Bryan & College Station, Texas

Are you wanting to go out to eat or call in a to go order, but you can’t find the restaurant’s website, and you don’t know what to order? Well, College Station and Bryan restaurant menus can be viewed at a website called “Aggieland Menus”.

Aggieland menus is a cool website that lists many (if not all) of the restaurants in town, and links to a pdf of the restaurant’s menu. So even if the restaurant doesn’t have a website, chances are, the menu is posted at AggielandMenus.info.

It’s a free service, so if you are a restaurant owner, contact them. And if you are a restaurant owner and need a website, contact me…it’s what I do.

Here’s what they have to say about their service:

Aggieland Menus is a guide serving the restaurants and consumers of Bryan-College Station, Texas. We are a free service that provides the most information about your restaurant to the most important person… your customers!

They have a rating system on the site, a place to write a review on the restaurant’s own page. It’s very well organized, and a great resource.

We just recently downloaded Spice Bowl’s menu for my wife’s parents. They wanted to try something different, and have another look at the prices.

I also downloaded the Pho John’s menu to see if they served Bubble Smoothies…they do.

It’s just a great idea to serve the restaurants in town.

You can even subscribe to the site with a syndication reader and get Aggieland Menus news as soon as it’s posted on the site. Nice. (click on the little orange RSS button in the corner).

And by the way, don’t you think the best menus are the ones with beautiful pictures of food items on them? I love those.

You should call in an order and eat in! Or order from Freebirds and go eat at Central Park.

jorge

We recently went to Central Park in College Station. The grounds are very nice, and although the playground is fairly small, there were other things to do.

There’s a basketball court, pavillions, baseball fields, picnic tables, paved trails, a pond and ducks.

Lots of ducks. And geese. We took peanut butter and honey sandwiches, goldfish crackers and granola bars, and those ducks ate almost everything we threw at them. I mean toward them.

My kids don’t eat the crust of their sandwiches. My mom always made us eat ours, and for the most part we make our kids eat theirs, but not when there are ducks around.

There is one goose in particular that is pretty big, and apparently the scout, well, at least not afraid to come right up to you.

In fact, at one point, I found our 4 year old (who we call the “Bug Whisperer”) petting it…practically hugging it.

I’m not convinced ducks like peanut butter, but they ate just about everything we threw at them.

The pond was very pretty and well kept. Looks like it’s stocked with fish and you can actually catch them, so bring your rod. The regular Texas Parks and Wildlife limits for bagging apply to this pond. The Central Park pond has Trout and Catfish in it.

Here are some tips on releasing fish:

Quickly play and release fish.
Keep fish in water as much as possible.
Remove hook with pliers or cut line.
Gently place fish back into water.
Revive fish by holding upright in water and moving back and forth, gently forcing water through gills.

Enjoy

jorge

Tanglewood park is a great park in town. It’s one of three “Splash Pads” in Bryan and College Station (one at Tiffany Park, and another at Lincoln Center).

These Splash Pads consist of fountains and even a water bucket that fills up and splashes down. It’s great fun in the summer and spring. It’s about the size of a basketball court…maybe smaller, and there’s a controller to turn it on when it turns itself off. The cycle is about 10 minutes, and the controller is just a post with a round top that is touch activated.

I read this about the Splash Pads from the Eagle website:

Based on the popularity splash pads in Bryan/College Station, city officials are considering including more of these features in future projects, so be sure to keep the look out for new splash pads this Summer.

I called the City of Bryan Parks and Recreation, and they told me that the water is City Water, just like you’d get out of your faucet.

Tanglewood park has several covered pavillions, three playgrounds, a sand volleyball court and loads of picnic tables.

We really like this park. Not as much variety as Austin’s Colony (well, except for the Splash Pad) but great playgrounds, and although it’s a well know park, we’ve never had trouble finding empty picnic tables.

You can get there from Villa Maria, 29th or Texas Ave.

And just so you know, here’s a website that sells these Water Play Features. I don’t know if Bryan and College Station get them any cheaper, but we can assume that these are approximately the price our city paid as well. I guess that’s what our taxes are paying for. I’m OK with that. Parks are fun.

Go play.

Jorge

First of all, a little info:

Lake Bryan is owned by the local utilities company (BTU). They use the lake to cool their power plant (which you can see from the lake). The use of the water by the power plant does not affect the consumption of the fish in the lake. Here’s what WikiPedia has to say about it:

Lake Bryan is a power plant cooling reservoir in Brazos County, 5 miles (8 km) west of Bryan, Texas, USA. The dam and lake are managed by Bryan Texas Utilities which uses the reservoir as a cooling pond for the electrical generators in the Dansby Power Plant. The reservoir was officially impounded in 1974.

My family visited for the first time on a very windy day. Our food practically flew off the picnic table. There were wind surfers, jet skiers, water skiers, volleyball players, a few dogs and other people having picnics. We’ll go back to swim and hang out in the Spring or Summer.

• Day use fee $3/car weekdays, $5/car weekends and holidays
• Open 6 am to 7:30 pm November 1-February, 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. March-October

There’s a restaurant (which is closed during the Winter Months), a boat landing and picnic tables just as you enter the park. The main area is across a bridge and into the center of the lake, where there’s a covered pavilion, volleyball courts, picnic tables, a beach, a stage and lots of room to run a play.

Here’s a list of things you can do at Bryan Lake:

1. Picnic: This is what we did. There’s a covered pavilion, and lots of picnic tables all around the area. There are BBQ pits at a few of the tables and a few large Oak trees for shade.

2. Swimming: It was too cold in December, but we will be back in the Spring to swim. In the middle section, at the tip, there’s a beach, and a large area cordoned off for swimming. Not sure how deep it was, but I’ll let you know.

3. Fishing: Looks like there’s Sunfish, Catfish, Crappie and Large Mouth Bass. Here’s what the Texas Parks and Wildlife Website has to say about it:

• Prey species: Sunfish make up the majority of prey fish in Lake Bryan. Gizzard and threadfin shad are present but in low numbers. Bluegill are the most abundant of the sunfish species, and most are < 4 inches in length. Threadfin shad were stocked in 1992 but do not contribute significantly to the prey base in Lake Bryan.
• Catfishes: Channel catfish abundance has declined over the past few years. Only one individual was captured in the 2006 gill net survey. However, the creel survey indicates anglers do target and catch channel catfish. Growth of channel catfish at Lake Bryan is slow.
• Largemouth bass: Largemouth bass are abundant in Lake Bryan with fish up to 21 inches collected in our electrofishing survey in 2005. The 18-inch minimum length limit has allowed the population to produce larger sized bass for anglers. The current lake record is over 7 pounds.
• Crappie: Catches of crappie in our monitoring surveys are typically poor. Though directed angler effort for crappie was low in the 2004 creel survey, anglers did report catching and releasing crappie, with some harvest of black crappie. Hybrid crappie were stocked in 1997 in an attempt to increase the numbers of crappie available for harvest; however, none were collected in the present survey.

4. Water Skiing: We saw some water skiing over by the dam. Looks fun.

5. Wind Surfing: There were two wind surfers on the windy day we went.

6. Mountain Biking: At the time of this writing, the trails are closed because of rain and mud, but I am definitely looking forward to hitting those trails. There’s an organization in town that even goes out periodically and services the trails to keep them nice and safe. Here’s a map of the Lake Bryan trails, and a place to find out the status of the trails at any given moment. (although the trails are not actually “closed” when they say “closed”, it’s just a reminder that the less they are taken care of, the more possibility there will be that they won’t be rideable in the future).

7. Hiking: Although the trails are perfect for mountain bikes, they are great for walking and birdwatching. Being a water area, there will always be interesting birds to look for.

8. Boating: There’s a boat ramp

9. Jet Skiing: Saw a couple of these while we were there.

10. Volleyball: There was at least one sand volleyball court that we saw. Looked in good shape.

11. Watch a show: There’s a stage out there. Not sure what ever happens on it, but it’s out there. Looks like a perfect place for an open mic night.

12. Eat at the Restaurant: Called The Hook Lakeside Bar & Grill“. They offer Catfish Tacos, Burgers, Po Boys and seafood platters at fairly decent prices.

13. Camping: I believe there’s an RV hookup per day charge as well as a tent charge. I can’t remember what it is, but I remember that there’s a thing called the “Honor Pole” where you pay what you owe. That’s fun.

Have fun.

jorge

Our favorite Park/Playground in town is definitely Austin’s Colony.

The park is behind Harvey Mitchel Elementary School, but we’ve gone during School times and the park is big enough that we don’t bother the kids at recess.

There are actually 3 playground areas, so we have a choice when we go there. There are also basketball courts, tennis courts, and even a paved skating rink with hockey goals in it.

There are some paved walking trails at the far end of the park that winds around a pond or creek or something, which means mosquitoes in the Spring and Summer, and watch out for Poison Ivy around the trails. (look for three leaves with a red stem where the leaves come off the larger stem, and wash off immediately with Lye soap if you rub on the plant).

The bathrooms are usually pretty clean (considering they are those public park toilets), and since they are one one side of the park, there has been at least one occasion where a certain little girl couldn’t hold it long enough to make it to the other side of the park. We found a secluded place behind a tree close to the pond/creek and left our mark.

The ground around the playgrounds are that “poured-in-place” rubber stuff and it’s kinda falling apart, but it’s soft, which has cushioned my kids’ heads many times.

We’ve seen some teenagers come out and hang out at the picnic tables every once in a while, but not causing trouble.

The pavilion is a nice size for around 75 people.

Jorge