Travel & Places
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Adiantum capillus-veneris | Southern maidenhair fern
A few weekends ago, New Years Eve weekend to be exact, we stopped by Westcave Preserve on our way home. We’d been by there a year before but did not have time to go in. I will have more on Westcave itself in two later posts, but this one is specifically about the beautiful maidenhair fern. The fern grows in all sorts of rocky outcroppings, and other nooks and crannies along the creek at Westcave. The creek flows maybe a quarter of a mile before emptying into the Pedernales River. It really makes pathways it lines a magical place. The Texas Vascular Plant Checklist lists one other species for Texas,…
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An Enchanted New Years | Enchanted Rock Pt. 2
If you missed the first part of this series go here. On New Years Eve I slept in and Chris got up early to take sunrise photos. Once up and breakfast was eaten, we headed off for the eastern side of the loop around the rocks. It was a gorgeously clear day again, perfect really. Initially we were going to completely go all the way to the east on the loop but we came to the junction of the Turkey Pass trail and thought it looked good, a cut through up to another trail and we could catch the eastern loop up there. We passed this beautiful pond on our…
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There’s a reason I hug trees.
Unfortunately I did not get to hug this one as you can see it is/was behind a fence. This is a photo of Chris and I on the Florida Trail last January, almost a full year ago, with The Senator. The Senator is no more. You see, this estimated 3,500 year old bald cypress tree, and 5th oldest tree in the world, burned down Monday morning. Burned down.. It’s almost difficult to fathom. I’m part of a swamp hiking group on Facebook and I happened to check my email Monday morning with a notification stating that the tree had been burned. I quickly went to search for news stories, hoping…
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Oh, Galveston
Last weekend Chris and I decided to go down to Galveston for the weekend. I’d been wanting to see two friends of ours and we decided to invite them to meet us for lunch down on the Seawall, a place called The Spot. It was a common place for us to go during college and a place we like to go when we return for visits. We met our friends and got to see new babies and chat for awhile during our meal and then afterwards when we walked across the street to the beach. My friend Erika’s daughter, Kayla, had a blast playing in the water and I think…
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The Lace Cactus | Echinocereus reichenbachii
This little cactus was not very common at Enchanted Rock but we did see several clumps of it nestled in the rocks. Because I am not very good at cactus identification I Googled and came up with the plant list for the park and narrowed it down from there. Luckily there weren’t many cacti listed. I initially thought it was a Mammillaria species but with some help from a Flickr friend Brad Wilson he corrected me with this species name. I’d initially googled this name with the var. reichenbachii listed and couldn’t find a good comparison photo but without the variety listed it was easy to see that this was…
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An Enchanted New Years | Enchanted Rock Pt. 1
I’m kind of amazed that I grew up in Texas and never visited Enchanted Rock. My parents took us camping a couple times a year but I know we mostly drove within two hours of home. This would have been nearly five hours away, so probably not a feasible trip back then. I had mentioned this park as a place to go on our Texas Roadtrip in September 2010 but for some reason it didn’t make it to our list of places to visit. Well, we finally did make it. The park itself is in the boondocks between Llano and Fredericksburg, west of Austin. The road the entrance is on…
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The Other Side of the Tunnel
On Wednesday I showed you Chris exiting a small tunnel that we found (and I’m sure thousands of other people have too over the years) at Enchanted Rock. These photos show the way we came in. Wayyyy back there we had to squeeze down, crawling a bit. Right before we went through here, Chris slid down between some other rocks to see about it being our potential cave but found it to be a dead end and crawled out after he hoisted his camera gear up to me. Good thing I let him check it out first! I bet there are other nifty places to find there.
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Through the Rocks
One of the photos I processed from our weekend at Enchanted Rock last weekend. We were trying to find a supposed cave but instead we found a slot of rocks to walk/crawl through. I spent most of the weekend shooting in black and white with a red filter on my camera. The landscape seemed to beckon for that type of treatment, but Chris managed to get some color shots that were stunning! I’m going to slowly be working on the rest of the photos. I’m trying to get a baby blanket finished and it is trying my patience and frankly I just don’t want to do it. Instead I want…
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Local Adventures | Natural Bridge Caverns
As I said in this post we went to Natural Bridge Caverns after our weekend camping trip and I have to say, it was well worth the money. I’ve seen two other caves, Penn’s Cave and Longhorn Caverns, which were both nice, but this one topped both of them. Only discovered in the early 1960s, the cave was discovered on private land is still privately held. The ‘natural bridge’ above one of the entrances to the cave. There were some fantastic formations in this cave and I was absolutely in awe every time we turned around. I was also happy that we were able to take our time, somewhat, in…
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Rainy Weekend in the Hill Country
Last weekend was spent at Hill Country State Natural Area near Bandera, Texas. That’s about 45 minutes from the outer reaches of San Antonio. We arrived in the dark and didn’t get to enjoy the scenery until the following morning. On Saturday we took a semi-long hike (in relative terms here, 6-8 miles, something like that, no 20 miler) through the park but about half way the mist and rain started. It continued that way for the rest of the day which deterred us from wanting to spend it outside. Instead we detoured into Bandera, a cute old fashioned Texas town with historic buildings and unique shops. The rangers at…