This year on the fourth of July, my family went to Murphy Park in Taylor, Texas to watch the fireworks.  It had rained off and on for a big part of the day.  The weather was really iffy, so when we took off for Taylor, we were not at all sure that this trip was going to work out well.  However, we really appreciated the cooler temperatures.  The fourth is usually excruciatingly hot, so the chance to see the fireworks without the heat seemed like a really good thing.

Murphy Park is fairly small with playground equipment, a nice pool, picnic areas, and a small lake with an island in the center.  We always park on the side where the pool is located.  When choosing an area to view the fireworks, we avoid sitting in places where we have tall trees directly to our right.  The trees sometimes block the view.  If you don’t care that much about sitting by the water, you can see the most by sitting back from the shore enough that the trees don’t obstruct the view.

I have to say, the birds are amazing.

I realize that not everyone enjoys having THAT MANY birds flying overhead.  I was a little nervous about the possibility of “bombs” dropping, but we were parked on the side of the park furthest away from the island!

When I was trying to find out more about the birds on the island, I found an interesting article written by Mary Ann Melton, a master naturalist.  She explains that the rookery on the island looks like a bunch of cattle egrets, but is actually several different species of egrets, herons, and even black-bellied whistling ducks.

Now on to the fireworks!

It was really smoky, as you can see in some of the photos.  I took all of these with my iPhone 7, and I was overall pretty happy with how they turned out.  We really wondered why there was so much smoke, especially along the ground, and then thought about how cool it was compared to a normal Fourth of July.

The Accuweather website explains how temperature inversions affect levels of smoke from fireworks.  In a temperature inversion, warm air actually sits on top of the cold air, trapping smoke and making it harder to see fireworks.  This makes a lot of sense to me.

I’d love to hear about how your family spends the Fourth of July.  Please share your family fun ideas in the comments section!