Travel & Places
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Hiking at Martin Creek Lake State Park
On our way up to Caddo Lake we passed a sign for Martin Creek Lake State Park. It looked enticing so when we were deciding what to do on Sunday morning, stay near Caddo and find something to do or head back towards home and do something in another park, we opted to check out this park before we hit up lunch in the town of Henderson. As we turned down the park road I saw that the lake had a power plant on the opposite shore. When we checked in at the park office the trees shielded most of the view so I put the idea of camping at…
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Caddo Lake Hiking
There are just handful of trails at Caddo Lake State Park and it was easy to cover them all in a short amount of time. Surprisingly there was a good amount of terrain change on the trails, at least for this part of Texas. That’s because there are quite a bit of slope forests in the region associated with creek systems. We had to split our hiking time up between my parents so that one of them stayed back to watch their Boston terrier, Daisy. Mom hiked with us Friday afternoon after we’d set up camp and we promptly got lost on the trails because they weren’t labeled appropriately. Luckily…
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Caddo Lake Camping
Last weekend Chris and I met my parents at Caddo Lake State Park in northeast Texas. It is a 5ish hour haul from our house with stops for the toddler. And while it is about the same distance time-wise of other places we go to in the Hill Country, this just seems like a harder place to get to because of the need to take multiple smaller highways to navigate through east Texas. There’s not really a direct route. We took Friday off to make it a more enjoyable weekend due to the distance and my parents came down on Friday as well. I really loved this state park for…
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The Frio Bat Cave
Finally we’ve returned to camping and hiking season around these parts! Just as a lot of people are storing their gear for colder months, we southerners are digging it out and are ready to get outside. Gone (mostly) are the days of standing outside for two minutes before dripping in sweat so now is the time to relish the cool weather and start exploring once again. We kicked off the season with a trip to the Texas Hill Country for Chris’ birthday weekend. We hit up Garner State Park, one of the most popular parks in Texas. While researching the area I found out about the Frio Bat Flight at…
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Beach Scenes
For our vacation, since we were on North Padre already, we opted to drive down to Padre Island National Seashore for all of our beach visits. I think this was mostly spurred because the first night we were there we drove down after dinner and it was quite peaceful with just a few cars on the beach. Even though we spent about 20 minutes driving down there, being able to drive on the beach eliminated the need to haul our gear across the street to the beach that was directly across from our hotel. There are definitely good and bad things about being able to drive on Texas beaches. One…
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Sea Turtles at Packery Channel
The second afternoon of our vacation we popped down to the Packery Channel jetties to walk along them (they have a sidewalk on top) and to look for sea turtles as we had done six years ago when it was just Chris and me. We were looking to kill a little time before dinner and it was very hot walking along the jetties in the late afternoon sunshine. It didn’t take long for us to find a sea turtle and then we continued to find them all along the jetties, inside Packery Channel and along the beach. Forest was in his stroller for the ride so I don’t know how…
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100 Years of the National Park Service – National Parks Part II
Great Smoky Mountains Even though I had been to the adjacent town of Cherokee, NC several times for work, I had never ventured over to see the Smoky Mountains until our thru-hike on the AT. Clingman’s Dome hosts the highest point on the Appalachian Trail, the joke being that once you climb the summit then it is all downhill from there! Hah! My experience with the Smoky’s is limited to the AT and seeing it via the road down into Cherokee where Chris and I took a zero day with his mom and step-dad while we were hiking. To ease usage of the natural areas around the shelters, it is…
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100 Years of the National Park Service – Monuments, Historical Parks, and Memorials
Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument Less than an hour from Billings, Montana on the Crow Reservation is the memorial to the battle of Little Big Horn, or what many people know it as, Custer’s Last Stand. One of the perks of my job in Florida was being able to travel multiple times a year and seeing a lot of different and unique places. Standing in what as once a battlefield was a little spooky and it wasn’t difficult to imagine the carnage that went on. Yet it seemed a little surreal to see the wide-open expanse around me and imagine that in the 1870s and think of just how much…
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100 Years of the National Park Service – Trails and Recreation Areas
Appalachian National Scenic Trail All of my Appalachian Trail posts are here Florida National Scenic Trail – While part of the National Trails System, it is administered by the US Forest Service. All of my Florida Trail posts are here Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area This recreation area we hit up on our AT thru-hike, but I’m still going to count it as a separate visit! Sunfish Pond El Camino Real de los Tejas National Historic Trail This historic trail dates from the Spanish colonization period and multiple paths from western Louisiana were forged through Texas as a highway to Mexico City. I’m mostly familiar with the area of…
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100 Years of the National Park Service – National Seashores
Canaveral National Seashore I think Chris probably spent more time on this seashore than I did—really I may have only been once when Chris stopped to fish somewhere on the Indian River Lagoon. I know he went up to fish fairly often when we lived on the Space Coast. Gulf Islands National Seashore My visit to this park is intermingled with our Florida Trail thru-hike since the end/beginning of the trail is at Fort Pickens. Padre Island National Seashore Padre is one national seashore I have always wanted to hike or drive the length of. When we moved back to Texas I had the grand idea to hike the beach…