Hiking Trail: There were several trails at the LBJ State Park Historic Site where visitors could walk among the large oak, pecan and many other trees seen at the park. The trails around the visitors center led visitors through many fields of wildflowers but the bluebonnets are the stars followed closely by the red Indian paintbrush flowers. Photo by Gary Warren/ladailypost.com
Spring Growth: The wildflowers were a little more sparse in areas but the lush green grasses and flowers and the spring growth on the trees made walking around the grounds of the state park very pleasurable. Photo by Gary Warren/ladailypost.com
By GARY WARREN
Photographer
Formerly of Los Alamos
With the excitement of meeting up with friends for the solar eclipse in April, the annual display of color along the Texas roadways and open fields took a “backseat” in priorities during our recent trip. However, the annual color festival was as good as it gets with this season bringing an exceptional display of wildflowers.
The bluebonnet, also the state flower of Texas, takes center stage in the spring blooming season but there were many other blooms that lined highways and back roads as we toured around the Texas Hill Country.
Since we met up with three other couples for about 10 days, we did a little more sightseeing and tourists activities than most of our Texas journeys. One such stop was the LBJ State Park Historic Site. Simply stated it was the LBJ Ranch where Lyndon B. Johnson and Lady Bird Johnson lived for decades. During the LBJ Presidential years, the ranch became known as the “Texas Whitehouse” because Johnson spent time there while President and hosted numerous dignitaries at the ranch during that period of time.
To make this Post From the Road a little different than previous posts featuring spring wildflowers I have decided to limit the bluebonnet and wildflower photos to those taken while at the LBJ State Park Historic Site.
As visitors to the state park we were somewhat limited on where to search for wildflowers within the ranch. There were blooms scattered throughout and along the drive through the park but the area around the visitors center and the grounds adjacent were the prettiest of the fields that we saw. There were several trails and walkways which made the flowers easier to see and photograph.
To capture the flowers during their “peak” of the blooming season, it would have been nice to have been there about 10 days earlier. However with the prolific blooms this year there were still a lot of wildflowers in bloom while we were there in April as our trip was scheduled around the solar eclipse event.
The blooms of all of the wildflowers was beautiful throughout the Hill Country as we moved about. There are good years and not so good years to view and photograph the flowers but I would say this was an exceptional year with fantastic colorful blooms.
Editor’s note: Longtime Los Alamos photographer Gary Warren and his wife Marilyn are traveling around the country, and he shares his photographs, which appear in the “Posts from the Road” series published in the Sunday edition of the Los Alamos Daily Post.
Red, Blue and Green: The bright blue blooms of the bluebonnets with a mixture of the red Indian paintbrush blooms creates a beautiful colorful ground cover during the spring blooming season. I love to see the various designs of the wildflower colors as they mix with each other across the fields. Photo by Gary Warren/ladailypost.com
Wildflowers: Large trees scattered throughout fields of flowers create a lovely landscape at the LBJ State Park Historic Site. When we left the area about 10 days after these photos were made there was not a bluebonnet to be found. We did not return to the state park but the blooms along all of the roadways had expired and were just green plants that looked more like a weed. The blooming season usually last about a month or so and we were lucky to catch the end of this year’s super bloom. Photo by Gary Warren/ladailypost.com
Wildflower Fields Forever: The Beatles had a hit in the 60s called ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’. The scenes around the LBJ State Park Historic Site appear to be saying Wildflower Fields Forever. We know nothing lasts forever though as these and many other spring blooms were gone a few days after we visited the area. Photo by Gary Warren/ladailypost.com