• Florida,  Florida Trail,  Travel & Places

    10 Years Ago – Ocean to Lake Trail Hike

    It suddenly hit me about a month ago that we’re wrapping up a decade here in a few weeks. To be honest, and I’ll elaborate more on it in my end-of-decade post later in December, my brain is still stuck somewhere in 2014-2016. It hasn’t caught up to 2019 yet. And then I realized that this Thanksgiving week is our 10th anniversary of our hike of the Ocean to Lake Trail, a side trail of the Florida Trail. Typically most people start on the eastern shore of Lake Okeechobee and then walk to the Atlantic Ocean on Jupiter Island at Hobe Sound Beach. We did this as a prep for…

  • Hiking,  Outdoors,  Texas,  Travel & Places

    Westcave Preserve In Summer – The Uplands

    Let’s rewind back to early July and our trip to Austin. We visited Westcave one sweltering morning after having not been there for several years. We had some time before our tour to the grotto and cave began so we hiked their upland trail. It was a trail we had not been on before so everything was new to us! Texas Skeleton Plant, Lygodesmia texana Snake Apple, Ibervillea lindheimeri I noticed this plant in the two photos above and was unfamiliar with it. It was obviously a cucurbit of some sort but I had no clue what it was. I was right about the cucurbit part and the plant is…

  • Alaska,  Travel & Places

    Ketchikan, Alaska

    After our hike at Carlanna Lake, we called a taxi and told the driver that we wanted to see the salmon run and ladder in town. She drove us to Deermount Street at the north end of a city park and sure enough, there were plenty of salmon in Ketchikan Creek. We got out and paid her and then watched the fish for a while. Forest wanted to play in the park nearby so we walked over and scouted that out while Chris finished oogling at the salmon. At the far end of the park is the Deer Mountain Hatchery which was open to the public to view and learn…

  • Memes,  Outdoors,  Wildlife Wednesday

    Assembly Moth, Samea ecclesialis | Wildlife Wednesday

    I’m always noticing the moths that hang out by our front door. This particular one was on the back door to the office at work one morning when I got there. It was precariously close to the hinge so I nudged it over a little bit and then took a few photos. It turned out to be an assembly moth after I put it into iNaturalist. There’s not much to glean about them from Google but I found out their range is North Carolina to Florida, west to Texas, and south in the neotropics to Brazil. Adults fly year-round in the southern areas of their range. This scientific article has…

  • Hiking,  Outdoors,  Texas,  Travel & Places

    Richards Loop on the Lone Star Trail | Sam Houston National Forest

    We have been meaning to get out for a short overnight backpacking trip the last few weeks but our initial weekend in October didn’t work out—I think rain was forecast. Last weekend we had it pinpointed once again but cold air and rain was a factor. As the weekend loomed closer it appeared it would be a great weekend for a short overnight hike. I looked up the Lone Star Trail maps with an eye on an hike I did with our friend Red Hat (trail name) when she still lived in Texas back in 2011/2012. Sure enough the Richards Loop looked like the length we were looking for–about 6…

  • Hiking,  Outdoors

    Bushwhacking Sam Houston National Forest | Round Two

    A few weekends ago we went bushwhacking in Sam Houston National Forest again. You may remember our hike last year while attempting to look for the Bartonia texana. It was coming up on blooming season for them again and we hadn’t been hiking in quite a while (and haven’t been hiking since!) so I mentioned to Chris that we should try once more. This year the weather was warmer and the sun was shining. Forest was a little more upbeat for this hike than last year since he was already familiar with where we were going. Veilwort, Pallavicinia lyellii — always enamoured by the liverworts along this creek. We reached…

  • Alaska,  Hiking,  Outdoors,  Travel & Places

    Thunderbird Falls Trail | Eagle River, Alaska

    Jumping ahead in our Alaska adventures (mostly because I wanted a simple set of photos to edit. I looked at Denali photos and the billions of bear photos and thought that was too much at the moment!) we’re going to hike on the Thunderbird Falls Trail just outside of Anchorage in Eagle River. We’d arrived in Anchorage that morning via the Alaska Rail into Anchorage, rented a car, checked into the hotel, and headed for a few hiking adventures on the outskirts of Anchorage in Chugach State Park. Since it was Labor Day, the trailhead was rather busy. In my assessments online it seemed like this was in a quieter…

  • Gardening

    Post Early Freeze In The Garden

    Eastern Carpenter Bee, Xylocopa virginica Last week we had our first freeze, about a month earlier than is typical. Last year we had a mid-November freeze, which was also early and then we warmed right on up again through December and didn’t freeze again until January, I believe. Some years here we freeze in December, one year I remember not freezing until January. I liked that year. But this year we got it early which meant Chris shuffled his orchids and bromeliads in and I moved a few plants from the potting bench to the back porch. I didn’t bother covering some things in the edible garden and it looks…

  • Thoughts

    Life Lately | November 2019

    Thinking: How about a short series of photos from the last month?? Of course there was Halloween last week. We kicked off with our tiny community’s hayride event, which Forest went dressed as a dinosaur! I tested out my feeble face painting skills and T-Rex got 2nd place! Well, we actually kicked off the night before at a fall festival at his school where there were games, food, and friends. Then there was a Halloween party at school and Halloween night trick-or-treating as well. For both of those he wanted to dig out his almost-too-tight costume from last year and be Spider Man again. *shrugs* Chris started working on the…