Outdoors
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Gus Engeling WMA in August
Another old draft here, this one from August 2023 and a trip to Gus Engeling WMA. It was one of our trips up towards Dallas when we were picking up or dropping Forest of with grandparents before school started. I can feel the heat from this post just reading through and looking at the photos. We didn’t get a really good trip into GEWMA this last summer due to the spring floods, which damaged access to the sandhill section on the north end of the WMA. We didn’t know it was closed when we were going to drop by and visit and so we ended up exploring the southern section…
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Bogging in Angelina National Forest
These photos are from October 2022, though they feel like they are from much more recently — no, now they feel ancient. I started drafting this a year or so ago and never published it, so I’m making an effort to launch some of my older drafts on here. So much has changed since 2022! This is from a bog near Boykin Springs in Angelina National Forest, a really cool area that I’d like to get back out to this spring, between Big Thicket hiking trips. Ribbed Mock Bishopweed (Ptilimnium costatum) with a green lynx spider and her egg case. Black swallowtail caterpillar on the ribbed mock bishopweed Pitcher plant…
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Scenes from the Field – July/August 2024
Long-tailed skipper caterpillar (Urbanus proteus) Viceroy caterpillar (Limenitis archippus) Banded sphinx (Eumorpha fasciatus) – 3rd instar Banded sphinx (Eumorpha fasciatus) – 5th instar Red-headed Willow Leaf Beetle (Chrysomela texana) larvae Red-headed Willow Leaf Beetle (Chrysomela texana) larvae Invasive apple snail eggs (Pomacea maculata) – becoming more prevalent around here. Little yellows puddling on the soil (Pyrisitia lisa) Trying to keep the sun off me! I came back from Ecuador this summer with Covid. I pretty much took a test a few minutes after arriving home from the airport, having felt poorly for the several days prior. We’d had field work lined up for the following week after our return for…
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Comet C/2023 A3 aka Tsuchinshan-ATLAS
In mid-October we did what many folks around the world were doing, looking up into the night sky to search for Comet C/2023 A3, also known as Tsuchinshan-ATLAS. I saw a few people in the Houston area say they were able to find it and so we trekked out to a more open area of the county one mid-week evening to search for it but never found it. I looked around for more information on how to spot it in the sky and approximately what time around sunset, and so we trekked out another evening to try once more. It was visible much later after sunset than what some people…
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Thanksgiving at Guadalupe River State Park
Gladicosa pulchra It’s been a hot minute since we went to the Hill Country. Well, it’s been a hot minute since Forest and I have been to the Hill Country. Chris goes almost quarterly either to Austin, or more recently, to San Antonio, for work projects. But it has been since late winter or maybe spring of 2023 since I’ve ventured to the Hill Country for recreational purposes. We made plans for Thanksgiving camping at Guadalupe River State Park, which the last time we’d been there was four years ago in 2020 for Thanksgiving. We also paired that trip with South Llano River State Park. I don’t think I ever…
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Hickory Horned Devil | Wildlife Wednesday
Back in late October we went camping at Huntsville State Park. It had been several years since we’d been and I needed to tackle some trails there for the hiking guidebook I’m writing. Which, now that I look at my archives, I can’t find that I wrote about that here….??? Oh, wait, I found it, hiding in a life update post from June. Yes, still plugging away on hikes for that and I probably should post an update soon of how that is going! It was rather warm for October at the state park but we carried on and sweated it out. On Saturday of that trip, we had one…
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Southern Twayblade Orchid (Neottia bifolia)
I have finally given up any pretense of writing in a timely manner here. Or sticking to a frequency schedule. Life is busy, writing time is scarce. Let’s roll back to February of this year when we hiked the Four Notch Loop of the Lone Star Trail up in Sam Houston National Forest, where we did a quick overnight hike to see the southern twayblade orchids. Unfortunately I don’t know when we will be back on the LST or anywhere in Sam Houston because the Forest Supervisor just issued a major closure order for a significant portion of roads and trails in the NF due to historic flooding events in…
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Aurora Borealis Visits Texas
On Friday evening I started seeing folks from around the world posting their aurora borealis photos, not long after sunset. I saw a news snippet or two that said it might be seen as far as some of the southern states but I’d heard that before and it never panned out. Chris started seeing the posts as well and decided to head outside, just in case. He came back in and said something along the lines of, “I think it’s reddish pink outside but I’m not certain.” So, we turned off all the lights in and out of the house and walked down to the pond to look. Sure enough,…
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Totality 2024
A year ago we made reservations for a hotel in Copperas Cove to see the total solar eclipse as it made its way through Texas. When the 10 day forecast started looking pretty dismal for most of Texas, we scurried to make alternate plans, just in case. In the end we ended up driving to the Lindale area in NE Texas to stay with Chris’ mom and step-dad for two nights after we made a detour to Sabine National Forest for some botanizing. But the hourly forecasts for Lindale were still iffy and so on Sunday night we started looking at possibly driving to the Tx/OK border, or even into…
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Boykin Creek Explorations
Let’s travel back in time to October 2022. It’s been almost a year since we were in Angelina National Forest and I’m itching to get over there again. Some days I wish I lived somewhere in central/SE Texas, or rather further east than I currently do live in “SE Texas”. We were over in the Big Thicket/Woodville area on Saturday and as rural as some of that area is, you can tell the suburbs are moving out there and even the rural is still rather built up. I digress… I think I might have shared a little bit from this area last year at some point but I know I…
