Choke Canyon State Park

Choke Canyon isn’t a canyon, but a lake. Apparently they choked off three rivers to make a lake and somewhere on the lake it formed a canyon-like formation. Anyhow, the park is great!  There is lots of wildlife here. Every morning I see over 20 deer, a few rabbits, maybe some turkeys, and lots of types of birds. We just saw several javelinas go past our window. We’ve seen scat or prints from coyote, bobcat, feral hog, and raccoon. I’ve seen pieces of turtle shells where the alligators broke their shell and ate them. It’s a busy state park!

I’ve been going to more of the park programs. The ones here have been funny. The ranger is VERY enthusiastic about the subjects and knows a lot. The issue is that he starts to tell you something, breaks into a story, then part of the way through story #1 he goes into story #2. Somehow he finds his way back through the levels and teaches you the original fact, but it takes time. I went to a one hour bird walk. He taught us about plants, animals, scat, history…and birds. After over two hours I left. I got back to the campsite and John was going crazy wondering what was happening. The 1-hour program took almost 3 hours including time riding my bike back and forth! The vermillion sapsucker and the scissor-tail sapsuckers were the most interesting birds that I saw. No photo since they were pretty far away.

Turkey Vultures

Lots of vultures here.

Black Vultures

Deer everywhere!

John came with me for the skins and skulls program. The same ranger was there. This time it was only 1.5 hours instead of the scheduled 1 hour program. But again, very interesting! We found out they found a dead alligator at the park yesterday that may have been 25’ long!