Late Summer Hike | WG Jones State Forest

Feeling the need to get out and stretch my legs, I drove to WG Jones State Forest, which is about 25 minutes from my house. It really isn’t that far away but all of the roads to get there are minor surface roads with a lot of traffic signals and speed limits are only as high as 55 in a few places. Nonetheless, it is a nice little bit of green space surrounded by suburbia. The town of The Woodlands abuts the forest to the west and south, though the park is technically in Conroe city limits. Chris and I went and explored the north portion of the park sometime when we first moved to the area two years ago but we hadn’t been to the south side, the side with the majority of the park, before.

Exploring on my own this time, I needed to get a little bit of fresh air outside of my own yard for once. The map showed several trails including trails that were more like fire break roadways throughout the forest. I wasn’t sure where I was going to end up, but I started down the Middle Lake Hiking Trail and went from there.

The parking lot at the trailhead had several cars in it and most times when I’ve driven by this way the parking lot has at least one car in it. A few runners, one guy who looked like a geocacher, and then later I found some fishermen at Middle Lake.

Helenium amarum, sneezeweed, was blooming profusely in many areas of the forest.

I spotted a couple of plants of Capsicum annuum, this particular variety being chile pequin, a native perennial pepper.

Foraging Texas has some good information on the plant.

Next I’ll share my explorations around Middle Lake!