Adios, Tejas

Tomorrow we (plan to) bike out of Texas, and I can't help but feel that this is the end of an era. Texas has been more unexpected and magnificent than I ever could have imagined, and despite my excitement to start a new state, I have to admit I'll be a little sad to leave the lone star land. We have been through desert and forest, city and pasture land, past cotton fields and through ghost towns. We stayed at a ranch, and biked through it all-- cold and dry and rainy and hot and humid and hilly as heck and flat as a pancake--all in the same state. It's only fitting, then, that we spend our last night here in an entirely new and pretty special environment, a goodbye treat from a big state that has already been darn good to us.

I had never heard of "The Big Thicket" before I saw it on our map. When I hear thicket I picture a brier patch or vine-overgrown hedge row. Texas' Big Thicket is actually a long narrow corridor of dense forest and waterways that is considered "one of the most biodiverse places in the world." I know, in Texas! The area has been protected since I believe the 70s, and from what I've read it's a veritable zoo in terms of the wildlife that you might see. Hundreds of different birds migrate and nest here, an equally large number of trees, countless flower and plant species--including 4 carnivorous ones--all 4 species of North American venomous snakes (?), and alligators. That's right, alligators. Our camp tonight is in a state park at the north end of this refuge, on a grassy point surrounded on 2.5 sides by picturesque BA Steinhagen Lake. Frankly, it's stunning, and we have pictures to prove it. Across the lake from our camp a ghostly cypress forest floats impossibly far from land, eerily suspended above still water, inviting of exploration. With only a canoe and a sense of adventure you could lose yourself here, perhaps literally, imagining that you are the first soul to witness the treasures you find around each bend in the river. Very tempting--but we have an adventure of our own to continue, with treasures yet unknown. And so we leave a place we've come to deeply appreciate as much for its people as for its aesthetics, and embark on the next leg of our journey--hopeful, yet skeptical, that any new place can possibly be as cool as Texas.
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