eating on the trail

What’s a good hike without a good trail mix for snacking? Yeah, I thought you’d think the same way I do!

GORP – Good ‘ol Raisins n’ Peanuts, Granola Oats Raisins and Peanuts, or Gobs of Raw Protein – whatever you call it, it’s a tasty snack to get a mix of carbs and protein that will keep you going on the hiking trail. You could buy some packaged trail mix, but why bother when it’s so easy to create your own? One of my personal favorites is to mix raisins, whole wheat Goldfish crackers and almonds. If you want other ideas, check out all the recipes at GORP.com!

Do you have a favorite trail mix or GORP combination? Let us know in the comments below!

Reduced fee/free park passes for seniors

This past spring, we picked up a Texas State Parks Pass to get us into all the state parks for free. We were visiting several state parks in the Austin area and we thought that it would save us some cash if we got the pass. And also encourage us to visit more state parks. The Texas State Parks Pass is $60 for one card, and $75 for two cards.

If you happen to be 65 or older, you can get a Texas Parklands Bluebonnet Passport which gives you a 50% discount on park entry fees. I’ve been told that if you’re over 70, you get in to Texas State Parks for free with this pass. The website says you had to turn 65 before 9/1/1995 to get in free. I suspect that the website may be incorrect and the 70 years of age cutoff is more likely. But you can check at a nearby Texas State Park to find out. Or call their Customer Service Center: 512-389-8900.

For National Parks, you can get an Interagency Pass. The $80 annual pass gets you into all Forest Service, National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Reclamation, and US Fish & Wildlife Service sites charging entrance or standard amenity fees. If you’re 62 or older, you can get an Interagency Senior Pass (formerly the Golden Passport). The Interagency Senior Pass is $10 and does not expire.

LSC-CyFair Walking Route

Lone Star College-CyFair has a beautiful campus and on a nice fall day like today it’s a great place to get in a short urban hike. Want to know the best routes (and distances of those routes)? Check out the presentation below!

State Parks near Houston

While not within 60 miles of Houston, Pedernales Falls is a great park!

State Parks are a great place for hiking and exploring nature and Texas has an abundance of them!

Texas Parks and Wildlife Department has a handy map of state parks within 60 miles of Houston. There’s also a nifty Houston getaways travel guide. Get a Texas State Parks pass and you have free admission to all Texas State Parks for as little as $60/year. What a great deal for a year’s worth of recreation! We picked one up this past spring and used it at a bunch of state parks in the Austin area, and also for a couple of trips to Battleship Texas. We’ll definitely be renewing at the end of our year – we’ve enjoyed the use of the pass and plan on having more excursions with it now that the weather has cooled off.

About poison ivy

I’ve never touched poison ivy in my life. And I’m not sure I’ve actually seen it anywhere before. But I’m tremendously paranoid about getting anywhere near it. I know all about the old adage: “leaves of three, leave them be.” So anything remotely 3-leafed totally freaks me out.

I started doing some research on it today, and it seems like there are a bunch of different varieties of poison ivy – some with even 5-7 leaves sometimes! Sometimes the leaves are smooth and waxy, sometimes they’re dull with jagged edges. It can grow as a climbing vine or a shrub. It almost seems like you have to touch it, wait 10 minutes and see if you get a rash to find out if it’s really poison ivy. Or just avoid anything remotely poison ivy-looking.

So, here’s my roundup on poison ivy resources:

• Texas Parks and Wildlife Young Naturalist article on Poison Ivy
• About.com Pediatrics Poison Ivy Photo Gallery
• Poison Ivy, Oak and Sumac FactSheet (from Texas Department of Insurance Division of Workers’ Compensation)

My take on dealing with Poison Ivy and its relatives? Wear long pants whenever hiking. Period. I don’t care if it’s 100 degrees with 90% humidity outside – if I’m hiking, I’m wearing jeans or pants!

Hiking the Bear Creek Pioneers Park Nature Trail

A couple of days ago, the kids and I set out to hike the Nature Trail at Bear Creek Pioneers Park in western Harris County. We’ ve been to the park many times in the past – it’s a great park with a couple of nice playgrounds, soccer fields, baseball fields, a walking/jogging track, and oodles of picnic tables and pavilions. Oh, and a great wildlife viewing area with longhorns, bison, pigs, ostriches, deer and other assorted animals.

Even though we’ve been there many times, we had never even known about the nature trail until a coworker told me about it. Granted, this is a huge park (2153.63 acres), so I’m sure there are other parts of the park that we just haven’t discovered yet.

With map in hand, we set out to find the nature trail. The trail entrance is not very well marked. Off the parking lot, you see a gated area with a big sign posting the trail rules and another with information about poisonous snakes. That’s your clue that you’re on the right track.

Head to the back of the open grassy area beyond the snake sign and you’ll see a break in the trees – that’s the beginning of your trail. The trail is not very well maintained – and apparently not used much either. In many areas, it’s a bit difficult to tell which way the trail goes since the trail isn’t marked and the foot traffic is so low that the trail path has vegetation growing 4-6 inches high in some places.

As we entered the trail, we encountered someone leaving and I asked him about the state of the trail, wondering if it was too wet. He said it was fine and said to look for some deer over by the bridge.

We saw lots of deer tracks…

 but no deer.

We only got a bit beyond the bridge before the path was just impassable. All of Bear Creek Park is in a floodplain and the Nature Trail appears to be in an especially low area. We’ve had a little bit of rain over the last few weeks, but nothing that I would consider out of the ordinary, especially considering how dry the summer was.

Now if I didn’t have kids with me, I might have considered the puddles below just a minor roadblock and would have detoured around. But with kids who already had a good bit of mud splattered up the backs of their pants from the previous muddy spots on the trail, I decided that these puddles were a sign that it was time to turn around and go back to the car.

On the way back, we did our usual lollygagging – checking out a caterpillar that was hanging out on my shoe.

We relocated the caterpillar to a bush off the trail so that he’d have a chance at surviving and not getting squashed by a hiking boot.

We also checked out a cool tree along the trail…

We checked out a loblolly pine that had lost a bunch of bark.

And crunched and kicked the bark that had fallen on the ground.

And then made our way back to civilization.

So, what was the verdict? Well, if there hadn’t been a drop of rain for months I might try the trail again. I was really disappointed, even though I kind of had the feeling going in that we wouldn’t be able to hike the whole trail. I just expected us to be able to go further than we did.

What did my fellow reviewers think? Well, let’s hear what they had to say:

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Hiking the Kleb Woods Nature Preserve

This trail review is a long time in the making, so I’d like for my dear readers to pretend that this was posted way back in February 2009.

The Kleb Woods Nature Preserve is located in Northwest Harris County, off Muesche Rd (near FM 2920). It is a nice wooded tract of land with a rich history – it’s very hard to believe that the property once was a farm. It is now densely wooded and the only reminders of its farming history are the various farming implements that dot the property.

Off the parking lot on Draper Rd., you have access to two different sets of hiking trails.  At the end of Draper Rd., there is a trail that takes you to the bark mulch hiking trail in the Forest Preserve area. We decided to save the Forest Preserve trail for another time and instead went on the Nature Center trail that has access from the parking lot on Draper Rd.

The trail to the Nature Center is a wide crushed granite trail with occasional benches along the way for you to take the occasional break. Not that you really need it – the trail to the nature center is very short (only 750 feet, according to the trail map).

Apparently, roadrunners sometimes wander across the trail. We didn’t see any. Unless you count the non-feathered short human kind.

The Nature Center building has nice restroom facilities and outdoor seating. You can sit out on the deck and enjoy a snack or even bring your lunch!

We chose to take the Farm Trail first, to see the old farm home of Elmer Kleb. The granite trail led to an old barn where you could see some antique farm equipment. Hard to believe people used to sit on those things and work for hours a day! These days, farmers drive around luxurious tractors complete with air conditioning and a seat that’s just a step away from being a cushy recliner.

Behind the barn was the old farm house (on the right) and guest house (on the left). I sure wish we could have gone inside the houses, but they were locked up tight. I just love looking at old buildings. They’re so interesting and full of character!

Beyond the Kleb house, there are two trails – a gravel path and a dirt path. We, of course, tried out the dirt path first.

It appeared to head roughly to the north. It had some bridges that were under construction, and then the path seemed to peter off. We suspected that they’re creating a new trail that will eventually meet up with the Forest Preserve trail to the north.

So we backtracked to the house and headed off on the crushed granite Farm Trail. To us, the trail was just too well-kept and not rustic enough. If there are tree branches to pick up, big rocks to kick around and dirt to draw in, then my kids just aren’t interested in hiking.

So we headed off on the Nature Trail. Make sure you take the side trail to see the windmill. As I mentioned before, once upon a time this whole area was a farm. And then Elmer inherited the place and let it go back to being a forest. Thus you find weird things like a tree growing through a windmill.

The Nature Trail is much more rustic – mostly leaf and pine needles over a dirt path. We had fun checking out the many holes in the trail that were dug by the forest animals.

Watch out for small tree stumps in the path. I’d sure like to see these things removed since I tend to spend a lot of time checking out the scenery and will sometimes not pay so much attention to the trail itself.

Check out the wetlands too!

All in all, it was a pretty nice hike. We probably spent about an hour and a half doing the two trails, but I’m sure others would take less time on the hike if they didn’t spend as much time playing with sticks as we did.

Don’t take my word for it – check out what my fellow reviewers had to say about the hike:

Okay, maybe you should ignore the reviewers. What do they know anyway? They have the attention span of a gnat.