Travel & Places
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Austin In A Day
Last Sunday I made a very quick trip over to Austin to spend the day with my friend Rosemarie. We were college friends, having met aboard the Texas Clipper II when we sailed the summer before our freshman year in college. She’s from a town just outside of Austin but now lives in California and had come to visit her family for two weeks. We met at the Treaty Oak, a tree I’d heard about but had not visited. I found it tucked between parking lots and a shopping center, so it was hard to imagine the many other oaks that used to surround this now lone oak. After spending…
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Evening On Top of Aasgard Pass | Enchantment Lakes
Pitching our tent on top of the Pass turned out to be perfect. We found an out of the way alcove, pitched the tent and took an afternoon nap. I alternated between reading and napping and of course poking my head out to check on our gear in case the goats were out snacking on it or our food. Chris saw some other folks climbing one of the mountains nearby so he followed in their tracks after dinner in order to try to see about taking sunset photos. I can’t remember if it was a success or not, but I’m sure the view was even better a few hundred feet…
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View From Aasgard Pass | Enchantment Lakes
I stared at the snow covered peak in the far background on the right for a long time. It looked gigantic, threatening, exciting. I later determined it was Glacier Peak. When we arrived back at Aasgard Pass we stopped to take a short break and take in the view. I hadn’t taken any photos on our summit, having been tired and ready to filter water at one of the lakes. That afternoon we were planning on descending and camping somewhere down at Colchuck Lake but I decided that we should camp up top, enjoy the view through the evening, especially since we had the permits to be up there. So…
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Return Traverse Of Upper Enchantments
Since it is coming up on almost a year since our trip to Washington I thought it wise to start finishing up these photos. This is our walk back towards Aasgard Pass through the Upper Enchantments, showing some of the area that I didn’t cover on our trip into the lakes. The pink on the snow is snow algae, also called watermelon snow. Going back through these photos makes me wish I was out adventuring somewhere. Maybe sometime later this summer or the fall.
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Afternoon at Lost Maples | Late Spring
Over Memorial Day weekend we headed off towards the Texas Hill Country west of San Antonio to do a little exploring. Our original intentions were to hit up Government Canyon State Natural Area since we always seemed to drive past it for other parks further west. Well, the weather decided not to play nice that weekend. Only days before we had been planning on kayaking along the Guadalupe River but a call to an outfitter and checking the river levels online revealed the river was a bit dry for running the river where we were planning. Then storms came through two days in a row causing flooding. Then there was…
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Natives of Texas Nursery | Kerrville, Texas
Last weekend while in the Hill Country we wanted to stop at a couple of nurseries to scope out what might be for sale in a different region than where we are in southeast Texas. We found a very tiny place near Bandera with a couple of cacti that were of interest, but didn’t buy anything. Google search and maps revealed not too many places and most of the ones that popped up were closed on Sunday, which is when we wanted to go. I found Natives of Texas and it said they were open on Sunday but I called just to verify before we left Boerne (apparently that is…
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Hohenberger Farmstead on the Old San Antonio Road
If you’ve ever driven around Texas for any length of time you’ll likely find yourself passing a brown sign pointing to a historical marker off to the side of the road. Many times it just faces a field, but sometimes they are in front of actual buildings. Chris and I were driving from Fredericksburg to Old Tunnel State Park on the Old San Antonio Road when we saw a long stone wall that went on for perhaps a mile. Then we came upon this house and since we had a bit of time to kill before getting to the state park I had Chris turn around so we could check…
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Mexican Free-Tailed Bats at Old Tunnel State Park
Over the weekend Chris and I went to the Texas Hill Country near Boerne to do some hiking and exploring of the area. We happened upon a rainy weekend, complete with some flooding in the San Antonio area. Because of this some of the areas we wanted to go to were closed. As I was planning our trip I found a small park on Google Earth called Old Tunnel State Park. So on Sunday night as we drove back from Fredericksburg to our motel in Comfort we took the Old San Antonio Road to the state park. I really wasn’t expecting a lot of people but boy, was I wrong!…
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Upland Island Wilderness Explorations
Last weekend Chris and I met up in Lufkin, Texas to attend at Zoo Brew fundraiser at the Ellen Trout Zoo. Chris has been working in Beaumont again and one of our field coworkers lives in Lufkin and his wife was part of the Zoo Brew committee. It sounded like a great event and diversion for our weekend so Chris and I went and enjoyed ourselves. We didn’t get to see a lot of the zoo animals as most were put away to avoid being stressed too much. However, we saw and heard the zoo’s many peacocks. I’m pretty sure they need to invest in some peacock birth control; peacocks…
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More Goats! | Enchantment Lakes NF
(yep, still working on these posts from August….) When Chris and I left Leprechaun Lake we decided to go to the north end of Perfection Lake at the trail junction to Prusick Pass. I wanted to go up there and see what was that way but after lunch Chris wasn’t feeling it, however we did wander down that trail just a bit and found, what do you know…more goats! So adorable!! Our lunch view! We sat just a bit further up, literally at the sign junction. This wouldn’t be our last encounter with goats, we had some hang out with us at our final campsite on Aasgard Pass. To Be…