Exploring everything but the cavern at Kickapoo Cavern State Park

While we were staying at the campground at Fort Clark, we realized that we were just 25 miles away from a Texas state park that we have never visited. So we drove to Kickapoo Cavern State Park to check it out. One would assume that we would be touring the cavern, but we found out that the once-weekly tour is booked up for the next two months. So we're going to explore everything but the cavern at Kickapoo Cavern State Park.

On our 25-mile drive to the park we passed miles of cactus and creosote, wondering what this land could be used for. We found out that this state park was once a sheep and goat ranch. Those must be the only two animals that can survive out here. Our first trail took us beside some corrals and the old windmill that was used to pump water for the animals. This trail took us to the top of the hill, where a memorial stands to the rancher that sold the land to Texas and helped develop the state park. From there we could look out over what used to be the Seargeant goat and sheep ranch.

But Denisa found something even better than the views from the hill and the memorial. She found a beautifully blooming claret cup cactus!

Also called a hedgehog cactus because of the shape, their blooms are a vibrant color in this brown desert. When we reported this find to the rangers at the park office, they didn't yet know that this stunning cactus was already blooming this spring.

The only other color we found in this desert landscape were these purple-blooming bushes.

We are familiar with mountain laurel from our hiking trips in the East, and this doesn't look anything like that. But the ranger explained that this is Texas mountain laurel. 

The bees and butterflies must be starving for pollen, because they were swarming the purple blooms.

Our next hike was to the top of Armadillo hill. We were definitely in the desert, but we were enjoying temperatures that were lower than we've had for the past week. They only topped out in the low 80s today. That's much better than the 90-100 degree temperatures we have been "enjoying" for the last week.

All this "cool" weather went right to our head, and we started a third hike in this state park. We started the 5-mile Barbado Loop that took us up to the highest point in the park.

We noticed some unusual rock formations on our hikes today. We would often see these curious white round tubes sticking out of the gray limestone. They are definitely toe-stubbers. We would also find pieces of this uniquely-colored rock that looked like sweet potatoes laying by the trail. The ranger told us that they are asked about these rocks often. It is churt, a rock that the Indians used for making arrow tips because flint isn't found in this part of the country.

When hiking in the desert, we are always amazed at how resilient the plants are that thrive here. We found an old metal pipe that had rusted in two and fallen over.  A prickly pear cactus used the little bit of soil that filled that pipe to root a new plant.

This claret cup cactus was thriving, even though it was squeezed between two chunks of limestone.

We took a picture of another claret cup in full bloom. Based on the number of pictures of this cactus in this blog, you might think we were tripping over them every other step. Quite the contrary, in hiking eight miles today, we only saw three of them. But Denisa just couldn't pass up those beautiful blooms without a picture every.single.time!

While exploring everything but the cavern, we found out that a large colony of Mexican free-tailed bats live in another cave in the park. They spend their winters in Mexico, and then most of the world's free-tailed bats come back to Texas each spring to feed on the mosquitoes and other insects here. They will give birth and raise their babies while they are in Texas. While they are sleeping inside the cave right now, we could see the life-sized bronze replica of the bat on the signage outside.

This is a little early in the spring for the bats to return, but the ranger said they arrived just last week. If we wanted to stay an extra 4 hours, we could have sat right outside Stuart Cave and watched them take wing for their bug feast tonight. These bats are welcome visitors, because each bat will eat the equivalent of their body weight in insects every single night.

We decided not to stay another four hours because we have already hiked most of the hikes and explored everything but the cavern here at Kickapoo Cavern State Park. We can check off another park on our very long list of Texas state parks visited.