Wow! Where do I begin with describing all of the new things that I experienced while on this trip? I don’t think I can choose just one day to describe, since they all sort of ran together so I will write about the most memorable parts. The first day in Texas, a new state that I got to check off my list to visit, was a great introduction. We went canoeing down Village Creek near Silsbee, Texas. Seven miles in a canoe, paddling back and forth across the creek, trying to spy birds that we could hear singing in the tree tops. We managed to find a few birds, a couple redheaded woodpeckers and a scarlet tanager for certain. We also saw quite a few snakes, which freaked most of us out. We were intrigued with getting close to them, until we thought we were too close, then we all panicked and tried to get away as quickly as possible. We were told the creek was full of large, white sand bars that we could stop at along the way but we had trouble finding them. The photo to the right is one I took at the start of our trip! It was a gorgeous day to be on the water!
We canoed for quite sometime before finally deciding to bank our canoes on a somewhat easy piece of ground to look at some plants and explore a little bit. I found a shed snakeskin in a tree as we pulled up to our landing spot! I collected it for Lauren. Lane and drew found a dead snapping turtle at this spot too! We ate lunch there and then explored for awhile, as well as collected some plants. Plants we found included fleabane, spiderwort, a species of panicum, and several other unidentified species. We brought plant presses along so that we could properly press the plants and preserve them. That was a dangerous thing to entrust us with, considering the canoes could have easily tipped at any point! We all successfully climbed in our canoes and started paddling on! As we came around the next bend, what did we find? A gorgeous sandbar that had been there the whole time! So we had to stop again! We got out and a few people tried fishing from shore. We all enjoyed how the nice warm, white sand felt on our bare white feet! We wrote a couple things in the sand and took some photos there before paddling on! We had a couple people in our group who had never canoed before so we were waiting for an accident to happen and sure enough it did! Most of us had successfully launched our canoes again and we were waiting for our last group members to catch up with us. We looked back and watched them hop in their canoe and it tipped! The boys were quick to recover and hopped out, dragging their partially filled canoe up on the sandbar again. We stopped and waited for them to gather their things again (it took them awhile), thankfully minimal damage was done. Phones and GoPros survived the spill and were loaded back into the canoe. Off we went again.
We continued paddling downstream. Stopping at various sandbars along the way. We went swimming at one spot. We asked about the water temperature at the canoe rental place and the guide told us the creek was spring fed and that the water was still very cold. Well, that wasn’t the case to us! We thought the water felt warm and we took advantage of it! The photo to the left is a flower drawn in the sand at one of the sandbars we stopped at. I wrote “VC 2k17” in the sand. It took us about four hours to complete our trek down Village Creek!
We were all whooped at the end of our trip. We returned to the bunkhouse were were staying at in Big Thicket National Preserve to regroup a little bit. Then we set out for a carnivorous plant excursion. Photos of pitcher plants and Barbara’s buttons (Texas Wildflower) are below.
No one was in the mood for much hiking so we were happy when we found out that our hike was just a leisurely walk on a path. We chose to go down the pitcher plant trail for our hike. We found so many plants! I collected some to bring back here for the herbarium at VCSU. After spending a few hours out on the trail, we were all hungry and decided to go back to base. We were there for a little while before Casey and the fish seining group returned. We shared our stories from the things we had done and seen that day and then Lauren made a big batch of spaghetti for us. Everyone got their fill and then we went to bed. Photos are pitcher plants (right), Barbara’s buttons (below), & a group checking out fish that were caught in the seine net in a cypress swamp .
There are so many more things to write about for this trip! Seeing the ocean for the first time, seeing sting rays, dolphins, sea turtles, and various jellyfishes are just a few things that I got to experience while we were down in Port Aransas! The fishing, the kayak tours, the different restaurants we went to and the crab boil that Casey & Lauren put on for us were all amazing! I don’t have many photos because I was too busy soaking in everything that I could but the photos that I do, I will treasure forever. Even the car rides that seemed like they were never going to end were some of the most memorable parts. Forever a part of ST6!! It was a great learning opportunity and probably the best learning experience of college that I have ever had! I will definitely be making a trip to Port Aransas again in the future!
