Travel & Places
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Through the Inside Passage
The day and a half we had sailing the beginning of the Inside Passage was one of my favorite parts of our trip to Alaska. Ok, the entire trip was pretty much my favorite part of the trip (hah!) but what was pleasant about this time was that we didn’t have to be doing anything. We could lounge in the room, sit on the deck watching the water, sit inside the Garden Cafe (aka: the buffet) and watch the water while eating a dessert or sipping coffee. So, that’s just what we did. Leaving port during those early evening hours we got glimpses of Canadian islands from the Inside Passage…
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Vancouver and Boarding the Ship
As I mentioned in the wrap-up post we made it to Vancouver, and I had started feeling better but not well enough to be traipsing about Vancouver and cramming in all of the sight-seeing as possible. We weren’t in the country long when Chris mentioned that he still wanted to try to eat at the Old Spaghetti Factory in the Gastown portion of Vancouver. There is a trolley in the middle of the building and Chris thought Forest would enjoy sitting in it, so I gave the restaurant a call to see about reserving a table for dinner, which they did. My stomach wasn’t in the mood for much else…
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Echinacea purpurea | Flower Friday
Every time I see coneflowers I am drawn to them. They are one of the long-standing bloomers in a garden and are tough plants and yet I cannot grow them at home unless they are inside our edible garden. You see, the deer love them, too. When we moved in to the house my mom divided some of hers to give to me and now those plants are long gone. I think we may have tried once or twice more before finally giving up on our chances of growing coneflowers out in the open. I am finally growing some inside the edible garden and they delight me every time I…
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Bird Blind Happenings at Pedernales Falls State Park
Over the 4th of July weekend we headed for the Hill Country and did some swimming in the Pedernales River at Pedernales Falls State Park. After a few hours of that in the morning we opted to drive over to the bird blind and sit there while we ate our lunch. Black-chinned hummingbirds, Archilochus alexandri, zipped from feeder to feeder and then to the small tree and shrub branches to rest. Luckily the glass in the bird blind was fairly clean so it allowed for some fairly clear photos of the birds. Then a Ladder-backed Woodpecker, Dryobates scalaris, made an appearance and it took me a few tries to get…
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Pearl Milkweed Vine, Matelea reticulata | (Wild)Flower Friday
I’ve come to really appreciate the milkweed vine species, particularly the more common one in my area, anglepod, aka: Gonolobus suberosus. It grows freely in our yard and in the garden and even gets colonized by oleander aphids like other milkweed species do. Out in the Texas Hill Country, the pearl milkvine, Matelea reticulata, is more common and a delight to see when hiking in the limestone hills. Endemic to Texas and Mexico, you won’t find this species too far east of I-35, though the USDA Plants Database has one county in east Texas listed that the species is supposedly found–who knows!? iNaturalist only shows central and west Texas and…
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Beluga Whales | Wildlife Wednesday
Beluga whales—something that was definitely not on my agenda of things I anticipated seeing while in Alaska. Humpback whales, porpoises, sea otters, sea lions, seals, possibly orcas—those were all things that were on our radar and for the most part we came across all of them. The orcas were the only things in that list we didn’t see. When we disembarked our ship in Seward we opted to take the scenic Alaska Rail to the Anchorage airport where we would pick up a rental car. Instead of taking the highway between Seward and Anchorage via buses, the railway would be more scenic and offer up chances to sip coffee and…
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Black-Billed Magpie| Bird Creek at Chugach State Park
I’ve decided to write up posts from Alaska in whatever order I feel like. It felt limiting to try to process photos in order and write them in sequence and so I’ll be sharing as I find inspiration. My first inspiration was from our last day in Alaska and finally getting some good photos of a black-billed magpie. I know my Mountain West readers are like “Um, Misti, these are super common over here!” and to that I’d reply that we don’t have them in Texas! Range maps look like a straggler or two might show up in the far north of the Texas Panhandle but that’s about it. I…
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Grand Alaska Adventure: A Short Wrap-Up
I didn’t mean to leave everyone hanging after the last post but honestly, it was going to be too hard to try to write every day and get a post up here every few days. I don’t know how hikers or other travelers do it on a daily basis, trying to compress everything they are doing into the day and writing it up, editing photos, and getting it out into the world. I suppose if you consider it like an ‘office hours’ type situation, but this was vacation and that wasn’t happening. (On a more annoying note, I updated my WordPress platform and I am hating the post editor now.…
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Quick update
Just a quick update because I’m not going to be able to write like I had intended—the app isn’t working right. We did get to our destination and then onward. I’ll update again when we return to Summer—for now we are going to continue enjoying early autumn! More in a week or so.
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Finding Our Way to Vancouver Part II
Sunday morning We arrived at the Motel 6 at around 3:30 am after landing and sitting on the runway for about 20 minutes because of a backup in Seattle. While waiting for our luggage I’d begun feeling poorly again. I’d felt bad since the day before when our flight issues had occurred but I’d chalked it up to nerves. It had settled later that day and I had felt better when we left Houston. But as we settled in for what meager sleep we could get that night I knew I wasn’t doing well at all. Morning came and we slept in as long as possible but our bodies were…