There are ten individual pictures to make up this Pano
I decided at the last minute that I would drive to Buescher State Park in Smithville to see how the Park was recovering after the devastating fires from a few years ago, 2011 to be exact. The plan was to go in the Park entrance and then take Park Road 1C back through to Bastrop State Park as I hadn’t planned to hike any of the trails. I turned off HWY 71 where the sign pointed to the Park and arrived at the Park gate only to see that it was barricaded off with another sign indicating that I should follow the Detour instead.
I turned around and then followed the Detour which I figured would bring me back into the park from the back end, so to speak. There are several roads that lead into the park that have private residences so not all accesses are controlled. I drove around for a bit just checking things out. The Park was pretty quiet as far as visitors go with a few cars parked at the cabins. I drove to the lake and looked around but it too was very quiet and I couldn’t see any bird life at all.
I decide to take Park Road 1C and head towards Bastrop State Park and then stopped at the two overlooks located along the way. The picture at the top of the page is a pano of 10 separate pictures joined together. It truly is a wonderful view. The picture below is a single picture taken from the first overlook.
Continuing along Park Road 1C, I noticed that the flowers were out in abundance and then as I turned another corner, came across a road washout which completely prevented me from continuing towards Bastrop State Park. I am not sure when this washout occurred but it must have been very recently as no attempt had been made to make any repairs. I turned the car around and then walked back to take a few pictures mostly of the wild flowers.
I had no choice other than to backtrack and head out of the Park off one of the other roads which was no problem. It looks like the Park is coming back to life and there is a lot of new vegetation and young trees growing. Even the Loblolly Pines that were planted just after the burn are beginning to grow back. Nature is a pretty wonderful thing and has remarkable powers of recovery and even takes the opportunity to wield her magic brush and paint a different picture than was there before.
Written 9/26/2017
Lovely photos. Thanks for sharing! 😊😊
Thanks. The flowers were absolutely gorgeous and put on a great displsy.
Beautiful post Francis 🙂
Thank you Beth. It’s easy to write about Nature’s beautiful things.
I’m very glad nature is rebounding. I sure hope that nature’s resiliency stays true in California. I spent time in Ojai, California — in the distant past — and now the region is surrounded by wildfires.
Nature is very resilient and can regrow itself all thing being equal even from wildfires. The ugly thing are the standing trees that are dead and charred and it will take a few years for them to fall.