Travel & Places
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Weekend at Lake Livingston
We kicked off February with a camping trip to Lake Livingston State Park. It is one of our closer camping locations and thus allows for easy access on weekends when we don’t feel like trekking across the state. In the past we’ve tried to take off work a bit early on Friday to make it a longish weekend at the campsite. We weren’t really able to leave that early this time and so when we arrived it was nearly dark. We would end up setting up the tent in the dark as well as making dinner in the dark. This was something we really couldn’t fathom doing a few years…
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A Hike at Split Oak Forest
As I mentioned a few posts ago, when I flew into Orlando I went for a hike over at Split Oak Forest WEA. After I made my flight plans a few months ago I knew I wanted to hike somewhere, probably on the Florida trail, and I had thought I’d likely hit up Tosohatchee WMA. But over the last few months I began seeing a lot more press about a potential toll road proposal going through the southern portion of Split Oak Forest. In late December, Osceola county commissioners ended up approving the toll road plans which was seriously disappointing to hear. Then, late last month a commissioner asked her…
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Scenes from Billy Goat Day 2020
View this post on Instagram The FTthruHIKE community continues to grow. And more and more hikers are thru-hiking every year! If you haven’t considered a winter thru-hike of the Florida National Scenic Trail you should! These people are just one of the reasons! . . #thruhiker #thruhiking #hikertrash #travel #nature #adventure #wanderlust #photooftheday #picoftheday #keepitwild #backpacking #hiking #thruhiking #florida #ftthruhike #floridatrail #nature #sunrise #sunset #hikertrash #adventure #camping #getoutside #florida #floridabackpacking #backpacker #travel #at2020 #pct2020 #cdt2020 #jewelofthetriplecrown A post shared by FTthruHike (@ftthruhike) on Jan 29, 2020 at 5:28am PST First, I’m going to share the photo from FT ThruHike comparing the group in 2014 versus this year’s group. To recap for…
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Billy Goat Day – A Quick Synopsis
Photo from Florida Hikes via Flickr – To find me, look for the dog in the lower left corner, then the guy in the yellow shirt, and then the grey and orange FT Thru-Hike shirt just to the right of that. It was a good crowd! Wow, what a weekend! I flew into Florida very early on Friday morning, landing at around 10:45am local time, stood in line for my rental car, and then jettisoned myself to the nearest Publix to get lunch. I’d started craving a Publix sub the night before but had been thinking about it for weeks. The particular Publix I found was very busy at the…
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Eklutna Lake | Chugach State Park
Digging back into some Alaska posts once again. I’ve felt a little lazy in processing photos these days but I’ll see if I can make more progress on them this weekend! For now, we’re going to pick up from where we left off at Thunderbird Falls and drive around the bend to Chugach State Park and Eklutna Lake. Let’s pretend that I did not, a million times over, keep trying to call this lake Elktuna Lake. Eklutna Lake Road is a gently winding road leading into the depths of Chugach State Park. There are several other entrances to reach this expansive state park but this would be really the deepest…
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Around Juneau, AK
Had to stop and take a photo of the Bucc-ee’s sticker all the way in Alaska! (Bucc-ee’s is a chain gas station/store in Texas that draws crowds of people when you stop at one. And super clean restrooms.) Because we’d arrived in Juneau mid-morning we had until later in the evening before our ship left port and approximately four or five hours before we had to return to the ship to get on our tour bus for the whale watching tour. Our ship was docked at the furthest dock from town and thankfully the city/cruise ships have a deal to provide shuttles to the east side of town for tourists.…
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Mendenhall Glacier View No. 2
On our way to a whale watching tour in Juneau, we stopped for about 10 minutes at the Brotherhood Bridge near the Mendenhall River to get our first glimpse of the Mendenhall Glacier. The Mendenhall River is a relatively short river, draining Mendenhall Lake at the base of the glacier, flowing into Fritz Cove downstream. The view from the scenic overlook area was gorgeous as you can see, with swaths of fading fireweed in the foreground. In the distance we saw paddlers in the river. A trail was nearby but we had no time for sleuthing down the trail so we had to be content with our views from here.…
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Kentucky Lady’s Slipper, Cypripedium kentuckiense | Wildflower Wednesday
I’ll have a few posts from our hiking trip along the Eagle Rock Loop from 2012 these next few weeks for Wildflower/Wildlife Wednesdays. Wildflower/Wildlife Wednesday is a much better use of “I don’t know what to post but it is Wednesday” than Wordless Wednesday used to be. Though, Wordless Wednesday had ease going for it—just post a photo! I suppose I could turn these into that as well but let’s not, though we can just keep them short and brief. I think lady slipper orchids are one of the Holy Grail orchids to find and also to keep. We had a variety/species of one when we lived in Florida and…
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The Grotto at Westcave Preserve
I think the word has gotten out about Westcave Preserve—our tour was crowded during our visit in July. Of course it didn’t help that it was the 4th of July weekend when we visited, but still. After you’ve come here several times and basically had a tour to yourself, you get spoiled! We joined the tour and stuck towards the back of the line so Forest could walk slower and we could dawdle just a bit. And we had been here several times so we knew the main spiel already, though of course new things get sprinkled in as the years go on, particularly discussions about floods. Various flooding events…
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Inside Passage Approach to Juneau, AK
I think this is what is labeled on a topo as Suicide Falls coming out of Cross Bay Creek on the SE side of town. Our arrival into Juneau wasn’t until mid-morning so we had plenty of time to get up, eat breakfast, and then bounce from outside deck to outside deck to take in the views as we slowly sailed into Juneau. With Admiralty Island and Douglas Island to our port side and the mainland to our starboard side, we had plenty of interesting things to see on each. The island side was less populated, less homes built and much more remote appearing. Once we crossed over to Douglas…