Roaming Free In An RV

We are roaming around in Texas! This is my first time in this state and everything really is bigger in Texas. 😉 When we crossed the Texas border we saw lots of oil manufacturing and the land is pretty flat.

Our first stop was Willis, which is about forty-five miles north of Houston. We stayed at a Thousand Trail campground and upon setting up I saw a tarantula!! It was not a nice way for Texas to welcome us. I screamed like a little girl and Brad came running over to where I was. He didn’t look too happy about that spider, either. Found out that people in Texas either see them often or not at all. Go figure that we saw one. We also had to worry about fire ants so we sprayed around the outside and inside of the 5th wheel. Some people told us to be on the lookout for rattlesnakes and scorpions, too. Oh boy, this is not how I thought our trip would start!

The next day we headed to Houston. A friend of mine is from Houston so she gave us some good recommendations for places to visit. For those who haven’t been to Houston, it’s a huge city! I’m from Chicago and couldn’t get over the size of the city. It is very spread out and the second largest city by land area. Our first stop was the Water Wall, which is a sixty-four foot semi-circular fountain that recycles 11,000 gallons of water per minute! It was pretty cool to see. And the mist from the water was refreshing on the hot day.

Next, we went to Rice University. The university is right in the city, but one would never know it’s there. It is surround by an elite neighborhood with large houses and nice shops. We pulled in and signs for parking and people were everywhere. It was graduation day! We walked around campus (a little underdressed compared to everyone else) and it started to get cloudy. We walked over to Hermann Park, which is home to the Sam Houston Monument. The city was named after him due to his role in bringing Texas into the U.S. as a constituent state. Walking back to the car it started to rain. Little did we know that during our week stay in Texas it would rain every day.

For dinner we went to Onion Creek and then headed over the Waugh Bridge at dusk to watch the bat colony. We got there early so we walked about the nice and clean Buffalo Bayou Park.

About the bats. Apparently, when the bridge was finished, the bats realized it was a prefect to spot to live and have lived there since. We went under the bridge and heard the bats “talking” to each other and we were able to see them hanging down. Two volunteers told tell us all about the bat colony:

• There are 250,000 bats in this colony.
• They eat about 2.5 tons of insects each night. (Gross and thank goodness for the bats!)
• The bats follow the same pattern every night and morning. They leave in the same order and return in the same order.
• If a Mom bat is out hunting, it can hear its baby cry. She knows exactly where the baby is under the bridge.
• These bats do not migrate like other colonies.

We went under the bridge and heard the bats “talking” to each other and we were able to see them hanging down. We had a good viewing spot. It got busy quickly and all of a sudden we saw all those bats emerge from the bridge! They didn’t fly by us. They followed the river and the line seemed never ending! It was a pretty cool things to see.

Well, I was going to write about our other Texas adventure but I think this post is long enough. You will just have to wait till next week.

Till then!