Brazos Bend State Park

We would like to thank Sandy, our good friend back home for this one. Sandy, grew up in Houston, Texas, and has been giving us suggestions for places to visit while we’re here and Brazos Bend State Park is one of them. This is a beautiful park along the west bank of the Brazos River about 50 driving miles south of Houston.

We lucked out and got a campsite despite arriving kind of late in the day (Tim and Shannon who?). The park office closed at 4:30 pm and we arrived at almost 5:00 to a sign saying “No Vacancy” and another saying something about reservations being required.

But we had already checked availability online where it said there were numerous “walk-in” spaces available. Good thing there was a camp host in one of the sites, she got us all squared away and explained that some things are not working as smoothly as they could be due to the pandemic. Long story short, we got a nice campsite for 2 nights right before the weekend.

The park has lots to offer – day use, camping, fishing and hiking, biking and equestrian use on 37 miles of multi-use trails. Click the map image above to see the official park website.

Biking around the park on the many trails, we saw lots of wild birds and some turtles. But one of the biggest attractions is the alligators, and we’re assuming that most of the time, they don’t eat people.

The park is home to about 300 adult alligators and we did see and photograph a few of them, mostly from across a lake or stream. But we did see one right up close (too close!) at the end of our bike ride.

The sun had just set and the sky was starting to get dark. We were on the final leg of a lake loop ride and returning to our campsite when right there about 3 feet off the trail was a huge alligator, probably 10-12 feet in length. And sorry, but you’ll have to take our word for it – being that close, we didn’t stop long enough for photos. We just looked at it, then looked at each other and said “ready??” and rode really fast past it. And it did nothing but lay there motionless as we passed.

Click on the thumbnail images below to see some of the sights we photographed.

We would definitely go visit this place again. Because of our late arrival with no reservations, 2 nights was all we could get so next time we’ll plan ahead and have more time to explore.