Outdoors
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Middle Lake Explorations | WG Jones State Forest
When I arrived at Middle Lake I saw several fishermen on the south end. I spotted a park bench on the east side of the lake and had to wade through calf deep grass to get there. A path was not worn well in this direction. Lake levels were down due to the summer and drought so I put my camera back down on the bench and edged closer to the water. I looked to the north and noticed more cypress trees, deciding that it was worth going off and exploring. A berm separated the lake and the smaller pond behind it to the north. The pond was down as…
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Late Summer Hike | WG Jones State Forest
Feeling the need to get out and stretch my legs, I drove to WG Jones State Forest, which is about 25 minutes from my house. It really isn’t that far away but all of the roads to get there are minor surface roads with a lot of traffic signals and speed limits are only as high as 55 in a few places. Nonetheless, it is a nice little bit of green space surrounded by suburbia. The town of The Woodlands abuts the forest to the west and south, though the park is technically in Conroe city limits. Chris and I went and explored the north portion of the park sometime…
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Paddling Galveston Island State Park
Last weekend Chris and I drove to Galveston for a short weekend stay over the Labor Day holiday. We headed for Galveston Island State Park to kayak their paddling trails on the bay side of the park. I hadn’t even used my kayak since getting it last Christmas and Chris hadn’t taken his out in awhile either. We launched from the Jenkins Bayou trailhead, driving the truck down a narrow two-track road to the launch to drop our kayaks off before parking back up the way in the parking lot. This made it a lot easier than wheeling our kayaks down the road like we’d thought we were going to…
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Backyard Birding
The waterbody we live on is named a lake but really it is more of a pond. There’s another pond adjacent to this one with a few other houses on it as well and it also has a lot of wildlife. Here you see a single roseate spoonbill and a plethora of black bellied whistling ducks. The ducks are very fun but noisy. Sometimes I can hear them inside my house at 11pm or later, just whistling away! I have no idea what they are up to at that hour, but so they are sometimes. (OK, according to multiple resources they are nocturnal feeders. There ya go!) I took a…
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Waiting for Fall
Just a few trees and plants are beginning to work themselves into fall foliage changes. Some are just calling summer ‘done’ and switching over to hibernation in favor of not putting up with the drought any longer. The ones that are truly beginning to turn colors are the mulberries like the one in our backyard. I remarked on Sprout Dispatch that I’m really enjoying this change, this tip of the switch between seasons. I am ready for Autumn. Puttering about the garden the other day I found the mimosa tree still putting out blooms. I’ve seen hummingbirds and swallowtail butterflies enjoying the nectar from the flowers. Walking near the edge…
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Cibolo Creek
I’m trying to finish going through some photos from Memorial Day weekend when we went to the Texas Hill Country. The first part of the weekend happened to be a little rainy. One of those days we stopped by Cibolo Creek a place we’d been to before three years ago when we did a Texas road trip, camping at various state parks from the Panhandle to the Texas coast. The nature center had changed a bit since we’d visited, a new building for nature education was built and the road entrance was improved considerably. While the creek itself was flowing rather lazily at the time we went, there was evidence…
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Down By The Pond
We’ve had a group of Great Egret’s starting to roost around the pond and sometimes they come to hang out in our trees down by the water. Of course now this makes it difficult for me to photograph without scaring them off, which is what happened last night. I managed to get a few half-decent shots of them flying around. I spotted this Argiope spider hanging out in the overgrown vegetation along the pond and rethought my plans of cleaning out the vegetation along the shoreline. I was planning on trying to remove some alligator weed and few other overgrown plants to clear up the edge a little so that…
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Cedar Falls Trail | Petit Jean State Park, Arkansas
Last weekend we were in Arkansas for a short vacation with my family. Saturday was the day they had to vacate the rental house on the lake and everyone else headed home for DFW while Chris and I were staying until Sunday. We weren’t quite sure where to go, wanting to take pictures, do a short hike, and sight-see. My brother mentioned he’d initially wanted to stay up near Petit Jean State Park and visit other areas nearby, but had changed the plans in order to simplify the issue of having to change locations every few days. So, Chris and I decided to check out the park and then see…
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Overly Excited About The Wrong Plant
We were driving down a two lane, very rural road in central Arkansas having just left Petit Jean State Park and Chris was intent on finding either Lilium superbum/Turks cap lily or Lilium mixhauxii/Carolina lily. I had a vague idea of what they looked like, lily-like you know, but having not recently seen a photo I had no idea for sure. So, here we are driving along and looking at farm after farm with very tiny towns interspersed in between looking in roadside ditches as we got 60mph down the road. We slowed a couple of times for trumpet creeper and orange daylilies to get a better look only to…
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4th of July at Lake Livingston
On the 4th of July I met up with Keely and her boyfriend over at Lake Livingston State Park. Chris was still out of town working so I decided to spend time with some friends instead of wading through chores at home—which I could have easily done mind you. Luckily I got there before the crowds got really thick and parking became impossible, but it was already filling up when I arrived at 11am. Keely was meeting a geocaching friend there for a cookout so for the first while we sat around a picnic area talking, eating and watching folks circle around and around looking for parking. The drive out…