Travel & Places
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Return to Florida
Last week Chris and I flew to Florida just as a nasty ice storm was hitting Houston. It was perfect timing. The only problem was our direct flight from Houston to Ft. Lauderdale was cancelled, with no explanation. We scurried to figure out how to get to Florida in the hours of the morning before most gate counters were open in the airport, but Chris was able to get us on a flight to Tampa leaving 10 minutes after our original flight and then connect to Ft. Lauderdale later. We arrived over 2 hours later than we’d wanted, and then spent nearly an hour trying to figure out where our…
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Pineywoods Native Plant Center | Nature In The City
Over the weekend Chris and I were in Nacogdoches and spent some time around Stephen F. Austin State University and their outdoor botanical parks. The first one we stopped at was the Pineywoods Native Plant Center on the north side of the campus. The directions to get there were a little sketchy for our Garmin to figure out, but eventually we found it. There was a family event going on with kids running to different stations to learn about nature—at one station I saw something called the ‘Bird Olympics’. I wonder what that was about? After walking around the front part of the center we found out there were trails…
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Caddo Mounds State Historic Site
Over the weekend Chris and I were in Nacogdoches to attend a short bat seminar. Before we arrived there on Friday we detoured to the Caddo Mounds State Historic Site about 30 miles west of Nacogdoches. I’d seen the park on Google Earth and thought it would be interesting to check out. We arrived right as they were getting ready to close but were allowed in anyway. Unfortunately they’d already closed their register for the day, ($2 per person), so we dropped back by on our way out of town later in the weekend to pay. The man in charge was friendly and let us use their golf cart to…
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Early January at Balcones Canyonlands National Wildlife Refuge
Over the weekend we wanted to get out and do something away, something that didn’t involve working on our house. I mentioned to Chris I had wanted to visit Balcones Canyonlands NWR after having seen it on the map over the last few years. It was northwest of town and not on our typical route when we visit Austin, so exploring this part of town was a nice diversion from our usual routine. We opted for the Doeskin Ranch area of the refuge as it has the most hiking trails. I’m a little disappointed there aren’tmore trails than the five-ish miles, but I bet there is opportunity for cross country…
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9 Miles at Nails Creek State Park
Lots of photos, details at the end… Last weekend, still wanting to stretch my legs after our failed attempt on the Northeast Texas Trail, Chris and I decided to hike the Somerville Trailway starting at Nails Creek State Park out west of Brenham. Our AT friend RedHat lives that direction and we invited her to join along. I had only seen her two other times since the AT, meeting her once for dinner and then hiking with her on the Lone Star Trail for a dayhike, but that had been almost two years ago! She’s always heading back to the AT to visit her boyfriend who is a ridgerunner in…
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Thru-Hike FAIL: Part I | The Northeast Texas Trail (NETT)
Well, I debated writing this or not. I mean, it is a fail, and after all, who wants to write about their failures? Earlier this fall Chris and I decided we were going to thru-hike the Lone Star Trail. I did some research and it seemed some sections were closed because the Forest Service is being asinine and calling these sections ‘dangerous’ due to dead trees along the length of the trail. Nevermind that the rest of the forest immediately adjacent to the trail, in the forest, was open. Silly, silly, silly. We were going to hike it anyway. That us until we received our Texas Parks and Wildlife magazine…
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Quiet Evening on Barton Creek
Last week I was in Austin for a conference and on Wednesday evening I tried to capture what was left of the daylight at the end of the day for a little exploration around town. I had contemplated driving out to Balcones Canyonlands National Wildlife Refuge but didn’t think I had enough time to get out there and do anything useful so I opted to head downtown to Barton Springs and Zilker Park. It was smooth sailing south down the Mo-Pac expressway until it wasn’t and then I found myself ducking off the highway and heading down the still congested Lamar Street that leads towards the west side of downtown.…
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Matagorda
Two weekends ago we drove down to the coastal town of Matagorda for Chris’ birthday weekend. He wanted to do some fishing and I wanted to go camping. We ended up camping at the Matagorda Bay Nature Park which is located mostly on the Colorado River towards the tip of the outlet into the Gulf of Mexico. Chris consulted his fishing maps for kayak trails and we found several along the road leading to the beach. Many of these areas have signs not to park next to the road, which confounded us at first, but as we drove back by we saw a small fill pad of a parking area…
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Cedar Brake Outer Loop | Dinosaur Valley State Park
Over the weekend I drove up to Fort Worth to see Patrice and Justin who are currently the Gear and Go Tour ambassadors for Backpacker magazine. You might remember them from our trip to Guadalupe National Park nearly two years ago at Thanksgiving or our first encounter with them in The Whites on the Appalachian Trail where they gave us trail magic and we met them after they had been following our journey from Georgia to Maine. Anyway those two have been traveling the country this summer giving presentations at various outdoor stores and they were stopping three times in Texas. Fort Worth was going to be the best opportunity…
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Wildness | WG Jones State Forest
Heading east down the Middle Lake Trail (not to be confused with the Middle Lake Hiking Trail), I came to the Deep Gully Trail. To the north it was another wide dirt roadway, to the south I saw a fairly well worn but slightly overgrown singletrack. Feeling adventurous I decided to try the singletrack. Worst case, if it dead ended I’d just turn around. Planted pine stood in rows, sometimes not very obvious, and other times you noticed that this was a managed forest. I’m at a loss for identifying this pea. I was thinking Centrosema or Clitoria but I really just don’t know. I saw some down by our…