Any guess?
Here's a hint: We're not in Texas.
We have entered the "Dog Days" of summer here, and for us that means that any significant outdoor activity needs to be started and finished before noon to beat the heat. One activity that seems to fit perfectly into these days is kayaking.
The Guadalupe River runs through nearby Kerrville, Texas, and has small dams in several places forming lakes. For our first trips in our new kayaks we put into the lower lake, but this week we decided to try the middle section. You can click on the picture below (or any picture!) for a bigger, clearer version.
We launched from a put-in spot in Louise Hays Park, right in the middle of Kerrville, and headed up-river from there. There is an island called Tranquility Island within the park, and it has some towering cypress trees that are used for nesting by a group of Yellow-crowned Night-Herons.
The herons have been using this site for decades, and it turns out that the best way to see their nests is from the river! The youngsters were almost as large as the adults, and the nests were starting to look crowded. It won't be long before these youngsters leave the nest and strike out on their own.
An adult bird arrived at this nest and the four youngsters immediately started to gobble up whatever delicacy had been delivered. We did learn not to get directly under the nests as we saw a couple of "poops" get shot down into the water. No thank you!!
While the first part of our paddle was definitely in town, with plenty of buildings and traffic noise, we soon got into a quieter and more remote section of the river.
We managed to get a 3-night reservation at South Llano River State Park in Junction. We are finding that it's difficult to get reservations at any of the state parks as the on-line reservation system allows folks to reserve months in advance.
Since S. Llano is only 1 1/2 hours from our house, and we have a very difficult time sitting around waiting to leave, we decided to leave a little early. We knew that check-out is noon and check-in is 2:00pm so we thought arriving a little early wouldn’t be a problem.
We were wrong. Even though the site was vacant, this park has a strict policy of not allowing early check-in.
With an hour-and-a-half to kill, we parked in the day
use area and went on a nice little hike through the woods.
We headed back to headquarters to check-in (making sure it was after 2:00 pm!).
We had a very nice site (#45) with an easy back-in and no close neighbors.
After getting set up we headed into Junction for lunch. We have been to this area many times
including volunteering at S. Llano in November 2019 so we are familiar with
the restaurants in town. The Mexican
restaurant wasn’t open so we headed to Lum’s for barbeque. Lum’s has been in Junction since 1976 and has
excellent barbeque.
After lunch we headed back to the park where we stopped at a couple of bird blinds. In the heat of the day, the water features in the blinds are particularly popular.
There are 4 bird blinds in the park. We usually aren’t in Texas during this time of the year and were interested to see what birds we would see at the blinds.
The male Painted Bunting is a spectacularly colorful bird, while the female is more muted. Remember, she has to sit on the nest and not get eaten!!
There are 22.7 miles of trails in the park. Our second day we were on a trail at 7 am.
Some of the trail was nice and level.
Besides birds, there were some beautiful wildflowers.
Our goal was to walk 3 miles. This is the farthest I’ve walked since my knee surgery. I made it the 3 miles but I was happy to get to the truck!
After the walk we went back to the bird blinds and took more pictures.
The next day we hiked the River Trail. It’s a beautiful trail that meanders along the Llano River.
This Turkey Vulture was relaxing and hadn't started flying yet this morning.
Our last morning we took our time getting packed up and headed back home.
Our second outing in the new trailer went well. Even though we still have cabinets without anything in them, with a much smaller trailer we don’t bring everything we own with us.
So, when my mouse battery quit working, we had to make a trip to the dollar store. Other than that, I think we’ve got things figured out with the new trailer.
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It was nice to get out and go someplace this year for Mark’s birthday.
Not too far from our house is the second largest bat population in the world that is open to the public.
We have been to many bat caves and always enjoy the show. This sounded like something fun to do so we made reservations along with a reservation for a beautiful cabin in the hill country.
We left our house and drove to Utopia (Texas). After having lunch at the Lost Maples Café, it was too early to check into our cabin so we headed to Garner State Park.
We spent a couple of hours doing a little bird watching.
From Garner we drove back to Utopia to check into our cabin at the Utopia River Retreat.
The cabin was very nice but the best part was the back deck.
The back deck is about 25’ up in the treetops.
We had a couple of hours to sit and enjoy the view before heading to the bat cave.
Texas has 33 species of bats, more than any other state. The Mexican free-tailed bat became the official state flying mammal in 1995.
The Frio Bat Cave is located on a private parcel of land-locked land within the Annandale Ranch in Concan.
We met the guide at the gate entrance at 7:00 pm and followed him the 2 miles through the ranch to the Frio Cave. This was a Monday evening and there were only 3 other couples and a couple of kids.
The walk up to the cave entrance was short, a little steep, on a paved road. The wildflowers were in full bloom.
This is a maternity cave where 5-10 million bats return
each spring to give birth to their pups. After the pups are born the population
increases to 10-12 million making it the second-largest single-mammal colony in
the world.
About 7:50 the bats started emerging.
It didn’t take long before the sky was full of bats.
The first room of the cave is 225 feet wide and 80 feet long with a 40-foot ceiling. The second room, known as “the great bat den”, is roughly twice the size of a football field.
We walked down to the Sabinal River before spending some time on the gazebo.
Here’s Mark with some of his birthday gifts (new binoculars and hat).
We enjoyed our time in this beautiful area.
On our way back home, we stopped at Lost Maples State Natural Area in Vanderpool, for a little hiking and birding. It’s also on the Sabinal River.
We have been to this park many times but I didn’t recall ever getting a magnet.
Lost Maples is definitely magnet worthy!
Feliz Cumpleaños, Mark!
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