Leon Creek Greenway, Cathedral Rock Park Trailhead

Friday, October 28, 2011

Today's photos:

Given the late hour this is being posted, I am going to depart from my usual procedure and simply note at the moment that I will add the text tomorrow.

Update, Saturday, October 29:

After a good night's sleep, here are more than a few thoughts about this walk:

The almost annual late October major cold front, typically the first real cold front of the season as cold fronts go in South Texas, blew through late Thursday afternoon. Low temperatures will be in the mid to upper forties and highs in the upper 60s to low 70s for a few days. Then it will warm back up by ten to fifteen degrees until the next front blows through.

I realize this is a very comfortable temperature range for much of the country, but for an area that has had a summer with a near record number of highs of 100 degrees and higher, the weather is now on the chilly side here. All of that is to get to the point that the warmth of the South Texas sun is especially welcome on walks like today.

I probably should say a bit about the fact that the Leon Creek Greenway south of Bandera Road is still very much a work in progress. The main trail is paved and open to Ingram Road, but the immediate right of way is still being landscaped.

Cathedral Rock Park is approximately three-quarters of a mile west on Grissom Road from the Grissom Rd trailhead. The feeder trail from the park to the main trail is just over a mile long. It is paved up to the park boundary, but the trail in the park is still natural surface and the signage is not yet complete. The feeder trail for most of its length southeast of the park is along Culebra Creek, one of the major tributaries of Leon Creek.

The park gets its name from the exposed limestone of the Culebra Fault, one of the major fault lines in the Balcones Fault complex. As with the Walker Ranch Historical Landmark Park, I have a feeling this park has a lot of potential that has yet to be realized. With the development of the Leon Creek Greenway, hopefully the San Antonio Parks and Recreation Department will continue to devote the resources needed to improve this important nature park resource.

I have made a point of avoiding editorializing about the management of San Antonio's greenways by the various government agencies that have oversight responsibilities, but this has been on my mind since my first visit to Cathedral Rock Park on Friday, July 22. Of all the trails in all the parks and greenways I have walked since beginning this blog, I have been most disturbed by my experience at Cathedral Rock.

The amount of trash: discarded bottles, cans, cartons, etc.; the sign vandalism and the graffiti tagging are a major problem. From what I could see on my walk today, some of the tagging has been cleaned up, but at least one of the newly installed greenway signs has already been tagged. Beyond an increased presence of the San Antonio Park Police, it seems to me that a major community relations program, something along the lines of a "Friends of Cathedral Rock Park," needs to be developed and implemented.

Now that I've got that off my mind, a few more words about today's walk. Bexar County includes a very diverse mix of geological and ecological systems. I find the differences between the five primary watersheds in the county to be a continuing source of fascination. I will continue to let the photos speak for themselves on this topic.

A Crawdad Out for a Stroll in the Sun

With birds having taken the spotlight the last three Tuesday / Thursday posts, I figured it was time for a bit of a change this evening. And this is definitely a change from recent posts. This series of photos was taken on my walk along the South Salado Creek Greenway Friday, September 9.

As I had mentioned in the post for that walk, the springs were still flowing in spite of the ongoing drought. Crawdads, as I grew up calling them, thrive in South Texas in outflow streams from springs. While I was admiring the outflow from one of the springs, this crawdad emerged from the mud and made its way into the water of the stream.

The crawdad is a freshwater cousin of the lobster. It goes by many other names: crayfish, crawfish, mudbug, freshwater lobster and probably more. It may not be the most attractive creature I have featured on this blog, but it is definitely a common and important member of the South Texas bio-community.

Leon Creek Greenway, Grissom Rd Trailhead, South

Today's photos:

I think the most difficult part of putting the posts together for this blog is that I am almost always working on it late in the evening at the end of a long day. My overriding priority is to do the best I can at editing and preparing the photos for publication. Now that it is time to write something reasonably relevant and intelligible, my brain is struggling just to stay somewhat functional. With that in mind, here goes.

I did return to the Leon Creek Greenway today and walked half the distance from the Grissom Rd trailhead south towards the Ingram Rd trailhead, a distance of about a mile, then back to the parking lot. It is two miles one way between the two trailheads.  The completed portion of the Leon Creek Greenway from Loop 1604 to Ingram Rd covers a lot of miles with much to see. While I have walked much of it, I still have several more miles to go.

If there is a theme to today's photos, I guess it could be titled "Themes and Variations" with several sets of photos showing variations of the same specific location along the creek. Once again, I have two more sets of photos from today, both of birds, that will be published in upcoming posts.