Three parks, two days, and one monument: an incredible adventure.
Seventy-eight state parks seems like a lot to visit. Luckily, Bryce and I have no time limit on when we want to accomplish this goal. It’s crazy looking back on it and realizing that we are already over 15% of the way through a plan started a couple months ago. I was looking at a map of all the parks to see if there were any more we could visit before Bryce and I headed back to our respective families for the summer. I noticed there were a few around the Houston area we could hit up. However, that would’ve taken multiple hours in the car if we decided to do day trips to each of these parks (plus a couple of them are small and we figured we wouldn't spend more than an hour or two at them). Once we came to this conclusion, I hopped on Airbnb and found us a reasonable place to stay a night in Galveston. After the reservation was confirmed, we reserved our places at the parks and got packed up (including a couple signature Bryce and Kaylee sack lunches).
Of course we had to stay on theme and wake up and leave later than intended, so we rushed to get the car loaded and headed out to Brazos Bend State Park in Needville. The drive was around two hours long, so we spent the time listening to our very own Spotify playlist with our favorite songs (and Bryce took a little nap, he was still a little tired). Check in at the park went smoothly due to the parks making everyone reserve their spaces online ahead of time. Although, there was this one group that didn't know that the Parks Department had made this requirement with the COVID-19 changes, so I felt a little bad for them (I don’t know if they were able to get in, but I hope so). After Bryce and I ate lunch, it was time to adventure around the park! Check out the next few blog posts for full write ups on each of the parks we visited in these two days.
It was around 6pm when we wound up leaving Brazos Bend (after we realized that they didn’t actually close at 5pm), and we were both starving so we took off for a Whatburger close to our Airbnb in Galveston. It took us about an hour to get there, so we were definitely starving. We took the food, checked in to the Airbnb (it was a little confusing at first) to finally eat, and walked down to the water. That part didn't go as planned either. At first, everything was fine. I was teaching Bryce some more photography techniques about composition, like the rule of thirds. Then I decided to move around to get a different angle of the rocks. And me, not being used to different surfaces like mud covered rocks, didn’t realize where I was stepping or what it would cause me to do, stepped down and didn’t stay standing for long. I slipped on the rocks and fell right to my bottom. After realizing how scraped up my hands and toes were, Bryce told me to rinse them off in the saltwater to kill the bacteria and that ended our trip down to the water real quick. We spent the rest of the night inside, watching tv, where nothing could hurt me.
The next morning, we headed about 10 minutes down the road to Galveston Island State Park. When looking at the trails map, Bryce and I assumed this would be one of the parks we wouldn’t spend as much time at ( which we were right about), so we made the decision to just spend the morning at the state park and then get ready for our next couple stops before going back to College Station. Galveston Island was still fun despite the beach access being closed, it was definitely like Brazos Bend in that it was different from the other parks we have been to.
Friday, May 8th was supposed to be the day that Bryce graduated from Texas A&M University with a Bachelor’s of Business Administration in Finance and would walk across the stage, but that celebration was canceled due to the coronavirus. So, we decided to do the next best thing, visit the San Jacinto Battleground and Monument State Historic Site. It was close to one of the state parks we would be visiting and figured it would be a pretty cool place for Bryce to flip his Aggie Ring and become a former student. After Galveston Island, we headed to the Monument (about an hour drive that also consisted of listening to our playlist on Spotify). I had never been to the monument and Bryce went when he was really little so he didn't exactly remember everything. It was a pretty cool site to see with the monument extending up into the cloudy sky. The clouds were moving so fast when you looked straight up it was pretty trippy. We took a lap around the monument and found a spot where the wind didn’t mess up Bryce’s hair too much for a video of him flipping his ring and some pictures. Now, I’ve only known Bryce for a few years, but I am super proud of who he is and what he has accomplished with his life. This moment was truly a special one, and I am extremely happy to have been there with him.
Next, it was time for the last stop of the trip: Sheldon Lake State Park. This state park is also an Environmental Learning Center; it still requires a reservation, but there is no fee to get into this park. These things also make it unique compared to other parks we have been to, so this trip was just full of new experiences with parks like none of the others. We didn’t spend more than an hour walking around the park after we ate lunch (and got rained on). We headed back to College Station, the trip coming to a close along with our time together in College Station. The next day Bryce and I would head back to our homes, but don’t worry, we would be back together to visit some more state parks soon.
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