Stephen F. Austin State Park

Friday, October 25 through Sunday, October 27, 2002

See more pictures from Stephen F. Austin State Park here!

Stephen F. Austin State Park is outside of Sealy, TX. All kinds of information is available on the Parks Department web site including a map of the park.

There are a number of links for Sealy, Texas. There is the Sealy Chamber of Commerce, City of Sealy, Promotional Design Publishing Map of Sealy, Sealy Area Historical Society, Convention and Visitors Bureau and Texas Escapes. Plus other sites like the Austin County On-Line web site. Other towns in the immediate area are San Felipe, Frydek, and Rexville. There aren't that many links for these other towns. The Austin County site has information on each of them. There is also the Stephen F. Austin Park Association.

I used AAA Texas TripTik to generate driving directions from San Antonio.

Sealy has a WalMart. I didn't recognize any of the grocery stores. Since we forgot to bring dog food with us, we ran into town Friday afternoon to get some. The grocery store (Bill's) was South of Interstate 10 on the main exit.

We drove into the park around 3:00 PM Friday.

Needless to say, it rained the whole time. Below is the gateway into the park. Above is the signage on the right had side of the entry way.

Here is the ranger station. They didn't come out to greet us like the rangers did at Lake Corpus Christi State Park.

Bollinger Creek runs under this bridge. The bridge is just beyond the ranger station. WATCH FOR SNAKES!

All of the runoff has caused the creek to turn a little muddy. I didn't see any snakes.

Here is campsite shot. The spaces here are much easier to get in and out of than Lake Corpus Christi State Park. The park road the parking sites are on is mostly straight. It is also very flat.

Another view of our parking spot. The full hookup sites are off a road that is oval shaped. There was swingsets and this play area in the bottom center of the oval. Click on the picture below to get the expanded view.

Here is our campsite after we set out all the stuff. We were trying our portable fencing stuff. We have the portable folding table, folding chairs, folding barbeque stand, the outdoor dog beds, and the green carpet all laid out under the awning and inside the portable fencing. This is Saturday afternoon. It was a little on the cool side and very wet. It was sort of drizzling.

Linda's parents gave us a domino set this past summer. We've been playing ever since.

I won two out of three. That is unusual. Linda normally wins four out of five times.

Earlier Saturday, we went for a walk. The ponchos are crude but effective.

This is the road between the full hookup spaces and the ranger station (entrance). I can't get over how nice the trees are in this part of Texas. They get decent rain and the soils are probably a sandy loam. Also, given the size of the deer, the grass is pretty good as well.

We saw this marvelous hawk. Whenever I got close, it flew further into the trees. This is the best I could do. The hawk had a pretty good wingspan which is why I noticed it. I thought at first it was a barn owl.

Crows! I didn't know they had real crows in Texas. Crows are very smart about people and guns. Maybe too smart. Taking pictures of crows is hard because everytime you point a camera at them, they move away from you. The crows were all over the place. We could hear them crowing (kah-kah-kah-kah). I just couldn't get close enough to get a good picture.

This crow was at the top of a hundred plus foot tree.

Find the deer in this picture. There is actually more than one group of deer in the picture.

Here is one group of deer from the above picture. Find another?

In the evening, the deer kept visiting the park host campsites. I suspect they were feeding the deer corn.

These things are some kind of seed pods. The drop off of the trees just like apples. They are the same kind of green as golden delicious apples.

Night falls on our camp. This is the first time I've tried out our new Coleman gas lantern. It runs a very long time on a nearly empty gas bottle. I let it run for about six hours before shutting it off before going to bed. The gas bottle was less than one third full.