Travel & Places
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Close Encounters with Diamondback Terrapins
A few weekends ago we camped at Goose Island State Park. Despite a brief period of time where cooler weather prevailed, it had retreated and in came the heat and humidity once again. And the mosquitoes. It was quite possibly the warmest October camping I’ve ever done in Texas. Goose Island was lovely as always and despite the mosquitoes we had an enjoyable time. One of the bonuses was getting to see Texas Diamondback Terrapins (Malaclemys terrapin littoralis)! In the summer of 2014, while I was heavily pregnant with Forest, Chris did a field job in coastal Louisiana. There he got to see a lot of terrapins, though I think…
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First Fall Hike of the Season
Contrast it with this next one—> First family Hike North Wilderness Loop from February 2015. The weekend before Tropical Storm/Hurricane Nicholas came ashore, the three of us headed for Sam Houston National Forest to start off the fall hiking season. It had been several months since we’d done any significant hiking and the day was perfect. It was warmer than it is currently but the light had changed and you could just tell the seasons were changing. We opted for the North Wilderness Loop, a loop we’ve done before as I’ve linked above, but it has been quite a while since we hiked it. I enjoy revisiting hikes and loops…
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A Farewell to Summer from Galveston Beach
Shark eye, Neverita duplicata Cancellate Cantharus, Solenosteira cancellaria Lettered Olive, Oliva sayana Atlantic Ghost Crab, Ocypode quadrata The good (and bad) things about having a kid in school is that there are now random holidays in the middle of the month that adults don’t typically get—teacher work days for one. Forest had one of these on Monday and rather than splitting the day and each of us working from home part of it, we took the day off and went to the beach. We had several things going for us: late September, it being a Monday, and not a normal holiday. I was hoping it wouldn’t be very crowded and…
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Grabbing Hold of The Feeling
We had stayed up beyond midnight the night before, talking and catching up despite that it was well passed our middle aged bedtimes. Bleary-eyed I woke up on Saturday morning as the sun broke through the curtain in the loft upstairs. I rolled over a couple of times, got on my phone to distract myself, and then finally convinced myself that I should get out of bed and do the thing I wanted to do, which was explore the pastures on the property of the AirBnB we were staying at. Downstairs, Michelle and Stephanie were already awake. Steph had made coffee and the two of them were talking quietly while…
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Searching for Denali
After leaving the Denali Highway way back in September of 2019, we managed to get a glimpse of Denali itself from the Parks Highway one of the pull-offs at Denali State Park. I took quite a few photos from the Denali Highway facing west, thinking that perhaps there in the haze that I could see Denali. But of course once we got to the state park and looked from there it was quite clear I was imagining things before then! And even in these photos you can’t see the entire mountain because it is still socked in the clouds. But—it was a glimpse! And now that our friends Patrice and…
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Back to the Pitcher Plant Trail
Let’s pretend this isn’t a dusty post languishing in my drafts folder since last summer! I wanted to post it a few months ago but lacked the interest in getting it out. And seeing as I took these photos in June 2020 and a new June is rapidly approaching I figured I might as well get this one up. And I am itching to get back to the Big Thicket soon, too. I am leaning towards this being a Carolina satyr Hermeuptychia sosybius however Intricate Satyrs are very similar and this one has that look like it is just slightly different and could be an Intricate. Going through my iNaturalist…
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Guadalupe River Shoreline Explorations | Guadalupe River State Park
Hi there. It’s been a few weeks. I haven’t felt much like writing here and to be honest, I’ve got a huge back log of things to share from not only Thanksgiving but I still have Alaska items to share, and now I have posts from Arkansas and a camping trip we took over Easter—and it’s a lot. I have enough photos processed to write a few weeks worth of posts but the last thing I feel like doing is sitting down and writing. I feel stuck in my writing here. I basically feel like I just do trip reports and while I enjoy that I need to figure out…
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Spring Wake-up at Roy E. Larsen Sandyland Sanctuary
Reaching back into late February with this post to go with a couple of others I wrote about our hike at the REL Sandyland Sanctuary. I actually had to look it up because I was unsure of who Mr. Larsen was, and it turns out he was an executive with Time, Inc. and as a conservationist later in life he organized the Nantucket Conservation Fund and joined the board of The Nature Conservancy, who later dedicated this tract of land to him when it became a sanctuary. A glimpse down to Village Creek before we headed for the trails. Swamp Azalea, Rhododendron viscosum I imagine it is a much different…
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To the Ozarks
It’s back to the grind for us this week, but last week Chris, Forest, and I checked out of state and drove to Arkansas to spend the week in a cute AirBnB cabin on the SE edge of the Ozark National Forest. Between cooler weather and the state of Arkansas not being on their spring break, it was fairly quiet for us on the trails except in a few areas. We could see that ramping up as we left our cabin on Saturday, the start of a glorious weekend meant an influx of ORVs, and canoes and kayaks being driven into the Ozarks as we passed heading south to I-40.…
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The Painted Bunting Trail at Guadalupe River State Park
Looking back at these photos from November feels like a lifetime ago. For one, it feels like nature was still abundant even if it was fall. There were butterflies and moths we saw during that Thanksgiving week we were camping—flowers blooming, nature was nature-ing. And now that we’re in this post-freeze haze and hurtling towards spring, I know growth is around the corner. But seeing these photos makes me happy. We’re going to go through the cycle once again. The Painted Bunting Trail is 2.8 miles and divided by the park road which allows you to park at one of two parking lots and allows you to make the complete…