I realized yesterday about noon that it was exactly six months since my birthday. Since this was an auspicious anniversary being as how it marked fifty-five point five years on the planet, I decided to honor the day with half a birthday road trip…

I learned something from this short afternoon excursion…I prefer my road trips in the winter…The beach was so hot I only saw cars parked about every half a mile heading down from Quintana to the Brazos River.

Bryan Beach State Recreation Area. Located on an undeveloped 878-acre peninsula, bordered by the Intracoastal Waterway, the gulf, and the Brazos River, the park offers quiet locations for sunning and swimming, fishing, bird watching, and primitive camping. Getting there can be problematical. There is no road to the park. You must drive over the beach and your success will depend on the height of the tide. The most certain way to reach the park is by boat or canoe, although you can certainly drive when conditions are right. That’s the kind of challenge that makes me want to visit a place. To get there (four-wheel-drive or a high clearance vehicle such as a pickup are recommended) take FM 1495 to its end at Bryan Beach, turn right and drive down the beach for about two miles. The park is open during daylight hours, with exceptions for campers. There is no entrance fee.

via Galveston | East Texas Gulf Coast | Nature Preserves | State Parks.

And yes, the drive is a challenge. The weather has dried such a large portion of the beach and the sand is drifting so deep that there were a few times I wondered if the Sport Trac was going to make it through…

Before I made it to the beach though I passed through and sat a while at Brazoria National Wildlife Refuge. If anything drives home how dry we are in this area it’s the lack of water throughout the refuge. Brazoria is supposed to be a very marshy area…If you check out any map the entire area is marked as swamp.

The past few years the water level has been dropping on each of my visits. During the past years fall and winter there wasn’t enough water to even begin to fill the ponds that are usually full of waterfowl. On this drive through the ponds had dried up to not much more than puddles in the center of large areas of cracked dried mud…Other than a few rails there wasn’t much in the way of birdlife to see.

I think in the future I’ll stick to my annual winter full birthday road trip and leave the summer fun to someone who enjoys the 100° temperatures that we have this time of year…Or else I need to get moved to the Blue Ridge so I can enjoy an August run up to the Roan…