I Dund Broke It 02/09/22

Brazos Bend State Park, Needville, Texas

One day he went into the house to attend to his duties, and none of the household servants were inside. She caught him by his cloak and said, “Come to bed with me!” But he left his cloak in her hand and ran out of the house. ~ Genesis 39:11-12 There are things to speculate here; things like why were all the household servants gone? Did she send them out in anticipation of Joseph coming? What was this cloak (some translations say ‘garment’), and how did he come to leave it behind? Most importantly, notice that Joseph fled from the sin that could’ve so easily ensnared him (Hebrews 12:1). He didn’t succumb. He didn’t argue. He didn’t shove her away. He ran from sin; so quickly that he left his cloak behind in her hands. This is a good lesson for us: When sin rears its ugly head, flee! As fast and as far as you can!

Rembrandt van Rijn, Guido Reni Italian Joseph And Potiphar's ... — This one is a Rembrandt!

Today was a bike-a-rama! This is a fantastic place to bike! At least in the winter. 😊 There are people around, but not many. I imagine there are a whole lot more around in the summer.

It was a gorgeous day, and miles and miles of hike/bike trails with wildlife everywhere, so there were quite a few ‘rest breaks’. Our first stop was at the Visitor/Nature Center, where we learned about the origins of the Park and got to pet a baby alligator. Shoulda asked to hold it . . . . ☹

Those are camping cabins. There are probably about a dozen.

We’re at the VC, and surrounded by live oaks!

I took pictures of the pictures they had at the entrance. Wow!

How many of you would pose your kid on the back of a gator – – dead or not? : )
Did you notice he’s holding a screwdriver or awl or something?

This is a hummingbird nest with eggs. They were about the size of Tic Tacs. : )

They have this tank of babies, which the guy told us would be kept until they were about a year old, then they’d be released into the wild because that’s when they begin to get snappy.

Enjoy the next group of pictures from our ride today! We loved it!

Blaine rode right by and didn’t even see it! I had to call him back. He’s usually catches things like this quicker than I do.

Enjoying the observation tower. You can see a long way!

They told us at the VC that a mama gator and about 40 babies were hanging out near the tower.
Let’s go down and find them!

How sweet!! They’re laying on mama’s back!
Everyone else hanging out observing felt the same way we did . . .
We’re not the only weird ones. : )

These (whatever they are) make a whole lotta racket!
And they skitter around a lot too!
Fun to watch!

I love the feathery tail feathers on these birds.
It’s unusual they let you get this close to them.

Things were going along swimmingly, until we had to ride up a small hill.

I wasn’t able to get a running start, so I had to change gears and suddenly, CLINK CLANK CLUNK !!!

Done.

I not only kicked my chain off the gears, it got so irreparably stuck in the frame, Blaine couldn’t fix it. Not even with an old sandwich bag on his hand.

So Blaine road off back home – about 20 minutes of flying one way.

While he was gone, I rolled my bike to the back of a bench
and went walking up and down the road we’d just come down from the observation tower.

I don’t know how that mama and babies get any rest when they pose for pictures all day . . . : )

Blaine returned with two screwdrivers and got to work, struggling and fighting, twisting and pulling, and finally . . . . finally! . . . . he got it loose and put it back on. Minus some skin on his hands. ☹

Finally, we were able to move on. It took almost exactly one hour out of our day.

We saw a lot of things today, but the thing that most excited us was spotting a couple Nutrias! We even witnessed one coming out of the water and lumbering on land for a few seconds. These are the times we wish we had one of those professional cameras with the super-zoom lens. As you can see, our pictures are not very good. They were just too far away for the phone to pick up.

The green dot is the end of his nose. I was gonna give him a red one, but it didn’t show up on the picture for some reason. As it is, you can barely see the green.

How to Identify a Nutria... | Conservation Management Institute | Virginia Tech

Evidence of wild hogs in the area.
There are a lot of dug up places like this around the Park.
But we didn’t see any hogs. *Drat!*

Near the end of our day, we came across some trail work going on. No one was working in the area we road down, but there were dump trucks rumbling up and down the road in another closed area. Wonder how long it will take to finish it?