No trees????? Wrong thing to say...
Drive through the area around Texarkana sometimes. Northeast Texas as it gets...I lived in Houston, Austin, Baytown, Bryan/College Station, San Antonio, Corpus Christi and outside Lufkin for a total of around 30 years. Only places I saw no trees were way out west on a trip to EL Paso, nothing but ant hills and tumbleweed, and the huge cow pastures around Bryan. Some trees there, but it's mostly cleared for pasture land. But patcdhes of woods here and there still. And downtown Houston, Austin and San Antonio of course have few trees, but they have left a few.
Tornado hit my neighborhood outside Lufkin a few years back. 23 trees down next door. That's just one person's yard...15 or more across the street down. 3 piled on top of each other 50 yards from my front door...and that's just what I could see from the yard. When building our place outside Bryan we had to clear land of trees and shrubs to make a place to put even a campsite.
If you're in Texas and don't see trees, you're in the wrong place. Texas covers everything from near tropical rainforest conditions to outright desert. (No Arctic snowcaps though) East Texas is home to several National Forests. One of them, Angelina, about 2 miles from where I lived, and will be moving back to soon. I've seen places you can't walk through...the lake is surrounded by forest. Davy Crockett National Forest is about 20 miles away, also nothing but trees for miles.
Here's a small example, a shot taken out the window about an hour south southwest of Shreveport driving down Hwy 59. This is just south of Carthage if I remember correctly. Not far from where Sansouheil lives.
Trees do thin out once you go west of Dallas, I don't know what you're calling northeast Texas, but the area around Texarkana, northeast as it gets, is loaded down with forest. Everything for miles around is forest, well into both Arkansas and Louisiana..
There are plenty other things about Texas that are acceptable. Yeah the heat is rough, but you can find ways to beat that. Take a trip to some of the other places...the hill country around Austin is some of the best scenery you'll ever see...unless you go to the Grand Canyon or Bryce Canyon out west...
Anuhuac (Spelling??? it's been too long) is a bird sanctuary, right on the bay outside Houston, thousands of shorebirds winter there. Amazing to see...I'm dying to make a trip down there with a camera.
Corpus Christi - Some of the greatest wade fishing you'll find. Padre Island is miles of beach. yeah, few trees around there, same as a lot of the Gulf Coast. Trees thin out but don't disappear along the Louisiana coast too.
Big Thicket...Huge National Forest, I've never been there but plan to try and check it out sometime.
The usual mental image of Texas is a farce created by Hollywood and all the two bit Westerns that feature the landscape out west. Even the movies about the Alamo...it's not nearly that bare around San Antonio where the Alamo is. I've talked to many people who came there expecting just that and were amazed to find trees and even huge forests in Texas.
But don't say no trees to a Texan...I've been transplanted, but can still show you plenty trees in Texas...
Posted: Thu Sep 27, 2012 8:44 pm
