Back in College Station, with classes fully online, and itching to get back outdoors.
It took us a week to get back to the outdoors. Spring break had officially ended, and along with it so did my hopes of school getting canceled for the remainder of the semester. My wish was that it would just be an early summer and they would let all of the graduating seniors graduate for putting forth the effort up until then. To my dismay, this did not happen. So Kaylee and I were back in College Station and classes were fully online. We made the executive decision that if we were at home home then we would accomplish nothing and be super behind on schoolwork. I think it was the wisest choice.
Texas Parks and Wildlife had been sending out updates saying that the state parks who could remain would, but there would be some stipulations. Kaylee and I being loyal State Parks Pass holders wouldn’t let those restrictions stop us. College Station has many state parks within a 2 hours drive of it, so we decided to try and get to one every weekend by making day trips. This first weekend we picked out Lake Livingston State Park.
Soon we had our lunch packed and Kaylee’s camera ready and hit the road to Lake Livingston. I had first shift driving (typically one of us will make the drive there and the other will drive back), and we ended up making a small detour when I learned that Kaylee had never seen the Sam Houston Statue just south of Huntsville, TX on I-45. She was SUPER impressed (not really) and it was totally worth it (no it wasn’t). We then arrived at the state park and prepared for an afternoon of outdoors.
First thing’s first for the hungry and that is lunch. We found a picnic table down by the lake to sit and eat our patented Bryce & Kaylee sack lunch of a ham sandwich and other sancky items. It began to drizzle on us while eating, but thank goodness for nature’s umbrella: tree cover. After finishing lunch we went to an observation tower that was nestled up against the lake and rose up about 20-25 feet to give views of the lake. Of course we wanted pictures of our Aggie Rings (classic Ags), but Kaylee was skeptical about putting them on the wooden ledge since it was small and we were around 20 feet in the air over the lake. What if they would have fallen? They didn’t. We snatched them up before anything could happen and went on.
Lake Livingston is one of the smaller parks that we have visited. There wasn’t much else to do especially with a portion of the park being closed for renovations. We hit up a small trail that was supposed to have some kind of tree that is unusual for the area. Didn’t see it. We then wanted to go to some marked bridges (Kaylee has a thing for bridges). It was closed off. We finally stumbled upon a different one and got a few shots. The last thing we did before leaving was walk a boardwalk trail.
The boardwalk trail was about a mile loop around a small pond that had a nature viewing hut. The entire trail was an elevated boardwalk. Toward the front of the trailhead was a wider area where we set the camera up for some pictures of the two of us. This area produced one of our signature photos thus far… I told Kaylee that we should get a picture of us doing ninja poses and she obliged. I timed my ninja kick perfectly and we were left with this photo of me kicking the air rising above Kaylee’s head as she is firmly planted on the ground. Do I have hops? Yes, I think so.
The rest of the boardwalk was decently nice. It was serene and full of wildlife since the recent rain had things stirred up. It was a quick trip overall and a nice, short getaway from the couch and our homework. Exactly what we needed to energize ourselves and get our fix of the outdoors. Kaylee drove us back a different way than we came through the Sam Houston National Forest where we got to enjoy a bit more scenery in the car.
Lake Livingston State Park may not be the best park we have ever visited, but it was a nice escape from the reality that the world was living in during COVID-19. It was still another adventure and another pin to push into our map of Texas (when it finally arrived and we got it together (see Kaylee’s blog post about ‘Our Map’ for more details)).
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