Outdoors
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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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Beach Combing
Galveston Island State Park, Thanksgiving Weekend 2015
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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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Spiranthes odorata | Wordless Wednesday
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Campsite Scenes | Martin Dies State Park
There’s one thing I find annoying about camping reservations with Texas Parks and Wildlife and that’s that you can’t reserve a specific campsite when you reserve your dates online. You are at the mercy of whatever is left when you arrive at that park. The Florida state park system was better in that regard. However, we did end up lucking out with our site a few weekends ago at Martin Dies State Park. We ended up at site 92 in the Gum Slough camping section. It was tucked off in a tiny loop off of the main camping area, next to Gum Slough. We were secluded a bit on one…
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Monarch Migration at the Lady Bird Wildflower Center
It’s hard to see just how many monarch butterflies were hanging out on this group of mist flower a few weekends ago, but there was quite a grouping of them. I’m sure you’ve heard the plight of the monarchs right now with habitat loss and climate issues affecting their migration. It seems that this year the migration stayed to the west of its usual path here in Texas. We typically don’t see a whole lot of monarchs in our area either. I have plans to start some milkweed this winter to some patches established in the yard and garden. Maybe we’ll attract some in coming year?!
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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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Fall Camping | The Unseen Scenes
The last camping trip we went on was back in the spring at Brazos Bend State Park. Summer came and we were thoroughly busy but it was also too hot for enjoying the outdoors much. About a month ago Chris and I sat down and made a bunch of camping reservations for the fall and winter, even a few in the spring. If you don’t reserve early many campgrounds get booked quickly, especially the more popular ones. We made a three day weekend out of this camping trip. This weekend was one of the more popular weekends apparently, because our searches for our general area and over to the Hill…