A Walk in the Park

For the last few weeks we been able to drive Jo and Jac's car (Petey), since they have had the use of another one (thanks, Matt). This has allowed us to extend our range just a little, to places where we can walk with Rooey and not be assailed by passing traffic.

Salado Creek Greenway
The path is 3-4 km each way.

The easiest local spot in the Salado Creek Greenway, one of a network of paths that San Antonio is developing along waterways to encourage walking and cycling through their vast city. The Salado Creek path runs along one of the ephemeral gullies that run everywhere through this limestone country and occasionally carry huge floods when there is heavy rainfall.

Limestone cliffs and dry creek bed
The litter stuck in the trees shows how high the water comes.

The path is all paved and virtually flat, so very popular with walkers, cyclists and joggers. And easy to negotiate for grandparents with a small boy in the Baby Bjorn front pack. It would be perfect, except that part of it lies under electricity pylons, and all of it lies under the landing flight path to San Antonio airport; but it's still a huge improvement on the shopping malls.

The pylons make good roosting spots for vultures
And you have to imagine a 737 every ten minutes or so.

Salado Creek path
Regularly washed and leaf-blown by park staff.

Expeditioners
Marty likes the front-facing position. The baseball cap is very cute.

America seems to deliver a huge amount of information to its citizens, mostly of a warning nature. There are quite lot of things that you mustn't do in the park, but the warnings about flash flooding and water crossing are real.

Just DON'T!

Signage
Does that seem wrong to anyone else? Don't leave the water?

We found this one mildly confusing too.

But there is a real risk
This section was under water the first time we came.

At the far end of the path we can actually get off the concrete and walk through oak woodlands that could be somewhere in the English West Country (if you ignore the aloes and occasional cactus). There and back takes us between one and two hours, depending on the dawdling. Rooey tends to sleep for at least half that time, and we usually sustain him with a bottle of milk at some stage. We see lots of squirrels, often deer (the bucks more interested in does than people at this time of year), many birds (always vultures overhead) and more flowers than I expected in autumn.

Oak woodland.
They don't lose all their leaves in the fall.

Flowers.
Autumn rains have rejuvenated the vegetation.

These are called Turks Caps

Salado Creek squirrel
This is the uncommon black form of the ubiquitous red-brown fox squirrel

With the very pleasant weather we have been enjoying (low to mids 20s and a gentle breeze) it makes an ideal morning excursion and we can get there and back without having to tackle any seriously busy roads.