DebbieCPhillips-Photography: Buescher State Park

We had several route options to get to our first stop, Buescher State Park. It is a Texas State Park just south of Austin. I picked the route through the Sam Houston National Forrest and a bunch of little towns. I really enjoy driving that route. We drove past Cagle Recreation area and over a bridge that goes over a finger of Lake Cagle. It used to be a river before they built a dam. Right after the bridge we were in Texas prairies and lakes area. The environmental transition from the piney woods to the prairies and lakes seemed to be instant. Big woods, almost solid trees to rolling ranch land with a few feature trees in the pastures and on the fence lines. We saw lots of cows and one goat farm. I saw a long horn cow/steer/bull licking the face of it's companion. Buescher State park seems to be very rural, but we can hear the road/ highway from the campground. It has a small lake that reflects the surrounding woods beautifully. Right now the edges are covered with fall leaves. There is not a lot of color in the trees, but there are some some of the trees are really bright. We drove the scenic drive until we left Buescher State Park on the road to Bastrop State Park. It was almost sunset so we turned around and parked at the overlook and enjoyed the sunset from the top of the cliff. We looked down into the valley and watched the cattle grazing while the sun was setting. We drove back to the campsite and grilled burgers. There is a burn ban, but we got to use charcoal.

The park is beautiful. There are lots of old trees, forest, moss. There are some dry creeks leading into the low lake. When the lake is full, it looks like it could go up to the road in a few spots. It is very low now, hence the burn ban. The sites on the loop we are on are short for rv parking. There are a few that can fit a longer rig, but most can't accommodate anything more than about 21 feet. Some are smaller than that. If you have a bigger rig, be careful what site you pick when making reservations. The cabins here have the prime spots. They are right on the lake with porches overlooking the lake. The decks face basically east and there is no one staying in the cabins, so we enjoyed both our sunrises at this park on the cabin decks.

Day 2 at Buescher State Park

We started out the day watching it get light on the deck of the cabin across the street. It was too cloudy to catch a sunrise. We hiked to a giant elm tree full of Spanish moss and I hiked a bit of the winding woodland trail. Then I hiked a rather rocky trail along the bluff. I picked up mom, who was enjoying being rained on by leaves and watching the birds at the campsite, and we drove over to Bastrop State park along a gorgeous scenic drive. The hills and curves were fun. We ate lunch in their day use area and tried to hike one of the grassland trails. It was too rocky for comfort. I did go grasshopper hunting. The little grasshoppers sound like tiny helicopters when they fly from spot to spot. They were fun to watch but I got no good photos. There were also a lot of small yellow butterflies. They were fast, I got no photos of them either, but sure enjoyed watching them. We spent the afternoon lazing around the campsite. I hung out in the hammock and watched the leaves fall and listened to the birds. There are a lot of birds at this park, cardinals, woodpeckers, and a bunch of others I couldn't figure out. I didn't get pictures of the birds, they were too fast and too high. We cooked dutch oven pizza over charcoal for dinner, which came out surprisingly well. We will definitely make it again. We rushed out after dinner and caught the sunset at another overlook and then watched it get dark at the lake. It was very peaceful.

The grasshoppers were really neat. I saw 2 kinds. Both sounded like tiny helicopters when they flew. Their wings looks like angle wings with their body in the middle. The big ones had white showing and the little ones had yellow showing. I bet that flying grasshoppers are how people imagined fairies.