Travel & Places

  • Outdoors,  Texas,  Travel & Places

    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!…

  • Hiking,  Outdoors,  Texas,  Travel & Places

    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…

  • Hiking,  Outdoors,  Travel & Places,  Washington State

    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…

  • Hiking,  Outdoors,  Travel & Places,  Washington State

    Leprechaun Lake | Enchantment Lakes

    On our hike through the Enchantment Lakes we hiked as far as Leprechaun Lake before deciding we didn’t want to descend further down into the Snow Lakes zone. We figured that going down meant having to come back up and well, we liked up already. Looking back I think we should have sucked it up and gone down into those zones, but at the same time what we ended up doing worked out too, leaving us time to explore other areas of Washington instead of staying only in the Enchantments. There was some rock hopping and precarious log walking involved to get across the streams leading to the lake. I…

  • Family,  Hiking,  Outdoors,  Texas

    Early Spring At Tandy Hills

    A couple of weekends ago I was in Fort Worth visiting my folks and I really wanted to go for a short hike, get out and stretch my legs. I managed to convince my dad and mom to come along to Tandy Hills for an hour long jaunt to see what was blooming, if anything. I noticed paintbrush coming up but not yet ready to bloom. We found a different pocket of trout lilies than we normally visit, but I couldn’t even find an old flowering spike. They would have bloomed in early to mid February. I wonder if the drier winter prohibited their blooming this year. Lots of yucca…

  • Outdoors,  Texas

    Evening Along The Shore

    Ah, Galveston. I love this island. For those who haven’t been reading long, my history with the island is that I spent four years there while in college. The island is equal parts old money, spring break, summer vacation, and ratty hole-in-the-wall. It’s still a little bit of a place called home for me, though. Chris and I spent a little bit of time down at the beach that we got engaged at. We think.. You see, when we got engaged there were more dunes and vegetation and a sign for riding horses on the beach. That was back in 2001. Since then Hurricane Ike came through and well, the…

  • Outdoors,  Texas

    Birding at Sportsman Road | Galveston

    Last Saturday Chris and I drove down Sportsman Road on the west end of Galveston Island to scope out the birds before we went home from a couple of days on the island for a conference. We are familiar with Sportsman Road as it was a place Chris fished regularly while in college (we went to TAMUG) and a place I went to for a few field labs. It is a popular place to not only fish but to launch kayaks too. There were quite a few birds out in the marsh that morning and a few of them let me take their photos. These were all shot via our…

  • Hiking,  Washington State

    Sprite Lake | Enchantment Lakes & Wenatchee National Forest

    After we found ourselves at Perfection and Inspiration Lakes we wound our way around the north end of Perfection back down towards the much smaller Sprite Lake. We took a few minutes here for a snack and photo break. There were several wildflowers along the path that I won’t even try to identify, though I did briefly look online. If you are familiar with alpine flora in Washington state please help me out! I do think these are some kind of phlox though. These little flowers are reminiscent of blueberries so I wouldn’t be surprised if they were in that family. Sprite Lake was a pleasant resting point before we…

  • Hiking,  Outdoors,  Travel & Places,  Washington State

    Inspiration & Perfection Lakes | Enchantment Lakes

    I know, I know, I haven’t finished writing about our trip to Washington State. My excuses are a: laziness, b: a crappy computer that has on several occasions shut down when I’ve had photos open in Photoshop thus leading to loss of interest in processing photos, and c: other interesting things that have been going on. But, I’m hoping to remedy this soon and finish the photos and writing about the trip. When I last left off, I was talking about goats. The goats were still prevalent for the rest of the trip and were definitely a source of entertainment! On our second morning of being in the Enchantments we…