Outdoors
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Campsite Play
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Frio Canyon Trail | Garner State Park
After our hike up Old Baldy, Chris wanted something more mellow and less terrain oriented. The Frio Canyon Trail takes a loop around the prairie portion of the north end of the park. We hiked it after dinner one evening and it was not busy at all, which made for a pleasant walk. There was a section on the west side of the park, near the road, that felt a little bit like being in south-central Texas, near Brenham, reminding me of the Somerville Trailway; it had a slight bottomland/scrubby marsh feel to it though it certainly was not wet at the time we hiked. The hike was peaceful, exactly…
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Old Baldy Hike at Garner State Park
Our hike up to Old Baldy last weekend did not start well. We hadn’t been hiking all summer and so it was an adjustment for Forest to get back into the backpack and for Chris to carry him. The trouble started when we left the very busy Pecan Grove camping area to head up the trail when Forest began wailing and throwing himself all over the backpack. Not only is this uncomfortable for Chris, Forest was also trying to sneak his arms out from under the straps and trying to escape. It took us a few minutes to realize he wanted to people watch at the campground instead of going…
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Famous Trees of Texas | The Rio Frio Landmark (Tree 149)
It isn’t often that we’re out in the area SW of San Antonio so when we were there this time around I made sure to grab our tree book to see what might be in the area. We were in luck, just up the road from Garner State Park was the Rio Frio Landmark tree located in the very tiny ‘town’ of Rio Frio located on the east side of the Frio River. Forest was not interested in taking a nap on Saturday afternoon despite all of my attempts to get him to lay down in the tent so we did what all parents do when they know their kid…
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The Frio Bat Cave
Finally we’ve returned to camping and hiking season around these parts! Just as a lot of people are storing their gear for colder months, we southerners are digging it out and are ready to get outside. Gone (mostly) are the days of standing outside for two minutes before dripping in sweat so now is the time to relish the cool weather and start exploring once again. We kicked off the season with a trip to the Texas Hill Country for Chris’ birthday weekend. We hit up Garner State Park, one of the most popular parks in Texas. While researching the area I found out about the Frio Bat Flight at…
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Famous Trees of Texas | The Goose Island Oak (Tree 171)
Our first stop on our vacation trip was to the ‘Big Tree’ at Goose Island State Park to get one of the Famous Trees of Texas. You may recall last year we stopped in Rockport to nab one but didn’t stop and grab this one. I had sights on getting another tree in Corpus Christi while we were on this trip but we never made it up to get it. We’d just missed a rainstorm when we arrived at the tree and thankfully it was overcast so it wasn’t too hot but the mosquitoes were out. It’s been quite awhile since I’ve hung out with that many mosquitoes—it was pretty…
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Beach Scenes
For our vacation, since we were on North Padre already, we opted to drive down to Padre Island National Seashore for all of our beach visits. I think this was mostly spurred because the first night we were there we drove down after dinner and it was quite peaceful with just a few cars on the beach. Even though we spent about 20 minutes driving down there, being able to drive on the beach eliminated the need to haul our gear across the street to the beach that was directly across from our hotel. There are definitely good and bad things about being able to drive on Texas beaches. One…
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Sea Turtles at Packery Channel
The second afternoon of our vacation we popped down to the Packery Channel jetties to walk along them (they have a sidewalk on top) and to look for sea turtles as we had done six years ago when it was just Chris and me. We were looking to kill a little time before dinner and it was very hot walking along the jetties in the late afternoon sunshine. It didn’t take long for us to find a sea turtle and then we continued to find them all along the jetties, inside Packery Channel and along the beach. Forest was in his stroller for the ride so I don’t know how…
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Carolina Satyr (Maybe) | (Not Quite) Wordless Wednesday
Over the weekend I was scoping out the figs, seeing if there were any to harvest. As I was doing so I was taking photos of the garden. I noticed several butterflies landing on the fruits and sipping the juices from the broken fruits pecked at by the birds. I managed to get a few photos but it was a butterfly I was not familiar with and would take some book identification and Googling to figure out. At first I thought it was one of the ‘Blues’, Family Lycaenidae, Subfamily Polyommatinae, but quickly realized it was a Family Nymphalidae, Subfamily Satyrinae (Satyrs and Wood-Nymphs). From there it became difficult because…
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Hiking Adventure on the Nature Trail at Fairfield Lake State Park
Everyone but my dad set out for a hike Sunday afternoon of Memorial Day weekend. Dad stayed back to hang out with their dog Daisy. We weren’t sure exactly how long this trail was because unlike many other Texas state parks there wasn’t an individual trail map for the state park. The trail was on the campground map but there weren’t really any distinguishing marks to estimate the distance of the trail. And to make matters more complicated, wires were crossed between my brother and sister-in-law in regards to what the end-goal was for the hike: my brother was going for a hike and my sister-in-law thought the trail ended…