Outdoors
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Trinity Trace Trail | Lake Livingston State Park
The Trinity Trace Trail meanders from the Pin Oak camping loop on the north end of the park down to the south end of the park, beyond the Hercules Club camping loop. We hiked only on the portion that began between the Piney Shores and Yaupon loops, heading south. I had been on this section before with Keely but I couldn’t remember everything about the loop. In particular, I’d forgotten about the bridge being out and the inability to complete the loop on the southern end. On our way out, behind the Hercules Club camping loop we passed a group of scouts heading north, appearing to go pick up trash.…
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Camping at Lake Livingston State Park
Roadkill speckled kingsnake Roadkill garter snake Our camping excursion for the end of March was over to Lake Livingston State Park. I hadn’t been since I met Keely there in 2013 and it was Chris’ and Forest’s first time. This state park is one of the few in Texas that allowed advance spot selection when you reserved your site—usually you have to take the luck of the draw when you arrive. Apparently this is a feature that is going to be available at more state parks later this year, something we are thrilled about. We’ve been frustrated by this lack of ability since we’ve returned to Texas and it was…
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Forest’s First Backpacking Trip | Part I
*Photo heavy post! Write-up at the end! It’s also long!* Prep and Planning I think we picked the perfect weekend for introducing Forest to backpacking. It wasn’t our longest hike with him ever but we also didn’t want to be too far from the car should we need to hoof it back if something went awry. The weekend before I had seen the 10 day forecast and thought it looked like a promising one for a backpacking trip. The rest of our weekends through April and early May are pretty busy with commitments and Chris heading out of town for work, so unless we planned on doing this when the…
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Spring Camping at Huntsville State Park
We finally managed to get out for a camping excursion after several months of dormancy in that department. Busy schedules and chilly weather left us without a camping trip on the schedule for December and January and while February warmed up nicely Chris ended up out of town for work for several weekends. We’re sticking closer to this side of Texas for our spring camping trips and we kicked the season off with a trip up to Huntsville State Park. While we’ve hiked here many times, Chris and I have only camped here here once, back in February of 2012. I like that this park is so convenient, only an…
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A little botany at Huntsville State Park
A week ago Sunday, before lunch, we took off for a morning hike. We were cantering down the Chinquapin trail, perhaps a quarter or half mile from the trailhead, when we saw an older gentleman pop up out of the shrubs and back onto the trail. At first I thought we’d interrupted his tree watering moment but he had just stood up from sniffing a flower. The flower in question was lilac and situated just a few feet off trail; he said it was extremely fragrant so we stopped and sniffed too. In chatting with the man we came to find out he was a frequent visitor to the park…
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Camping at Huntsville State Park | Part I
I’ve got photos and stories to write up, but in the meantime I processed the videos and put them into one giant video (18 minutes!) for y’all to enjoy. Lots of cute toddler talk!
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Shelling on Bryan Beach
Once Chris was off work last Saturday he met Forest and me at the hotel in Clute and we drove down to Bryan Beach located in the tiny beach hamlet of Quintana. To get there we drove through Freeport and past a maze of various chemical plants, common in this region. Chris commented on a large fenced parking lot full of new car—he’d seen the cars being offloaded from a cargo ship that he’d sent me a video of when it cruised by him (as he was fishing on the jetties) as it headed for the port. It was not a great day for being on the beach; clouds and…
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Morning Hike at W.G. Jones State Forest
Saturday morning we got out for a bit to do a little hiking at WG Jones State Forest. We’ve been there many times but this time we opted to park in the eastern parking lot on the south side of FM 1488 instead of the usual parking lot on the western boundary. This entrance was hopping with trucks towing horse trailers entering through a locked gate to park about a half mile down the dirt road at the horse parking lot. There were a lot of riders out that morning! We crossed over Rice Branch, seen in the photo above, and I think both Chris and I wished we had…
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Hello 2017!
The last week has been quite the lazy one around here. Chris and I were off work and the first half of the holiday week was warm and pleasant and we spent a lot of time outside playing. However, by Wednesday Forest’s cough that had started developing last Monday grew worse and we had a camping trip planned for New Years weekend and I didn’t want to go without getting him checked out. So, off to the pediatrician we went. She prescribed some cough medicine—so nice that we’re finally getting into the ages where more medicine can be prescribed for him!—and thought it was RSV or some similar virus and…
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Six Miles on the Lone Star Trail
We went for a hike yesterday afternoon on the Lone Star Trail and really enjoyed the warm weather!