Hiking
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2nd Day Hike at Eagle Mountain Park
First Day Hikes have become more popular in the last several years, which is very good thing, however we weren’t able to get out and enjoy a hike on the first day of 2016. Chris and I had opted to go up to visit our families in DFW during the latter part of our winter break and that encompassed the New Years holiday. After being cooped up for several days due to various visits with family and cold weather, Chris was itching to go for a hike somewhere on the second day of the year. It was a rather lazy start to that Saturday, enjoying bacon cooked by my mom…
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Eightmile Lake | Wenatchee National Forest
On our third night of backpacking in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness, we took a relatively flat hike over to Eightmile Lake. There were a few rolling areas but it was an easy hike after our climb up and down Aasgard Pass. It was also a very quiet hike. There were a few people camping on the far side of the lake but we never interacted with them, and we saw no one on our hike into the lake. It might not have been alpine as the Enchantment Lakes were, but it wasn’t without a lot of grand scenery! There was a very cool old dam near the end of the…
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Another Sunday Hike On The Chinquapin Trail At Huntsville State Park
We first hiked this loop back in late March when Forest was almost 7 months old! This time we opted for a clockwise route instead of the counterclockwise route. The trail is the orange line on this map. It was a little chillier than I expected when we set out that morning and I was thankful that I had a hoodie on my fleece jacket. The sky was overcast and while there were some storms west of us in Austin, we didn’t expect to be impacted during our hike. There were lots of prints in the first creek crossing we visited, some we could identify and others we couldn’t. Chris…
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Aasgard Pass Descent
If you’ve been reading here long enough you know that Chris and I went to Seattle and the Cascades for our 10th anniversary in 2012. I never actually finished sharing the photos from that time and since I don’t always have a lot of excursions and adventures to share these days, I thought would try to finish sharing those photos over the next few weeks. If you missed any of those posts you can flip through them here. The big chunk of time we spent in Washington State, the primary reason for going, was to hike in the Enchantment Lakes. We had a permit for the Core Enchantment Zone which…
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The Woodlands Trail | Big Thicket National Preserve
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The Wildlife and Island Trails | Martin Dies State Park
On the Sunday of our camping trip several weekends ago we went over to the Walnut Ridge unit of the park to hike for the morning. We merged these two trails together to create a longer loop. There was no one on the Wildlife Trail while we were on it but a few people were starting to explore the Island Trail just as we were leaving. It was definitely a quiet loop to do. The one annoying thing about the trails in this park is that they include the mileage along the roads to get back to the trailhead of origin for their loops, which we thought was weird. There’s…
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The Slough and Forest Trails | Martin Dies State Park
Acer floridanum, southern sugar maple. Ilex opaca, American holly Poor luna moth! Lobelia cardinalis The afternoon we arrived at the state park we combined the Slough and Forest Trails for a giant loop through the Hen House Ridge Unit of the park. Being as it was Saturday the park was very busy and the trails did have people on them, particularly closer to the ‘front country’ interface near the roads. One thing we were definitely surprised with in this park was the size of some of the trees out there, particularly the magnolias, beeches, and even some of the American hollies. Ocassionally there would be a large pine that has…
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The Dogwood Trail | Woodville, Texas
Last weekend as we were heading east down US 190 towards Martin Dies Jr. State Park we saw a brown sign pointing out the Dogwood Trail on the north side of the road. We knew the Big Thicket National Preserve was around the area but didn’t think a unit was right there and the Dogwood Trail did not sound familiar. After we got to camp I got on my phone and looked around but couldn’t find much information other than one review on All Trails. It looked interesting enough to check out, though. I tried looking again the following day and did end up finding a bit more information on…
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Hiking at McKinney Roughs Nature Park
It had awhile since we had done any out of town weekend trips. Chris’ birthday was last week and I had been pressing him for a month or so to decide where he might want to go. When we were living in Florida we started taking weekend trips on occasion to little areas of Florida just to get away. Most of the time we would head to the west coast, usually around Sarasota but sometimes we’d go to Sanibel or Ft. Myers. We’ve been back in Texas for five years now and have tried to continue doing similar trips when we can, however we usually head to the Hill Country…
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Local Adventures | On the Lone Star Trail
It’s been a long time since I have categorized something as a Local Adventure, though I have had other blog entries that might have been written as such. I decided this hiking trip should be labelled as a Local Adventure and so here we go! After having quite a busy and hot summer (when is it never hot in Texas during the summer?) Chris and I sat down and planned out a pretty full autumn and early winter, filled with camping trips and other excursions. We have a lot on our plate at home, too, with general yard and house chores. Sometimes, a lot of the time, I tend to…