South Texas Brush Country

May 22, 2025

Last year was Julie and my 25th wedding anniversary. And we had a kid graduate from high school. So we put the anniversary on the back burner and promised ourselves we would do something special this year.

Well this year the world continues to become more complicated, so we looked for places to explore close-ish to home. Several months ago I was looking at a map of Texas’ regions and noticed one labeled “South Texas Brush Country”. I don’t think this was an official term, but it got me thinking, “What made that different from West Texas or South Texas”?

Julie was similarly intrigued. So we found a big enough town for a hotel and restaraunts that could meet our dietary restrictions and then looked for state parks. We setteled on Seminole Canyon State Park and History Site and Kickapoo Cavern State Park.

Heading to Del Rio was fun. We hit one of our favorite San Antonio restaruants - Vegan Avenue, and then did some vintage shopping. We never head west out of San Antonio so we hadn’t been to the Alsatian bakery - “Haby’s”.

Haby's Alsatian Bakery. So cute. Got lots of donuts.

We headed out and had another stop for vintage shopping at Homer’s on the Square in Uvalde. Uvalde is still a hard place to visit.

Then we headed towards Del Rio. As we headed west we got to see the brush country. A lot of ranches rather than being cleared had dense thickets of bushes with nothing much more than 8 feet tall. Mountain Laurels and cenizo were everywhere. On the way in we passed Lackland Airforce Base, and a jet of some kind took off right in front of us. It was really fast and as I am married to a woman who wanted to be a fighter pilot this may have been her favorite moment of the trip. We spent the night and then headed out to, but had to pass through a border patrol stop on our way to

Seminole Canyon State Park

Sculpture by Bill Worrell inspired by the paintings.

Once we knew where we were going we signed up for the Fate Bell Shelter Tour. Just a heads up. When they say it’s a bit intense they’re not lying. While it has very well developed stairs, it’s a LOT of stairs in direct Texas sun. This is coming from someone who likes to run in the afternoon heat. Our tour was the last before the heat breaks in the fall.

I don’t want to spoil the cave art with my bad photography. When they say it’s spectacular, they’re not joking. The artists did some very large art over a lot of space and used 4 different colors of paint. It’s worth the trip. But there are border checkpoints on the way, so obviously not everyone can.

But plants!

The view from the top of the visitors center.

The number of beautiful delciate flowers growing in rocks was unreal. When you see the overall view it looks very harsh, but there are so many delicate plants.

Looking back up at the vistor's center from the canyon.

An eagle eyed woman on our tour spotted this fox having a nap. Can you see it? It blends in perfectly. Look at the lower left corner of the traingular orange rock shape.

Sotol amd Rock Penstemon making a fine combo.

Every description of button brush I've read makes me think I'd kill it. Seeing it in its natural habitat - small bits of very damp soil inside sun blasted dried riverbeds - I am convinced. I think I'm going to keep admiring it and admit my yard is nothing like that.

I did very badly at IDing these. I'll try to update as iNaturalist folks help me out.

One of my new favorite bushes - Guajillo!

We drove out to a view of the Amistad Reservoir. Even though it's man-made it's beautiful. I don't think I've ever seen a lake that looks like the beaches of Cancun.

More strawberry cactus. It was in bloom all over the place. So beautiful.

After being out in the sun all morning we went back for showers and spent the day exploring Del Rio. And we did that! Yes we did. All explored.

Kickapoo Cavern State Park

Our third day we headed out early. Because of the route we were going we went through Bracketsville. North of Bracketsville was a border patrol stop. It was not the professional border patrol agents. One of the agents walked to the car with his finger on the trigger of an AR-15. There were so few cars on the road it felt like an “accident” could find our bodies in a ditch. I wouldn’t really recommend going that way to anyone. It was unpleasant and being near the Alamo film set it felt appropriate to highlight that the brutal, violent history of Texas is not the past.

I can’t decide if either of these parks are worth the risk, but they are amazing.

You know I love those grasses. I left my "Field Guide to Common Texas Grasses" at home so I'm not sure what I was seeing. But I loved it.

Texas Persimmon. One of my favorites, but definitely more of a tree in Austin. Very much a bush in brush country.

Papershell pinyon, are you also lusting after pines that won't grow here?

At the time we thought this view was amazing.

Cenizo pretty much everywhere. Everywhere!

iNutrualist is suggesting seep muhyl, but it's not curly. Hmm... it was definitely ocurring in dry creekbeds.

The signs said Spanish Dagger, but I think that's frequently just used generically for any yucca. This had much narrower blades and the overall head was a lot smaller than what I think of as Spanish Dagger.

I don't know what this is, but I was fascinated by it.

Mountain pink? It was sooo small and pretty.

We went to the top of the armadillo view. Which we thought would lead to us seeing cute animals, but instead we saw this breathtaking view in every direction. When we were back on the ground we realized that the hill was shaped like an armadillo.

I'm not sure if this is indicative of what this was like before it was grazed by sheep, but it's a very pretty vigenette in any area where there was clearly a lot of overgrazing resulting in loss of grass.

The road north on 670 was just jawdropping. We pulled over to take this picture. I'm pretty sure when it's wetter there are waterfalls. We went over cattleguards and were given the side eye by some cows in the road. Definitely in my top 3 roads I've driven in Texas.

In any case, we were both really glad we went. This was very different country from Big Bend or the Hill Country. As we drove into Kerrville on 10 it really it HOW different it was.