Outdoors
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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…
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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…
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Nature in the City | A Sunday Morning at Burroughs Park
For an earlier trip here, see this post and this post. For most of the summer it seemed as if we were go-go-go or bury our head and do some kind of house project, well, that last part was Chris. August was our month to recuperate a bit, though Chris has been out of town for work a few times so he hasn’t gotten to recoup as much as he has wanted. We layed low last weekend but still wanted to do something fun and outdoors. The summer has been awfully hot as I think it has been for much of the country. Paired with barely any rain compared to…
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Famous Trees of Texas | The Zachary Taylor Oak ( Tree 73 )
For the original scope behind this, visit here for our first trees. Right before we headed off for vacation earlier this month I grabbed the Famous Trees of Texas book to scout out any trees that might be around our vacation destination. I found three that were within reach, including the tree I am writing about here. The others we didn’t end up getting to, though one of them, the Goose Island Oak, we went to five years ago on our Texas roadtrip post AT thru-hike. I also visited it as a kid with my parents. Anyway, we didn’t make it back to that tree for it to count on…