Buffalo free Bayou

Houston calls itself the City of Bayous and one of these bayous, the Buffalo Bayou snakes its way westwards through Downtown Houston between Allen Parkway and Washington.  Between Shepherd and Sabine Street, the city maintains a park either side of the bayou.  On a beautiful autumn afternoon I took a little more time for my customary cycle through the park and stopped to take pictures along the way.

Along Harmony Way, the Tolerance sculptures sit at the edge of the park and Allen Parkway.  One of them seems to have drying laundry on it that day, although there was nobody lurking about who may have been the owner of the shirts – not everything needs to make sense!

A little further on is a fountain I call the Dandelion Fountain.  You can probably tell why I call it that.

Some of the views I enjoy while cycling through the Buffalo Bayou Park are of things just outside the park, like this copse of trees just coming into flower the day I was taking pictures .  The trees are painted blue and there is a stone of some kind in the centre of the copse.  I have no idea why they are painted blue and as getting to the stone required crossing roads with high kerbs, I decided not to explore it more closely on this occasion and keep wondering who paints the trees blue and why.

Another view of something just outside the park is the KHOU11 broadcasting tower.  I singled it out for this picture so its now diminutive stature in comparison to the Houston skyline is not apparent and it rises above its immediate neighbours in its original glory of height over the city.

One of the most recent additions is this step monument which kind of reminds me of a bathing pool in an Indian palace.  I could be showing my ignorance of central and southern American indigenous peoples as it could also be designed to mimic Aztec or Mayan temple structures.  There are names engraved at the top, although it isn’t clear who the named people are.

I assume that this particular bayou had been a watering place for buffalo at the time of the original settlement around the Houston harbour area.  Fortunately for me, I have yet to encounter any buffalo at this end of the bayou, that’s not to say it may not continue to be a source of water for free roaming cattle further upstream!