Hiking at Jack Brooks Park

My 6 yr old son has been having some problems at school so I decided to take a day off with him. I decided we should go on an old fashioned hike together. I imagine a father would take his troubled son out to experience nature in some world like ours.

Well after a quick look at biking and walking trail in the area, I came across this app called AllTrails. It's like MapMyFitness (another great app) but for parks and trails. Go figure. Looking at the list of trails, I discovered one labeled hard.

A hard trail? How does one even make a hard trail anywhere near where I live? For those who don't know, Houston resides on prairies and marshes. I live on the subtropical marsh side. Yay mosquitoes! The only elevation we see down here are from the overpasses.

Anyways, I've been to this park about once a year. Backstory. My daughter's biological father played disc golf and her grandmother holds a yearly disc golf tournament in his honor benefiting my daughter. There's 2 nice disc gold courses at this park. There's an RC airplane field and an archery range too. What's not seen is a huge network of trails in the woods. I figured, why not?

We get there, the only ones there and begin to scope out the area. There are a few visible walking trials and a few horseback trails. I remember seeing the signs from before but it never registered until now. The network f trail on my app led me to a mountain bike course. I figured if a bike could do it, out feet could too so with a little persuasion, we entered a black marked course.

It was pretty fun. There were many hills and dips along the way as we strafed strafed small steams leading to a local bayou. I was quite impressed, I didn't even expect a change in elevation. It was so uncommon for the area, the trail names Hell and Dragon's Back actually made sense. There were some interesting trails. Some of them provoked thoughts of investing in a mountain bike. There were a few cool jumps and sharp declined wooden ramps. One called the spider bridge.

We spent about an hour there and I loved it. Colin was relieved when we got back. He was concerned we'd happen along a tribe of ravenous honey badgers. The only thing we encountered was a fat turtle in the middle of the path. I loved it. He didn't hate it. We bonded.

Anyway, the moral of the story is if you ever go near Hitchcock Texas and you get a hiking bug. Definitely check out Jack Brooks Park. I loved it and will be back.