Home sweet slough

When we arrived at Martin Dies, Jr. State Park late Thursday afternoon, our trip organizers extraordinaire had reserved some gorgeous campsites for us all together along Gum Slough (I tried to work "Gum Slough/Gumshoe" into the title for this post but couldn't quite come up with anything).

Isn't that something?! Unfortunately, we didn't ever take advantage of this lovely waterway for paddling, although some of our friends did. But I did take a lot of pictures from the shore. Here's a sample:

morning sun and still water

even stiller water

I can never get too much of trees reflected in still water

cypress knees

a cloudy morning...

,,, and a setting sun

One of our party, staying home from the Saturday paddle, got to see an alligator gliding by in our slough! We only caught a glimpse of one just at the end of our Friday paddle, when we saw one across the way from our launch point.

Carnivorous reptiles or not, though, you can't have a much better place for camping than this...

I mean, look at those trees!! A tree aficionado like myself can't help but channel her inner Tolkien and take lots of pictures of these beauties...

so tall, and so graceful!

sunrise just touching the tops