Outdoors
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Old Memories | New Memories
It’s been almost five years since I was on Mustang Island and in Port Aransas. It’s been even longer, decades, since I took an actual vacation there with my parents. It must have been high school, maybe middle school, the last time I was there on vacation with them. They’ve gone many years since then but Chris and I were in Florida for a lot of those times. The last two years for their vacations they went to Arkansas, one of which we joined them on. Last year I was too pregnant to be traveling that far. When my parents mentioned they were going back to Port A this year…
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Kemp’s Ridley Sea Turtle Hatchling Release on Padre Island National Seashore
For the last week of blog silence here we’ve been in Port Aransas, Texas on vacation with my family. I had hoped to write a few blogs while I was gone but the wifi at the beachouse my parent’s rented was absolutely horrible. I was lucky to get online just to check email and read a few things online for about twenty minutes a day. Forget anything else productive! I’ll have a bigger write-up about the trip soon, but I wanted to cover one of the more fun things we did while there. On July 3rd, Friday evening, once we’d arrived and gotten settled in, my dad and Chris ran…
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Hike it Baby Hike at Terry Hershey Park
An Amorpha sp. I mentioned Hike it Baby a few posts ago in my link roundup and that I was going to try to go on one with Keely last weekend. Well, we did make it despite some passing t-showers that were coming in off the Gulf. It didn’t threaten to rain until we were about to leave the hike anyway. We met at a parking lot at the outlet of the Barker Reservoir/George Bush Park in Katy. Terry Hershey Park is a greenway that lines Buffalo Bayou heading east towards Houston. I hadn’t seen Keely since 4th of July in 2013. We’ve kept in touch via email, blogs, and…
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Camping at Brazos Bend State Park
Last weekend we made it out for our last camping trip of the season. It was borderline too hot and humid anyway, but we toughed it out. There was a chance of rain but nothing appeared until our drive home, thankfully. I would definitely like to visit this state park a few more times with Forest as he grows up. There’s a lot to do at the park with a ton of trails, a small nature center, plus the George Observatory. A lot of the trails were closed this weekend due to recent rains and flooding over the trails, but we made do with more of the front country trails…
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Swamp Walk
Remember that trip to Florida I took last March while still in my first trimester of pregnancy? Well, I took a bunch of short videos in our ghost orchid slough and meant to make a video a year ago. Well, I finally got around to putting it together tonight! It’s only a little over three minutes but it gives a fun glimpse into the slough and several great shots of healthy ghost orchids, which were unfortunately not blooming at the time. Below this video is a link to Chris’ video from when we got the sphinx moth pollinating/visiting a ghost orchid back in 2007. We got a good laugh at…
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Short Hike at Buescher State Park
Rain Lily I think this is Vaccinium arboreum, aka: farkleberry. After we took down our campsite at Bastrop State Park we mosyed on over to Buescher State Park for some hiking before we headed home. I didn’t want to get home too late so we didn’t opt for a long hike. Chris put together a loop out of the park trail map that was about two miles long. Forest ended up falling asleep on the way over to the state park so I carefully managed to get him in the Ergo where he managed to fall right back asleep. It was overcast and not long after we got on the…
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Camping at Bastrop State Park
Two weekends ago we finally went on our first family camping trip. We’ve tried to go a few times this spring but have had to cancel at the last minute for a variety of reasons. A weekend opened up and Chris was able to find a site at Bastrop State Park for one night. This state park and about 30,000 other acres were burned heavily back in September 2011. The area is very slowly recovering but much of the ‘lost pines’ that the area is known for was torched and is left standing as only canopyless pine logs. It’s pretty devastating and I can only imagine how gorgeous the area…
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Fresh Air at Tandy Hills
Castilleja purpurea, purple paintbrush Wild onion flowers New trail Where the old trail was… On Good Friday we drove up to Ft. Worth for the Easter weekend. We got up early and made good time, stopping just twice to change and feed Forest. Always in a Tex-Mex mood when I hit the DFW area (because, seriously, Houston doesn’t compare to Tex-Mex in DFW) we went to Mexican Inn on East Lancaster in Ft. Worth, my parent’s old stomping grounds growing up. It was only a hop and skip across the road to Tandy Hills and I wanted to scope out the wildflowers. Unfortunately we were a few weeks early for…
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Sunday Hike On the Chinquapin Trail at Huntsville State Park
It was 2012 the last time we were at Huntsville State Park. We were planning to camp last weekend but bad weather on Saturday deterred us from venturing out. I think had we not had Forest we might have attempted it, but it worked in our favor anyway as Forest came down with a nasty cough and it was probably better he wasn’t outside in a tent overnight. Chris still wanted to get out and do something on Sunday so instead of hitting up Sam Houston National Forest again we opted for Huntsville State Park as they have a diverse trail system and we enjoyed our last visit there. The…
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Early Spring Hike at WG Jones State Forest
Carolina jessamine, Gelsemium sempervirens was in bloom everywhere. A pileated woodpecker hole??? Rubus trivialis, southern dewberry Last weekend we jaunted back over to Jones State Forest for a short hike. Google Earth was giving me a pain but my estimate is that we walked a short 2.25-2.5 mile loop. We started at the most western parking lot on the south side of FM 1488 and headed down the west perimeter ‘trail’, Jones Trail. We turned east on the Upper Horsepen Trail and then cut-up to the north on Cochran Trail before heading back west on the Middle Lake Trail. Before getting to the lake we cut back north on the…