We arrived at the Pine Springs Visitors Center at Guadalupe Mountains National Park somewhere around 11am MST. Patrice and Justin were going to be meeting us in a few hours and I was surprised that we’d arrived at the visitors center so quickly. That and we didn’t anticipate a time change though I should have figured that we were going far enough west to have one. The extra hour was definitely a bonus.

Inside the center we filled out our backcountry slips and took a look around the exhibits, watching the video in the small room behind the main desk. Killing time, we decided to get everything together so we could book it as soon as they arrived. A few texts were exchanged and they were going to arrive around 1:30 MST, which they did pretty much promptly. Chris was anxious to get to the top of Guadalupe Peak, the 8,749′ mountain that reigns as the highest point in Texas, for sunset. The ranger at the visitors center said that three hours would be a fast time for anyone to climb the mountain, but he didn’t know that there were two recent Appalachian Trail thru-hikers that could probably whip that out pretty fast (Deal and Steadee) and though our thru-hike was well over a year ago we figured we could do pretty well. (I think it was somewhere around 2.5 hours to the top for us…Patrice can verify, she had a Garmin Forerunner clocking our time and altitude).

We were the only ones to start up that late and most folks were coming down by that time. I took my time, slowly and steadily, and not feeling so great from the slowly increasing altitude and from not eating a good lunch. Bad choice on my part! A mule deer was scared from its resting place just off the trail about a quarter of the way up and we encountered an obnoxious if informative kid saying that “we had a long way to go” still. Yeah, we know, dude. Then, since we were all A.T. thru-hikers we lamented about the ever persistent question on the trail when descending a mountain “How far to the top?”. The answer in our head would have been “Well, for you or for me?” After one has covered so many miles it is easy to become quickly efficient at hiking up and down a mountain. Of course we didn’t answer so snidely and are nice about it, “Well, it’ll be awhile, sorry!” This time though I definitely felt on the other end of the stick since I was out of mountain shape and my lungs were feeling the pressure.

The peak we thought was the summit turned out to not be the summit, of course. This is the ever annoying curse of “That must be it!” and it really isn’t. The false summit was instead the 1-mile from summit campground. Looked promising.

Up, and up, and up. Round, and round, and round. We spotted the horse hitching posts and then Chris noticed the monument on the top of the summit.

We’d made it! The rotten thing was I was so shaky and had started having leg cramps on the way up (a banana would have made me feel a lot better!) that I immediately started making dinner. That, compounded with the wind chill at the top didn’t allow me to share in the hub-bub of making it to the summit. I just wanted food and to get in the tent. We decided to find a good patch of rock to set the tent up on instead of descending the mile down to the campground and pitched the tent on the summit instead.

It was a great choice, the view was magnificent and the stars—-wow, the stars! We left the fly off the tent that night so every time we woke up to turn over, our view was to the beautiful stars above. Before we went to bed we were stunned by the amount of cars driving down the road to the east of the park. The lights were endless and we only guessed that it was holiday travel coming to the park or going to areas in southeastern New Mexico (Carlsbad is less than an hour away) and west Texas. Chris took some great shots of the lights and when he gets them downloaded and processed I’ll post them here.

The next morning was awesome! Sunrise was wonderful…perhaps almost as good as Sunrise on Katahdin, I mean, I think the 2,179 miles behind that summit made that one, but it was still pretty awesome.

Was not going for composition here. I literally reached out of the tent for my backpack, got my camera (we carried our good dSLRs up) and shot the photo out the door of the tent.

Looking west, the shadow from Guadalupe Peak on the flats below.

Deal and Steadee

View south to El Capitan and the salt flats

The salt flats again

Looking northwest towards the rest of the range

We camped directly on the other side of the canyon, there, our last night. You can see the trail, the Tejas trail, that goes down the mountain on the far right side of the photo.

About the monument erected by American Airlines in 1958 honoring the Butterfield Overland mail route that went through the region.

Deal and Steadee studying the map…

I took Ridley, the little sea turtle mascot my niece gave me when we did the Florida Trail, to the top.

Next up, we’ll descend and then hit up McKittrick Canyon for some strenuous, but beautiful, hiking!

• Husband flew home from Pennsylvania after a flight delay on Tuesday night. Delayed our intention of leaving for far west Texas until the wee hours of Wednesday morning.
• As in 2 a.m. wee hours of the morning.
• Arrived in Mountain Standard Time at Guadalupe Mountains National Park and was thus happy to receive an extra hour of hiking.
• Our friends Deal and Steadee who we know via the Appalachian Trail met us out there and we then climbed up the tallest mountain in Texas.
• Got my ass kicked by said mountain.
• Had salad for lunch…I wonder why mountain kicked my ass? Hrm, let’s see here….
• Saw a beautiful sunrise from the top of Texas!
• Got my ass kicked yet again going up endless switchbacks to the McKittrick Ridge campsite.
• Saw tons of mule deer.
• Got pelted by rain and wind.
• Hiked among snow flurries. Got worried a white out would happen and then pondered the thought of losing the trail.
• Pondered for no reason as the sun came out a few hours later.
• Walked along beautiful creek beds
• Saw Barbary Sheep on the way down from the mountain this morning.
• Am very tired.
• Will hopefully get a few good posts up soon!
• Hope your Thanksgiving was great!

Mentally I was prepared for a 10-12 mile hike. Because our maps were conflicting and not quite accurate we ended up on a 16 mile hike and I could feel it at the end. Hiking as much as we have hiked in the last year and a half it is easy to gauge how far we travel. Sometimes I think that since we are going on a day hike that I don’t need to prepare as if I’m thru-hiking. That’s a mistake! I learned when we hiked to the giant sycamore and wore cotton socks. This time I didn’t wear my hiking underwear…bad idea. Chafing! I wore the right socks but wasn’t in my normal boots so I ended up with some blisters, one that ended up blood filled, something I’d never had before.

It was an enjoyable hike, though. I’m always bummed when I go places that don’t seem to get much use. We were in some fairly far out regions of the forest and I wonder how often anyone comes through there. A few forest roads access that area so one can get in that way, though.

We ended up making a large loop out of the North Wilderness Trail and then connecting the west end of the Little Lake Creek Loop, back to the Pole Creek Trail that we’d taken on our last hike. Chris found a better map online and figured it to be about 16 miles. I had guessed 18.

A small patch of snow-on-the-prairie, Euphorbia bicolor, made me opt for a photo stop. Can you tell sedentary work life is catching up with me? Hrm. More running and yoga needed.

Not too far after this point we heard thunder and Chris thought we might be half way at this point. If we’d been on the right trail and our maps weren’t messed up. Good thing the main storm bypassed us, but we did get a five to ten minute sun shower a little while later.

We saw a lot of deer on the trail, plus a pack of three dogs that appeared to know where they were going, and then this little turtle. I think this little friend is a three toed box turtle.

Hi!

We were supposed to have been on this trail for most of the time, however the map was labeled wrong. Then we chose to go to the right and took the long route. Had we gone left we’d of done the 10-12 miles we’d estimated originally. Oh well! Adventure!

One of the few water sources we saw.

A luna moth dead on the trail.

And another small water source.

I need to be out doing 16 miles every weekend! Love the feeling after a good hike and being out in the woods. I’m disappointed that there is this huge forest right near a large metropolitan area and it is not used nearly like it should be. Maybe that’s a good thing, I don’t know? But, Ocala National Forest is right by Orlando and Ocala and gets heavy use, Chris says mostly because of the springs, but lots of hiking goes on in that area. Texans are missing out!

A few weekends ago Chris and I ventured out to the McGuire Tract of the Trinity River National Wildlife Refuge. It was a hot and humid day by the time we arrived so there wasn’t a lot out on the trail. We had to drive through some back roads to even reach this tract and I wondered how often it was even used. Luckily the ‘trail’, a wide grassy road of sorts, was mowed so we didn’t have to deal with itchy grasses. I’d love to explore more of this area and paddle around on the Trinity too…some day! Next time we’ll attempt it in a non-heat and buggy season.

I was really excited to see this tree, a water locust. I’d seen small seedling/shrub sized plants but this was my first actual tree. I’ve since seen a couple of others.

The creeks were rather low and we spooked an alligator that had been sunning in the water. It sped out of the water and into a hole under the bluff faster than I’ve ever seen an alligator move.

Found a clematis in flower….

and a seed pod forming.

Some poison ivy, good ol’ Toxrad! (That’s Toxicodendron radicans….) Some Camrad in there too, Campsis radicans, aka: trumpet creeper.

At the end of the trail, well at the base of one of the loops, we found a short bridge across a creek and a picnic table to rest for a bit.

A few blackberries were ready to eat.

I poked down this creek for a minute to see what might be around. Not much.

Pretty quiet hike but it was nice to stretch the legs a bit and get out. Maybe we’ll get out on the river sometime in the future.

On our way home from Beaumont we stopped by the Pitcher Plant Trail in the Turkey Creek Unit of the Big Thicket. We showed up just after sunrise, Chris was a bit miffed we didn’t get there a few minutes prior, but I think it worked out anyway. We’d been to this trail before last November but the pitcher plants weren’t blooming or looking too swift. Now they were blooming and looking great!

It’s only about an hour from Beaumont so I’m sure we’ll end up there again during our next two months in Beaumont.

I tried the white background thing again but it wasn’t that great, however I got a few shots that were blog worthy. Then I slapped the red filter on for some black and white photography, something I hadn’t done in quite awhile. I think I’ll be hitting that up more in the coming weeks.

I’ll be working on updating photos to the Wildscape website in the coming weeks and include a select few from the pitcher plant trail. My favorites are the last diptych.

Pitcher plants, this particular species is Sarracenia alata, are carnivorous and will digest unassuming bugs that fly into the plant. More information on this species and others.

This past weekend my brother, my dad, Chris and I went to the Cross Timbers Trail at Lake Texoma to do a short backpacking weekend. My brother and dad have gone here many times with the Boy Scouts and my first trip here was in October 2008. I’ve wanted to go back ever since and funnily enough my brother had been wanting to go as well and mentioned it when we returned from the Florida Trail. We had to do some convincing for my dad since he wasn’t feel as in shape as he should be but my brother managed to twist his arm enough.

We set off on Friday night, it’s about an hour and a half from Fort Worth, and did what my dad calls meadow crash which is the same as stealthing. It was dark when we arrived but set up easily.

The morning was beautiful, not too cold and not too warm. Good hiking weather. Dad walked over this small rough green snake but luckily I spotted it before stepping on it. Chris was able to easily pick it up.

Chris and I were excited for a different kind of backpacking trip, going light and slow. No push for a 20 mile day, only did 6.5, stopped a lot and Chris got some fishing in. This is at the end of the Eagle’s Roost campsite down by the lake where he was catching catfish. He managed to catch some at 5-mile camp, a small one, for dinner.

My brother disappeared for a hours to replace some geocaches a couple of miles away. He finally appeared walking the edge of the lake.

Filtering some lake water; that is one nice thing about this short hike, that you don’t need to carry much water. There is a potable water source at the Cedar Bayou marina and of course access to water from the lake.

The wind kicked up later in the day and a chill came about the air. Chris and I only brought our Marmot Pounder’s, 40* bags. Turned out we should’ve brought our 15* bags! It got cold the second night!

Dad and Curt had trail food, Knorr noodles and a can of chicken. I’ve eaten enough of that in the last year that Chris and I nixed that and went for something else.

Instead we went for chicken sausages that we could cook on the fire. Mmmmm, nothing like eating real food on the trail!

We tried to reenact this photo which made my dad appear much taller than the rest of us, but we switched it up a bit.

I’m pretty sure this is Baptisia bracteata. Not too many flowers are blooming as this has been a very dry spring.

This trail was packed over the weekend; Boy Scouts galore, and lots of other weekend hikers were out not to mention a few mountain bikers. Couldn’t believe it!

There’s a two mile loop that you can do but most people seem to skip it. I think I want to hit it the next time we go, though.

We did find two coral root orchids next to the trail and Chris had gone ahead of us at one point on the way in and taken the Lost Loop by accident and found a few there as well. I’d love to get some good photos of them but I think they will be peaking this week so I’ll need to scout somewhere else soon.

The hike out was pretty chilly with the wind whipping up off the lake and once out of the trees we could feel quite a bit of mist.

We decided that we should do this at least three times a year, too hot in the summer here. Love getting out and doing some exploring! This is a great trail to come out to if you are in the north Texas/southern OK area.

I’ve been digging around to find natural areas in the DFW Metroplex in order to explore some of these areas a bit more. Several months ago I’d bookmarked Spring Creek Forest Preserve in north Garland as an option to see. Finally on Tuesday we made our way out there. Turns out it is very close to my in-laws house and close to a Freebirds, so it was perfect!

There are two entrances on each side of Holford Rd, a two lane country road that you would have seen in this area even 5 years ago, but now most of them are spreading out to four lane and being colonized with shopping plazas. This was a wonderful respite from all of that!

Senecio ampullaceus, I think. This was the predominate flower blooming in the area.

More grape hyacinth on their way out. The bottom blooms are going to seed.

We did find a lot of trout lilies here, though they were already past their peak.

It seemed that there was a better rate of flowering and pollination here than at Tandy Hills.

A lingering flower.

I’m thinking this is a viburnum but am not sure.

The creek running through is really beautiful and the water is clear, but it is sad to see the shoreline littered with mostly plastic bags. They are up high and down low and really ruin the shots. You can see a blue one in this photo if you look hard enough.

Verbena

Lithospermum incisum, fringed puccoon.

More evidence of previous homesteads, garlic or onion of some sort growing wild.

Lingering red bud seed pods from last season.

I will definitely be exploring here more as the seasons change.

I found out about the Bob Jones Nature Center in Southlake, TX from my friend Amanda. It’s among the many nature areas that line Grapevine Lake.

On Monday evening I felt the need to take some photos and get out in nature some so Chris and I drove up to the preserve. It was deserted except for what appeared to be a staff or volunteer car next to the education building. We set off down the trails to the east and behind the education building not sure where we would end up. I initially didn’t take too many photos when I remembered that I could do a Nature in the City post. By this time we’d actually ended up on the outer boundaries of the preserve and into some of the Walnut Grove trails.

Here’s a bit of what we saw:

We found lots of old jars and debris from old homesteads. I am kinda curious why some of these haven’t been cleaned up yet. Still, they provided interesting photography subjects.

Another remnant of old homesteads, maybe broccoli?

Chris needed to kick around to see if there were any snakes hiding. No snakes!

The trails were decently marked, though you could easily end up on an animal trail that has been taken by humans enough to have eroded into a real trail.

Estigmene acrea hanging on in the wind.

There weren’t too many blooms but we did see a lot of blackberry vines.

I’ll have to go back when we get some spring rains and see what else is poking around. Chris did scare off an owl, probably a barred owl.

This week will be full of ‘last’ trips. Every time I go somewhere or drive somewhere I wonder if it will be the last time I’ll drive by it. When we left Fakahatchee yesterday I was reading a magazine and when I looked up and realized it’d be the last time for awhile I said goodbye while watching the evening sun glisten across the fields.

I wanted to go for one last trip there but my idea was to go see some variegated Guzmania monostachia. Instead Chris and his hiking friend Rich wanted to go to a very distant population of Cranichis muscosa, the moss loving orchid. It was lost for a century when another population was found elsewhere in the Strand. Chris and a group went down to this population about three years ago and let me tell you—it is in the boonies. The tram we took used to be clear-ish apparently, but not this time around. We waded through ferns up to our shoulders and ducked under, over and around Brazilian pepper bushes. Two + miles of that. And the water was still fairly high out there for this time of year, not to mention cold!

These are the little plants. They grow on floating logs in the water or in cypress knees in some areas.

This is my favorite shot. I used the reverse lens technique on my 18-55mm lens.

The flowers are very tiny; the whole plant is not but a few inches tall. They are very non-descript if you walked by them in their non-blooming state.

We didn’t see any animals other than a cottonmouth that swam in this area that Chris is at in the photo. It came out of nowhere, but I heard it splash and saw it go over the log and off into the woods. Very creepy! Oh, and a smaller cottonmouth, very tiny baby that wasn’t going to move because it was too cold. But other than that, only bear scat and nothing else!

Brazilian pepper is one of the worst plants in the world. Ok, in Florida. I’m sure in Brazil it is lauded as beautiful and awesome. But, not here. However, I was eyeing a seed pod on a strap leaf fern and thought that it looked pretty cool.

And so I thought this might be the only nice way I would enjoy a Brazilian pepper.

When we left we caught Mike Owen and Karen Relish and a few other Fakahatchee explorers in the park office. It was good to chat with them since it would be the last time to see them in awhile. There was another person there who took a group photo of us but I don’t remember his name, but I do know his friend read my blog at one point. If you are reading this—send me an email! I’d love to have a copy of that photo!

So, goodbye Fakahatchee Strand Preserve State Park. I’ll miss you…but not your mosquitoes.

After going through the rest of my photos of Dinner Island I realized I didn’t have enough macro shots to warrant a separate post. Alas, you’ll get a mix of macro and sunset. I love looking at the little details…

Lichen holding on…

I think this is one of my favorite shots. It can be difficult to get light coming in like this, but I love it!

Probably my favorite sunset shot out of the set.

I didn’t think this one was going to turn out that great when I looked at it in the camera, but I think I like it!

A few things:
-Does anyone else have horrible spam comment issues with WordPress? I NEVER had this problem with Haloscan (which is now closing its doors, so go download all of your comments now!), but I get at least one a day if not more and it is usually on the same post. I don’t want to moderate every comment but this is getting ridiculous!

-We now have a Trail Journal page. It has an RSS button as well. I am planning on copying and pasting on each. I did three posts, repeats of what was on here in order to get the journal listed on TJ, and you can do HTML so it will be easy to c&p. But, TJ has a gear section and we are slowly adding our gear to it. I will let you know when we’ve got it finished and you can have a gander at it.

-We went to Little Slough today to check on the ghost orchids and make it a farewell trip. The ghosts did much better than we thought. A few were already on their way out from a dry spring last year, but only a few had some yellowing on their roots. One even already has a spike! So, things are good there. I’ll bring photos of those later this week. It was a bit bittersweet leaving it, but we have some friends who will keep a good eye on it.