After lunch at The Bake Shoppe and Cafe in Cypress, we decided to explore the Little Cypress Creek Preserve
for the first time. What a treat! While Harris County's web site refers
to it as a "58-acre undeveloped park site", it is really a gorgeous
wooded gem along Little Cypress Creek.
What this park
lacks in play equipment and picnic tables (there are none), it makes up
for with its lovely hiking trails among the ponds and along Little
Cypress Creek. The ponds were mostly empty due to the persistent dry
weather, but the recent rains had the creek flowing fairly strongly.
We
spotted a little snake and a number of turtles sunning themselves as we
followed the creek. In the woods we saw cardinals, jays, chickadees, woodpeckers, and a hawk. On the "maybe" list were a bluebird and a brown
thrasher.
We spent a couple of hours exploring the wooded
trails and thoroughly enjoyed every minute. The weather was lovely and
we needed to burn off the delicious chocolate chip cookies from the Bake
Shoppe.
This is definitely my new favorite patch of
wilderness relatively close to home. If you're on the northwest side of
Houston and looking for an outdoor escape, you could do much worse than
losing yourself here for an hour or two.
