Travel & Places
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Spotted Tussock Moth (Lophocampa maculata)
As we walked around Skagway and then over to Yakutania Point to go for a hike in the afternoon, we noticed a ton of these wooly bear like caterpillars. They were everywhere! I didn’t identify them until I got home a few months ago and put them into iNaturalist. A more northern and western species, the larval stage of these moths feed on “poplar and willow, but also feed on alder, basswood, birch, maple and oak.” The adults are variations of brown with some patterning like so many moths out there and their larvae are definitely the most colorful thing about them!
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Texas Spring
If there’s one thing we can count in in spring here in Texas it is that the bluebonnets and paintbrushes will continue to rise out of the soil and bloom. The sandyland bluebonnets (Lupinus subcarnosus) were the species blooming on our trip over to Lake Somerville State Park last weekend. Only a few paintbrushes (Castilleja indivisa) were seen but there were plenty of other wildflowers to gaze upon. We did find these wonderful patches of bluebonnets nearly 2 miles down the trail in an open field as it sloped towards Nails Creek. This weekend is rainy and cooler and so we’re not leaving the house to explore much. I suspect…
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Exploring Skagway, Alaska
If you are anything like me right now you are probably a bundle of nerves. My friend Eliana posted a photo the other day from some travel around Alaska—they emerged from the YK Delta and saw what was going on and had no urge to return to Florida immediately—so they took a trip to Kodiak. The photo was this beautiful sunset photo of oranges, reds, and purples and looking at the photo made me feel like things were normal. They are now heading back to Florida and all this. But since we’ll be at home all weekend I will probably work harder on editing more Alaska photos and getting blogs…
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Lepidopterans & Sunshine at Lake Somerville State Park
Yesterday I wanted to get out and do some hiking and thought it would be nice to head west to Lake Somerville State Park. We haven’t been there since I was pregnant with Forest in May 2014! Not for lack of interest, though. Every time we checked into going we would find the state park closed due to one of the various flooding events over the last few years. Harvey did a number on the parks and just within the last month was the Somerville Trailway between the two units open once again. Our last good hike on the trailway was in 2013 with our AT friend Redhat. Wanting to…
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Signs of Spring – Huntsville State Park
Camping two weekends ago at Huntsville State Park was pretty fantastic. The weather was gorgeous for late February and everywhere the signs were out that spring was coming and there was no stopping it. On Saturday we took a 7 mile hike around the lake and got to see what was blooming or beginning to push through the pine needles. Fox Squirrel, Sciurus niger – the squirrels at our campsite was all about looking for whatever scraps might be left from campers. One of them wanted to become our BFF and hop into the food containers which required constant vigilance even if we had the lids on to our food…
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White Pass and Yukon Route Railway
We arrived in Skagway, AK and had approximately 12 hours to do what we wanted. Our first thing on the agenda was to take the White Pass and Yukon Route Railway up to the Canadian border, cross it, and then turn around and come back down to Skagway. I’ve gotta say, all that made me want to do is take that train all the way to its final destination somewhere in the Yukon. You’ll see… We slowly choo-chooed through the eastern side of town, passing storage areas and seeing the back side of houses along the way. The Skagway River was gorgeous at the lower elevations. And then we slowly…
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A Fluttering Question
It seems the lepidopterans are ready, they are beginning to emerge from their various states of overwintering and become a little more active. We were camping at Huntsville State Park last weekend and we noticed several species out flying but I wasn’t able to get photos of any but this question mark, Polygonia interrogationis. The three of us took a 7 mile hike around Lake Raven and I opted to put my 75-300mm lens on for the duration of the hike just for this reason. Plus, it alleviated my need to bend down and take flower photos. And while I wasn’t able to get any other butterfly photos I was…
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Flora, Fungi, and Fauna along the Florida Trail in Bronson State Forest
Let’s wrap up my Florida trip with this final post from my hike at Bronson State Forest. Sand Heath, Ceratiola ericoides Rosemary scrub habitats in Florida are considered to be a particularly endangered habitat. It thrives in sandy, old inland dune habitats and prefers to have a good burn once in a while—and well, you can imagine that sandy habitats and burning can be in short supply when people build homes right on top of and up next to the perfect habitat. A few sites with more information: Scrub Rosemary via UCF Arboretum, Endemic Florida Rosemary via Florida State Parks, and Rosemary scrub via Florida Hikes. Deer Moss, Cladonia evansii…
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Raptor Leftovers
Every now and then a hike gets you a glimpse of something wild and interesting. In some areas maybe you get to encounter a large mammal—a bear, maybe a panther or bobcat. Sometimes you just get really cool animal interactions like the time we watched a bald eagle steal a fish from an osprey on the last day of our Florida Trail thru-hike. Occasionally you come across the weirder but still interesting animal presence such as this dead opossum we found on a hike at Huntsville State Park over the weekend. Since we travel at a 5.5 year old’s pace these days we had been stopping and slowing down, and…
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A Hike in the Chuluota Wilderness | Florida Trail
On the Sunday of the short weekend in Florida, I went on a hike with Sandra of Florida Hikes and Kate Dolamore, an artist friend in central Florida I’ve gotten to know the last couple of years. I wanted to hike on a section of the Florida Trail that was new to me, a piece in the Bronson State Forest that was in the process of being re-routed when we hiked in 2011. During our hike we had to road walk a large chunk of this section. So, after breakfast with some of the crew from Billy Goat Day at the Townhouse Restaurant, I met up with Sandra at the…