Thoughts
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Reverse Macro Love
On Monday we went to the Dallas Arboretum with Chris’ dad. I had never been so it was a nice experience. After being so used to Fairchild Gardens in Miami, it’s hard to get used to non-tropical plants. There are some nice tropicals such as this Pride of Barbados, but a lot of them are temperates. They also have a great test garden where they do try some of those tropicals like mandavilla and tropical hibiscus. It was blazing hot and though we didn’t walk fast or far, we were sticking to our clothes pretty quickly. It was 107* for a high here on Monday. Yesterday it was about 12*…
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5 Things Sunday
Today is list day. 5 Things I Love Swimming in a pool. Breakfast with three of my favorite friends and one cool little kid. Finding nice clothes for really cheap at Goodwill. It’s becoming my favorite store. My new brown hair. Really loving it! The blonde will come back, but it’s nice to have a change. My talkative little niece. She’s a ham! 5 Annoyances 103*. Blech. Texas in the summer bites. At least the humidity isn’t nearly as bad as it was in New England a month and a half ago. Eliana pawning Millie off to someone else. Yeah, I am peeved at that. She’s Baloo’s buddy now, keep…
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Four Goals and Overwhelmed
So, it’s been two days since we went up Katahdin and ended the hike. Yesterday felt pretty ok, like a zero day, just relaxing in town. Today, well, it was back to the real world in a way. We’re still on a vacation of sorts, but we went into the biggest town we’d been in since our short trip back to DFW in May and it was a bit overwhelming. So much stuff….everywhere! Our goal of the morning was to hit up a Goodwill after going to Best Buy to get a new GPS since we think ours was stolen from my mom’s luggage in the airport. Goodwill was nice…
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Trail Thoughts
As we wind down our first week here in Texas, time is inching closer to when we leave for Georgia for the Trail. We’ve tentatively set the date for starting for the weekend of the 13th of March. With all of the snow that has fallen this month and in January, it appears the trail conditions are fairly bad, especially in the higher elevations of North Carolina and up the trail. We experienced the blow-downs here and there are a lot of them on the AT in GA and NC right now, though local trail associations are clearing them out as they can. I think we’ve convinced my uncle and…
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Trail Q&A
Alright, I’m finally getting around to the couple of questions that were asked a few posts ago. I know the videos probably cover a lot of the answers, but I will take a few minutes to answer the questions now that we are semi-settled in again. Chris Hind asked: I’d like to know what backpacks and tents you guys will be using. We are using Osprey Atmos 65 packs. Mine is the small version, Chris is using a large. I got my backpack from my dad who got it off of Steep and Cheap and it wasn’t what he was thinking it would be so he gave it to me.…
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Le Sigh
We finally made it to DFW today around 5pm. The perfect time for traffic. We had smooth sailing the entire trip until we hit Dallas rush hour and then a few key places near my parents house in Tarrant county. I have to be honest, it was hard to leave Florida. When we passed Pensacola and into Alabama I felt very sad. Through Alabama and Mississippi, where we stayed last night, I felt lost. It subsided a little once we entered the western part of Louisiana and then, finally, east Texas. But, it feels weird being back home. It’s home, but not home. A limbo state. And there is snow…
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The Last Trip to Fakahatchee Strand
This week will be full of ‘last’ trips. Every time I go somewhere or drive somewhere I wonder if it will be the last time I’ll drive by it. When we left Fakahatchee yesterday I was reading a magazine and when I looked up and realized it’d be the last time for awhile I said goodbye while watching the evening sun glisten across the fields. I wanted to go for one last trip there but my idea was to go see some variegated Guzmania monostachia. Instead Chris and his hiking friend Rich wanted to go to a very distant population of Cranichis muscosa, the moss loving orchid. It was lost…
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The Last Ghost Orchid Trip
It was bittersweet taking our last ghost orchid trip to Little Slough. When Chris found our slough in 2007 (you’ll have to scroll down to May because I didn’t link titles back then) we’d been searching for ghost orchids for several years. We’d tromped all around Fakahatchee Strand looking for various plants and just exploring, not really knowing any different orchids. When we found this orchid, Campylocentrum pachyrrhizum after a geocaching camping event, we were super excited because we thought it was a ghost orchid. Only, it wasn’t. Close—but no cigar. Sadly, this orchid isn’t even there anymore, it was taken by someone right off the tree. Bummer. We looked…
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Mushroom-y Thoughts
One area I’d like to improve upon is my identification of mushrooms. Right now it is nil. Nada. Nothing. They are such intricate creatures, fungi. These are beautiful; the white and brown are such a beautiful combination. Find a good piece of rotting material, wood, animal, excrement, whatever—and up grows a mushroom. Sometimes over night. I’ve been struggling lately with the idea of leaving Florida. I do have a Florida post brewing in my head, but my problem is mostly because it was here in Florida that I really learned to see nature around me. I learned the ecosystems and started learning to identify plants and animals and took a…
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Nearly Wordless Wednesday—with music
Mostly because I’m obsessed with this song at the moment. M. Ward—To Go Home. Realized I loved it via my friend Sara and her wonderful playlist on her blog.