By our third day in the park, we had ridden our bikes over most of the 35-miles of Brazos Bend State Park's trails. You know it's a great state park when you realize you haven't even started the car in those three days. Everything is just a nice bike ride away. The trail to the best alligator habitats is now familiar to us, as we headed that way after breakfast. It wasn't long before we started seeing gators right beside the trail. Say good morning to gator #1!
Actually, there were four gators sunning near the trail together, until this big guy headed into the water. We have seen gators lay in the same position for hours, so we are pretty excited to actually see one in motion.
That still left three gators, included this one with his tail on the trail. That's the reason the pictured woman in the red blouse just couldn't walk any further down the trail. Her husband and child had already walked by, but she just couldn't make herself walk that close to an alligator. Her husband told us he had been waiting thirty minutes for her to continue their walk. But she was absolutely terrified. So when Mark offered to stop his bike and provide a shield, she finally walked through the grass and safely joined her family. Her husband was so thankful for Mark's shielding!
Now it's Denisa's turn to ride by. You can see that Denisa is leaning as far away from that gator as she can.
We were glad to see that the woman in red didn't stay longer, as this big guy soon climbed out of the water. He stopped with those very powerful jaws pointing very close to the trail.
We've grown accustomed to watching alligators that don't move for days. This one is growing plants on his back because he has laid on this spot on the spillway for so long. This is gator #6 today.
Alligators don't need to eat much because they don't burn many calories. We read that they eat about once a week, usually hunting down a water bird or turtle. It must not be a day for eating, because this heron stood right beside this gator #7.
We spotted several alligators across the lake, too far away to get a good picture. Why try hard to get a long-distance picture, when it's so easy to snap a picture of gator #12 right beside the trail?
Seeing alligators up close, we have determined that they are very friendly animals. You can just see the smile on his face this morning.
That brought us to the 40-acre lake, home to our favorite mother alligator and her family. She'll be gator #18. If you look carefully, you can see #19 crawling on her tail right behind her back left leg.
Yesterday they were swimming in the water around the mother. Today the young-uns are in the grass right beside the trail.
Mark started counting heads, and he came up with 21 babies. That would bring our alligator count up to #39.
It was hard to pull ourselves away from all this alligator baby cute-ness! We never thought we would see so many little gators so close. It felt like we had wandered right into another of God's wonders.
We learned that babies feed on insects and small fish, doing their own hunting. This little guy opened his mouth wide to give us an early view of those powerful gator jaws.
A group of alligator babies is called a "pod." They probably hatched around July, and they stay with their mother for the first year. Because baby alligators make a great food source for birds and other reptiles, it is very unusual to have this many survive this many months. Good job, Mom!
We saw a couple more larger gators in the water. Then we had to ride by gator #42 to get on down the trail.
We were looking for the other mother gator, and we found her in the swampy area on the other side of the trail. She will be #43 for us today. But you'll find more if you look at the picture below closely.
Covered with the green swamp moss, we spotted three babies on her back. Our count is now up to 46.
Finding alligators is more fun than finding Easter eggs. We continued around 40-acre lake, and this was #49.
This adolescent gator (#52) was lying in the water, framed with wildflowers.
Just in case you would think we were only seeing scales today, a passing hiker pointed out a mother nutria and her two babies in the marsh. By the time we found them, the babies were nursing. We add this furry picture as a break from all the gators.
But we really are on a mission to find as many gators as possible. Here is a full-length shot of #54 with #55's tail.
As we circled the back side of the lake, we found gators resting on the banks of the island in the middle of the lake. Then someone told us about a group of yearlings that often hang out at the corner of the lake closest to the parking lot. Mom is no longer around to watch over them, as this pod is older.
Several were posing for us as we snapped this picture of #65.
We hadn't yet walked the nature trail across the road from the nature center, so we did that to find our last few gators of the day. We ended with a record-breaking #69! Four years ago, we were impressed with the day we saw 24 alligators. We blew that record right out of the water today!
We are easily entertained with projects like alligator-counting, and it was a fun day at Brazos Bend State Park. A passer-by offered to take a photo in front of the butterfly wings, and it seemed a fitting last picture after so many gators. As much as Denisa loves counting gators, she loves hanging out with Mark even more. Hanging out with Mark AND counting gators is a great day of wandering God's wonders!
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