• Hiking,  Outdoors,  Texas,  Travel & Places

    Goose Island State Park at New Years

    After our arrival to Goose Island State Pak back on New Years Day, we stopped off at the short boardwalk in the marsh on the north end of the bayside campsites. There were several wading birds in the areas, including these roseate spoonbills, to keep our attention for a few minutes. The wind was brisk, blowing off of Copano Bay from the north, so we were bundled up despite the sunny day. Little Blue Heron, Egretta caerulea Common Loon, Gavia immer Cannonball Jelly, Stomolophus meleagris There were quite a few cannonball jellies on the shoreline and it was a good opportunity for Forest to feel the hard, rubbery bell of…

  • Gardening

    Spring is Coming

    Within the last week or so the daffodils that are in an abandoned bed on the property line to our north, bloomed. These have been blooming every January/February since we moved here in 2012 and have likely been there for 20 years or more. They are among the first things to bloom every year and I hadn’t been paying attention and then suddenly, there they are. I’ve been slow to drag myself out of my usual November/December winter stupor in the garden. I wasn’t ready to deal with it all. But yesterday we made some progress in cleaning up the flower beds and getting mulch in because things are going…

  • Hiking,  Outdoors,  Texas,  Travel & Places

    In the Company of Giants | Bald Cypress Trail at Guadalupe River State Park

    When many people think of bald cypress trees they immediately think swamps and wetlands, maybe focused in on the areas in the southern US. But the Texas Hill Country has some stellar examples of these trees growing along their creeks and rivers, and the ones lining the Guadalupe River are excellent specimens to behold! Some of the largest trees we’ve seen can be found on these banks, somehow evading the logging industry when their swampy counterparts didn’t. The ones along the Guadalupe River were a feast for the eyes and it didn’t take much to want to hug them and ask them what they had seen over the centuries, to…

  • Hiking,  Outdoors,  Texas,  Travel & Places

    A Crisp Winter Weekend

    Right when Forest started school I looked up his school calendar to see what holidays he had off this spring. Most holidays Chris and I do not get off–the perils of working in the private sector. Boy, do I miss all of those holidays I used to get at my job prior to this one. And rather than suffer through working from home while Forest is off school for the holiday or Chris and I taking turns taking a day off, I figured we might as well take PTO and make it a three day camping weekend whenever these holidays came up. Of course, the first holiday was coming up…

  • Baby Teddy,  Family

    Forest’s First Week of School

    We kicked off the year with Forest finally going back to be with his peers at school. He had been home with us since late March 2020. While he had spent most of his life going to daycare 5 days a week and making friends and learning there, the 9+ months at home made him cozy and it was a bit hard to get him motivated to go to school at first. We spent the month leading up to it talking school up and getting him excited but he was still rather ‘meh’ at first. Even to the point of crying that Wednesday before we left the house, which of…

  • Hiking,  Outdoors,  Texas,  Travel & Places

    Chinquapin Trail Loop at Huntsville State Park

    As the saying goes, “What a month this week has been!” Let’s step outside for a bit, even if it is in retrospect, to last Halloween weekend at Huntsville State Park. It was our first camping trip of the season, the first since our last one in late February/early March before the pandemic closed everything down. I believe it was Huntsville State Park that was our last camping trip, too! We set off for the large outer loop, the Chinquapin Trail, around the lake. Forest decided these roots along the trail were mountains to climb so he crawled up them and proceeded to do that for several others we found…

  • Hiking,  Outdoors,  Texas,  Travel & Places

    September on the Lone Star Trail

    Whiteleaf Mountain Mint, Pycnanthemum albescens Digging back into some of my drafted posts, today we are going back to September and yet another jaunt on the Lone Star Trail. I really need to figure out what gaps we have left on this trail. We’ve very nearly finished a lot of the portion west of I-45 but there are some small gaps where we turned around and didn’t connect. This trip was after our yearly trip to a patch of beautyberries where we take birthday photos for Forest. A wine colored fruiting beautyberry. Violet Coral Fungus, Clavaria zollingeri This may be one of the coolest fungi I have ever come across…

  • Alaska,  Hiking,  Outdoors,  Travel & Places

    Along the Nenana River

    I still have a good handful of posts that share from our August/September 2019 trip to Alaska. There’s no reason I shouldn’t have wrapped these up a lot sooner than 1.5 years later but I hope in the coming months I can get everything squared away. I think part of the problem is I really wish we could travel and get to Alaska again. There was so much to see and explore up there that even if we lived there it would take a lifetime to get to it all. This will be the last post from along the Denali Highway, where we stopped alongside the Nenana River as it…

  • Famous Trees of Texas,  Hiking,  Outdoors,  Texas,  Travel & Places

    New Year’s on the Texas Coastal Bend

    We checked in with an old friend yesterday, The Big Tree, aka: The Goose Island Oak. We hadn’t been by to see it since Forest’s second birthday, before Hurricane Harvey. Of course, we had plans to visit the year he turned three but Harvey struck the week before and shattered those plans. And it has taken us this long to get back down to Rockport. She’s showing signs of wear and age but thankfully there’s a team working to keep her going after all these years. Before we made it to the oak, we stopped into the main area of Goose Island State Park to walk around and go out…