We drove up to the park entrance fee station and there everyone was.  It seemed like we all had arrived almost at the same time.  What a miracle! There was David, Luther, An, Tea, Betsy, Corinne, Christa, Lisa, Barry, Sara, Andrew, Taylor, Von,  Lynda, and myself.  Great group and great timing.

Then I found out the bad news.  Stephen F. Austin State Park had been hit by a flood on Memorial Day and a good portion of the trails that I wanted to hike were closed due to downed trees, silt, and the mess that a flood brings.  What to do?

Why simply hike the trails that were left.  So off we went.  But first, we made a stop at the restrooms for a last minute pit-stop.  This is where we found the first of our surprises.  In the tall grass, next to the restrooms, were beautiful, blooming, purple passion flowers.  Their elegant and strange floral design was offset by a lovely lavender color.  As a bonus a deeply maroon leather flower (Clematis species) was hiding upside down in the same tall grass.  We also saw a marauding wolf spider move through the grass and few 100 yards away we stopped to admire the deep, red Turk's Cap that was blooming in the shade.  

We began to hike deeper into the forest.  This forest was different than the Piney Woods that we usually visit.  It was more open, with large Cedar Elms, Hackberry, Western Soapberry, and Pecan trees scattered across the landscape.  There was plenty of sunlight that hit the forest floor so grass and wildflowers were in abundance.  I heard in the distance, a Red-bellied Woodpecker and we saw Northern Cardinals fly through the understory.

We hiked on and came to an overlook of the Brazos River.  This big, 840 miles in Texas, muddy, red, river has moved and carved its channels over the upper Texas Coast for eons of time.  As the sunny weather heated up we were saved from the humidity by small, persistent breezes that flowed through the forest and keep us cool.

Insects were also out and David showed us squash bugs, stink bugs, hunter beetles, Giant Swallowtail Butterflies, and other six-legged critters.  In the understory, Prickley Ash (my favor name for this plant is, Toothache Tree), Deciduous Holly, hawthorn, grape vine (complete with ripe grapes), Trumpet Vine, and Virginia Creeper claimed their spots in the forest.  A Leopard Frog made an appearance and was so perfectly camouflaged that several people had to nearly step on it to view this spotted beauty.

Finally, as I thought we were about at the end, I saw that at the terrace to the floodplain, the trail dipped down and was open.  Down we went about 8 to 10 feet as we started walking the floor of the floodplain.  Here Eastern Cottonwood was dominant and we saw large tree after large tree.  We measured one tree and it was five feet in diameter.  This gallery forest was magnificent, tall, and open.  It was here we broke for lunch.

After lunch we began to head back, since further movement into the floodplain was blocked off by no trail hiking signs due to the flood.  Before we finished our hike I heard a Yellow-billed Cuckoo, the famed “Rain Crow”, croak as we approached the end of our hike.  That was a suiting and fitting finale for our walk in Stephen F. Austin State Park.  Beautiful, mysterious, and fulfilling.

Brandt Mannchen
June 10, 2017