You Can Even Hike In The City at Houston Memorial Park
My wife and I recently took a weekend trip to Houston, Texas mostly to visit REI, a camping and outdoors store, since Houston has one of the closest locations to Baton Rouge. I wasn't sure what to expect when we visited the Memorial Park in the heart of Houston but it was amazing!
Google maps shows the park as a significantly large patch of green, so we were hopeful that the park would be a fun visit. What we were not prepared for was the size of the park or that is splits the highway. One side has an awesome pond and the other has a conservatory. Both sides feature individual trails as well as a larger trail that connects the two. Fun Fact: the larger trail is used as a runners trail and has a lot of paved parts. That was nice.
Running trail leading around the outside of the park.
This trail is a “do-as-much-as you-like: trail. There are various signs that lead to new trails so you can extend your hike or you can take a shortcut to get back sooner. We started off near the entrance of the running trail. I will be honest the map was kind of overwhelming so my wife and I just picked a direction and figured we would see where it led. After a little bit we crossed over the highway and decided we did not want to go that way because it was leading away from the sanctuary place we saw on the way in.
A quick detour later, we somehow ended up in a drainage pipe . . . that was both cool and creepy at the same time.
Finally we managed to find the trail we’d seen earlier, and entered the sanctuary area. This area is mostly gravel and has a lot of different viewing areas. There is an inner loop and an outer loop, we chose the outer loop. The scenery changed constantly. First part, a small side loop, had cool fun metal structures that reminded us of artist boardwalks, for us to walk across.
After that the trail continued through the park to a wildflower area and then down a wooden boardwalk. At the boardwalk section we noticed people with binoculars checking out the birds.
Memorial Park does not have any challenging trails but the fact that you can make it as long or as short as you want is definitely a big perk. We are looking forward to returning on our next trip to Houston to continue to explore the park and see all that it has to offer.
TRAIL REVIEW
DIFFICULTY: 3 OF 10
The trails are all well maintained and there is little elevation gain throughout the entire park. A lot of the trails do have tree roots crossing the path so keep a watchful eye.
ABILITY TO FIND: 8 OF 10
The park is hard to miss that's for sure but finding a good parking spot is different. Most of if not all of the park has paid parking. I think it is free on certain days but we’d need a revisit to know for sure.
ENJOYMENT: 10 OF 10
This was a great experience for my wife and I to explore. You can hear the road noise in certain spots but the deeper you go in the faster it fades away.
FACILITIES
Bathrooms can be found scattered throughout the park, most are located near the parking lots.
