Hiking
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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…
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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…
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Flora, Fauna, & Fungi on the Carlanna Lake Trail
Because I take too many photos these days I’ve broke down the Carlanna Lake Trail into two posts, with this one focusing on the flora, fauna, and fungi we found. This was seen not far from the trailhead parking lot and honestly, I’m not sure what it is. iNaturalist suggested cotoneaster and the closest one I think that would be is Late Cotoneaster, Cotoneaster coriaceus. It is native to China and so I’m thinking this is an escapee from the neighborhood nearby. Again, not 100% certain on the ID. Large-leaved Avens, Geum macrophyllum Slugs, so ubiquitous in the temperate rainforests–I think this one is an Arion sp. Oxeye Daisy, Leucanthemum…
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Carlanna Lake Trail | Ketchikan, Alaska
When we woke up on Wednesday of our cruise we found ourselves in Ketchikan. We’d been there for a bit it seemed though I don’t think we were supposed to have been there until 7am but we had clearly been tied up at the dock for a while. Though, as we came to find out when we left port later that afternoon, the crew had everything down to a science and we were out of port within 30 minutes of the final call to board the ship. Our dock was just west of the main area in town and there were already tour buses ready for those who were preparing…
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Bird Blind Happenings at Pedernales Falls State Park
Over the 4th of July weekend we headed for the Hill Country and did some swimming in the Pedernales River at Pedernales Falls State Park. After a few hours of that in the morning we opted to drive over to the bird blind and sit there while we ate our lunch. Black-chinned hummingbirds, Archilochus alexandri, zipped from feeder to feeder and then to the small tree and shrub branches to rest. Luckily the glass in the bird blind was fairly clean so it allowed for some fairly clear photos of the birds. Then a Ladder-backed Woodpecker, Dryobates scalaris, made an appearance and it took me a few tries to get…
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Black-Billed Magpie| Bird Creek at Chugach State Park
I’ve decided to write up posts from Alaska in whatever order I feel like. It felt limiting to try to process photos in order and write them in sequence and so I’ll be sharing as I find inspiration. My first inspiration was from our last day in Alaska and finally getting some good photos of a black-billed magpie. I know my Mountain West readers are like “Um, Misti, these are super common over here!” and to that I’d reply that we don’t have them in Texas! Range maps look like a straggler or two might show up in the far north of the Texas Panhandle but that’s about it. I…
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An Evening at Kickerillo-Mischer Preserve
In late June we took an evening out in the middle of the week, dinner at a new to us Tex-Mex restaurant and then a walk/hike over at Kickerillo-Mischer Preserve. The park is down near The Vintage in the Willowbrook area of NW Houston off of SH 249—so it is rather urban/suburban but once you get into the park it doesn’t feel like it unless you pay attention to the background noise of the roads in the distance! The park itself was very busy with joggers, strollers (not the baby kind–well, probably a few of those, too!), and fisherfolks. If we lived closer than a 25 minute-ish drive I know…
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Lower Fisherman’s Trail | Inks Lake State Park
Cenizo, Leucophyllum frutescens — I think. It looks rather ragged and I can’t figure out anything else that this could be. Fairy-Swords, Myriopteris lindheimeri Small Ballmoss, Tillandsia recurvata Tiny Bluet, Houstonia pusilla Sand Phacelia, Phacelia patuliflora Now that it has been many months and moons since we visited Inks Lake State Park (February 2019), I’m now yearning once again for those spring ephemerals. Though, autumn blooms are coming our way (SOLIDAGO, I SEE YOU!)—to revisit this site now would be an interesting study in contrasts! We hopped onto the Lower Fisherman’s Trail on our way out of the state park after our long weekend camping. You can easily complete a…
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Coconut Point Sanctuary | Melbourne Beach, FL
It’s July 11, 2009, my 29th birthday. At this point we are already full throttle into planning our Appalachian Trail thru-hike. I mean, in the fact that we are pretty sure we are going to quit our jobs and pack away our things in early 2010 and head out on our thru-hike, pending on what our bank account looks like towards the end of the year of course. With that in mind we are kind of on a roll to hit up a lot of places in Florida that we may not see for a while after we move out of the state, including a trip back to the Melbourne…
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Post April Showers at Burroughs Park
*blows dust off of WordPress* Hello there! There comes a point when I take these long breaks from writing here (which I haven’t taken one this long in many years) that at some point I start having a contest with myself to see how long I can go without writing. A week? Can I make it two? Two? Why not go a month? Paired with the sporadic posting from the previous two months before, well, the blog hasn’t really been a priority. Honestly, it still isn’t but I figured I shouldn’t let it lay here floundering in the internet wasteland. So, let’s go back to early April when we made…