Texas

  • Hiking,  Outdoors,  Texas,  Travel & Places

    Hiking at Martin Creek Lake State Park

    On our way up to Caddo Lake we passed a sign for Martin Creek Lake State Park. It looked enticing so when we were deciding what to do on Sunday morning, stay near Caddo and find something to do or head back towards home and do something in another park, we opted to check out this park before we hit up lunch in the town of Henderson. As we turned down the park road I saw that the lake had a power plant on the opposite shore. When we checked in at the park office the trees shielded most of the view so I put the idea of camping at…

  • Hiking,  Outdoors,  Texas,  Travel & Places

    Caddo Lake Hiking

    There are just handful of trails at Caddo Lake State Park and it was easy to cover them all in a short amount of time. Surprisingly there was a good amount of terrain change on the trails, at least for this part of Texas. That’s because there are quite a bit of slope forests in the region associated with creek systems. We had to split our hiking time up between my parents so that one of them stayed back to watch their Boston terrier, Daisy. Mom hiked with us Friday afternoon after we’d set up camp and we promptly got lost on the trails because they weren’t labeled appropriately. Luckily…

  • Outdoors,  Texas,  Travel & Places

    Caddo Lake Camping

    Last weekend Chris and I met my parents at Caddo Lake State Park in northeast Texas. It is a 5ish hour haul from our house with stops for the toddler. And while it is about the same distance time-wise of other places we go to in the Hill Country, this just seems like a harder place to get to because of the need to take multiple smaller highways to navigate through east Texas. There’s not really a direct route. We took Friday off to make it a more enjoyable weekend due to the distance and my parents came down on Friday as well. I really loved this state park for…

  • Outdoors,  Texas,  Travel & Places

    The Frio Bat Cave

    Finally we’ve returned to camping and hiking season around these parts! Just as a lot of people are storing their gear for colder months, we southerners are digging it out and are ready to get outside. Gone (mostly) are the days of standing outside for two minutes before dripping in sweat so now is the time to relish the cool weather and start exploring once again. We kicked off the season with a trip to the Texas Hill Country for Chris’ birthday weekend. We hit up Garner State Park, one of the most popular parks in Texas. While researching the area I found out about the Frio Bat Flight at…

  • Outdoors,  Texas,  Travel & Places

    Beach Scenes

    For our vacation, since we were on North Padre already, we opted to drive down to Padre Island National Seashore for all of our beach visits. I think this was mostly spurred because the first night we were there we drove down after dinner and it was quite peaceful with just a few cars on the beach. Even though we spent about 20 minutes driving down there, being able to drive on the beach eliminated the need to haul our gear across the street to the beach that was directly across from our hotel. There are definitely good and bad things about being able to drive on Texas beaches. One…

  • Outdoors,  Texas,  Travel & Places

    Sea Turtles at Packery Channel

    The second afternoon of our vacation we popped down to the Packery Channel jetties to walk along them (they have a sidewalk on top) and to look for sea turtles as we had done six years ago when it was just Chris and me. We were looking to kill a little time before dinner and it was very hot walking along the jetties in the late afternoon sunshine. It didn’t take long for us to find a sea turtle and then we continued to find them all along the jetties, inside Packery Channel and along the beach. Forest was in his stroller for the ride so I don’t know how…

  • Baby Teddy,  Family,  Texas,  Travel & Places

    Birthday Fun at the Texas State Aquarium

    For Forest’s birthday we spent most of the morning at the Texas State Aquarium. I hadn’t been since I was a teenager, about 20 years ago, and during that time period went two or three times. I had vague memories of it but couldn’t quite recall everything about it. It appeared based on the website that the aquarium had more attractions but it was also working on an upgrade to the facilities. When we actually arrived to the aquarium I began remembering more about it, recalling that I had been to some of the features before and that definitely some of it was new. They are working to upgrade to…

  • Hiking,  Outdoors,  Texas,  Travel & Places

    Hiking Adventure on the Nature Trail at Fairfield Lake State Park

    Everyone but my dad set out for a hike Sunday afternoon of Memorial Day weekend. Dad stayed back to hang out with their dog Daisy. We weren’t sure exactly how long this trail was because unlike many other Texas state parks there wasn’t an individual trail map for the state park. The trail was on the campground map but there weren’t really any distinguishing marks to estimate the distance of the trail. And to make matters more complicated, wires were crossed between my brother and sister-in-law in regards to what the end-goal was for the hike: my brother was going for a hike and my sister-in-law thought the trail ended…

  • Texas,  Travel & Places

    Small Towns: Gonzales, Texas

    We popped into Gonzales, Texas the afternoon before Mother’s Day to take a break from the heat and have a little diversion. Plus, we were on the prowl for ice cream, hoping to find a local ice cream store! The city was like many small Texas towns, slowly fading with many historic buildings that were empty or decaying. Sure there were quite a few businesses in the town center and we popped into a few of them, but it was a quiet little town. The most interesting shop that we would have explored more of if a: the stroller fit through the aisles and b: a toddler wasn’t in tow,…

  • Hiking,  Outdoors,  Texas,  Travel & Places

    Regal and Bee Creeks | Pedernales Falls State Park

    Up the Wolf Mountain Trail at the state park, not but a mile or so in, you cross Regal and Bee Creeks which feed down to the Twin Falls Creek. We only stopped shortly at Regal Creek, shown here with Chris flipping rocks over to find salamanders and other creek life, but spent more time scoping out Bee Creek which was wider and flowing more than Regal Creek. Bee Creek begged to be explored more. Chris poked around the creek for bit while I entertained Forest with a late morning snack in his backpack. On his explorations he found chatterbox orchids just out of reach of good photography range. Doesn’t…