Travel & Places
-
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.
-
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…
-
Finding Our Way to Vancouver Part I
Saturday –posts are being drafted in real time and posted a few days later. Or I’m trying at least. On the way to the airport. Chris and I have a poor track record with passports. Back in 2008 we showed up to MIA with tickets to La Paz, Bolivia with our friends Marc and Eliana only to find out my passport was fine because I’d renewed it recently, but Chris’ wasn’t because it had less than three months left on it. Queue us rescheduling our flight for the following Monday so we could get a new passport last minute for him and us flying later into Bolivia and meeting our…
-
An Evening at Kickerillo-Mischer Preserve
In late June we took an evening out in the middle of the week, dinner at a new to us Tex-Mex restaurant and then a walk/hike over at Kickerillo-Mischer Preserve. The park is down near The Vintage in the Willowbrook area of NW Houston off of SH 249—so it is rather urban/suburban but once you get into the park it doesn’t feel like it unless you pay attention to the background noise of the roads in the distance! The park itself was very busy with joggers, strollers (not the baby kind–well, probably a few of those, too!), and fisherfolks. If we lived closer than a 25 minute-ish drive I know…
-
Lower Fisherman’s Trail | Inks Lake State Park
Cenizo, Leucophyllum frutescens — I think. It looks rather ragged and I can’t figure out anything else that this could be. Fairy-Swords, Myriopteris lindheimeri Small Ballmoss, Tillandsia recurvata Tiny Bluet, Houstonia pusilla Sand Phacelia, Phacelia patuliflora Now that it has been many months and moons since we visited Inks Lake State Park (February 2019), I’m now yearning once again for those spring ephemerals. Though, autumn blooms are coming our way (SOLIDAGO, I SEE YOU!)—to revisit this site now would be an interesting study in contrasts! We hopped onto the Lower Fisherman’s Trail on our way out of the state park after our long weekend camping. You can easily complete a…
-
Coconut Point Sanctuary | Melbourne Beach, FL
It’s July 11, 2009, my 29th birthday. At this point we are already full throttle into planning our Appalachian Trail thru-hike. I mean, in the fact that we are pretty sure we are going to quit our jobs and pack away our things in early 2010 and head out on our thru-hike, pending on what our bank account looks like towards the end of the year of course. With that in mind we are kind of on a roll to hit up a lot of places in Florida that we may not see for a while after we move out of the state, including a trip back to the Melbourne…
-
Weekend in Austin
Over the 4th of July long weekend, the three of us buckled in and drove over to Austin for the weekend. It had been quite a while since we had just tinkered around Austin without camping plans, so Chris found an available hotel room in north Austin and we set off to do some Austin exploring. I even came up with a list of new things to do after trolling around on Google Maps and checking out various parks, but of course we resorted to going to the places we always go to! And they are good places, of course, but one of these days we’ll manage to see something…
-
The Last Green Thread | FL Wildlife Corridor
If you’ve got 17 minutes today, hit play and watch. I have a lot of thoughts about this that I’ll have to expand on another day so I’ll leave it at this.
-
Post April Showers at Burroughs Park
*blows dust off of WordPress* Hello there! There comes a point when I take these long breaks from writing here (which I haven’t taken one this long in many years) that at some point I start having a contest with myself to see how long I can go without writing. A week? Can I make it two? Two? Why not go a month? Paired with the sporadic posting from the previous two months before, well, the blog hasn’t really been a priority. Honestly, it still isn’t but I figured I shouldn’t let it lay here floundering in the internet wasteland. So, let’s go back to early April when we made…
-
Hiking the Pecan Flats Trail | Inks Lake State Park
This is a longer post because I couldn’t refrain myself from taking all-the-photos! Write-up at the end! Agarita, Berberis trifoliolata Sonchus sp. Tradescantia sp. Cutleaf Evening Primrose, Oenothera laciniata — now that I’ve noticed this I see it everywhere! Drummond’s Phlox, Phlox drummondii Myriopteris sp. More agarita — I loved seeing this in bloom! Texas paintbrush, Castilleja indivisa Allium sp. Shepherd’s-Purse, Capsella bursa-pastoris Texas Toadflax, Nuttallanthus texanus Pepperweed, Lepidium sp. Rain Lily, Zephyranthes sp. Dwarf Dandelion, Krigia occidentalis Lace hedgehog cactus, Echinocereus reichenbachii ssp. caespitosus Yellow Stonecrop, Sedum nuttallii Lace hedgehog cactus + yellow stonecrop More lace hedgehog cactus Tradescantia and bluebonnets Tenpetal Anemone, Anemone berlandieri bluebonnets Drummond’s Skullcap, Scutellaria…