We drove up to the Goose Island State Park in Lamar, TX. Lamar is just north of the Rockport/Fulton area. We have seen many, many Southern Live Oak trees here in Texas. According to Wikipedia, the southern live oak, is a normally evergreen oak tree native to the southeastern United States. That would explain why so many of the RV Parks have the word “Oak” in the name (i.e., Southern Oaks, Ancient Oaks, Enchanted Oaks, Coastal Oaks, Hidden Oaks, Taylor Oaks, to name a few). There are huge yards filled with these oak trees. The oak is tall and has broad open canopies that intertwine with each other to create a beautiful open park beneath.
Within Goose Island State Park there is a “Big Tree”. Really, that’s what the signs say to direct us to the fenced area of the “Big Tree”. It happens to be Southern Live Oak that is supposedly over 1,000 years old. Unlike the redwoods of the west coast, this tree does not have one main trunk towering up into the sky getting wider and wider as the tree ages. The “Big Tree” has a very large base but branches out within a few feet from the ground and continues to spread itself out and up into the sky – what looked like 50 or more feet. To sustain this tree, a number of human additions have been included. A couple of lower branches have supports keeping them in position and some upper branches are wired together to maintain the canopy. This is the perfect type of tree for tree houses – lower enough to prevent high falls and with branches spreading out parallel to the ground, it would provide a good foundation for the structure.
As we were returning to the truck, we heard some very loud “whoops” and another tourist confirmed that there were whooping cranes down the road in a farmers pond. We followed his directions and came upon many other tourists and about 15 whooping cranes. According to local paper, whooping cranes are coming through on their migration north. So we might be able to see many more before we leave for San Antonio.
