hot, but we saw three pigs, tri-color herons, Carolina Wren, Mississippi Kite (a life bird for Joe), a caracara (pictured below) and a lot of other coastal type birds.

We also saw an alligator. When we first saw it, we thought it was a cute little thing about this big:

Then we realized that what we saw was only only the head, it was really this big:This is when Joe tells me that I can't outrun an alligator. Hmmm....there is only one tree on this trail remember. Luckily the gator is not hungry and stays in the water.

Our first hike was a success and look forward to the fall when the spiders die off and the temperatures cool. Only 59 hikes to go!

Biloxi!

Nancy, mom and I headed on a road trip to Biloxi this week.

We started the trip with a toast to Kathy with Oreos, cookies she always insisted that we get when we went on these trips. We were greeted with dark, scary clouds and a threat of getting hit by a tropical storm.
We were worried about the rain and not getting any beach time, but when the weather cleared up, we walked along the beach and nobody could pay us to get in. The combination of lots of jellyfish, mucky water and the presence of oil was a huge turnoff. Up and down the coast there were crews cleaning up the oil off the beach.
We were able to hit the pool a couple hours a day in between downpours. We were often visited by our friend the frog.We spent the rest of the time going from casino to casino. Our favorite was Hard Rock. They gave us lots of comps and had fun machines. Nancy did the best there, I won a lot at Island View in Gulfport. Mom...is lucky she didn't lose her shirt.

At the Beau Rivarge in Biloxi me and Nancy ran into David Hasseloff. Ok, maybe we stalked him. He is really tall and skinny, but not as good looking in person. He is there for a Gulf benefit that will air later this month.

It was a fun trip and maybe too easy of a trip to Biloxi. I hear the slots calling me.

Sean Swimming