In light of our frightening jaunt through the largest subdivision on the entire planet, we decided to go find some wilderness yesterday. There's a state park on the outskirts of Houston, so we drove out for a nice hike in the woods.

We weren't sure about what this park would be like, since it's in the middle of housing developments and industry, but it was really very pretty!

Thee trees were lovely:

The branches of this shrub were all bent into an arch for some reason.

This one has an interesting past - another tree died and fell on top of it when it was young, and it grew around the other tree until it rotted away, leaving this funky kink in the trunk.

This one had a vine wrapped around it that had since fallen away, but left a stripe wrapped around it.

Some interesting fungus growing on where a tree used to be:

The park had been a fish hatchery in its previous life (up until the mid 70s, apparently) and so it still had some ponds that were being studied for ecological reasons. They say they had gators in the ponds, but this was the only one we saw:

Some birds (a cormorant and an egret) were relaxing in the trees.



We also saw a beaver swimming in one of the ponds, but it dove under before I could get a picture of it. Sorry!

The buildings in the park were fabulous. Check out this cool modernism:

Aaaa-dooooore it!! And the best part: the iron parts are reclaimed oil pumping derricks. How neat is that?

I attempted to take some artsy pictures while there.

And of course, some Things In Sky.

This afternoon, since it was rainy and dreary out (we've seen more precipitation in Texas than we did in Georgia, seems like!), we went to the movies! We had been talking about seeing Sherlock Holmes for a while now, so decided today was the day. I had held out for a while on it, because I'm a big fan of the original stories, and the previews of the movie didn't seem all that faithful to the characters. But! I'm pleased to say that it was actually quite entertaining (it dragged a little, but not too bad). And the costumes were fabulous.

We got home and I made chicken cordon bleu and we stuffed ourselves and watched movies. This campground has Showtime, which is awesome for the movies they show, but sometimes, after hours, things get a little....scandalous. I'll leave it at that. Fortunately we have our ol' standby, Syfy, which always has cheesy movies on for us to watch.

Tomorrow morning we're leaving to head to Livingston, TX. Noel has a little bit of time off between jobs, so we figured we might as well sit back and enjoy it in a less congested and trafficky part of the world. Livingston is just an hour and a half or so away, but has such pretty countryside. It's big enough to have the amenities you need (except for a yarn shop but I'm not hurting for yarn right now) but not so big that you end up totally stressed out and hating life after 14 minutes of driving. AAAHHHH the road rage around here.

Also, the weather has warmed up here quite a bit. It stays above freezing at night, which we appreciate. Of course, it does get a tiny bit chilly sometimes in the evening. We just use space heaters at that point. Funny though, sometimes the heat doesn't seem to get very far into the room:

These cats are SO SPOILED.