Texas
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Dog Canyon | Guadalupe Mountains National Park
We rose at the McKittrick Ridge campsite the following morning to clouds. It had been quite windy the previous night and a few times it sounded like rain outside, but despite all of that, the ground was relatively dry. We ate a hurried breakfast, taking the tent down first in case the bottom fell out of the sky, so that the tent wouldn’t be wet later. I asked Patrice and Justin if they were awake so they could get up if they wanted to get back down to the McKittrick Visitors Center before the rain came. We were expecting at least a 70% chance of rain for the day, as…
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McKittrick Canyon
When I told my dad we were going to Guadalupe Mountains National Park for Thanksgiving he recounted his tale of it being one of the hardest hikes he’d ever done. He regaled me with a story about my brother and him being ahead of the rest of the Boy Scout troop, and climbing and climbing to the McKittrick Ridge campsite they were all supposed to stay at that night, however night fell and they ended up laying out their sleeping bags somewhere in the middle of the trail. Eventually everyone got caught up together but then there was an issue of getting water and the only place was several miles…
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Thanksgiving Morning From The Top of Texas
We arrived at the Pine Springs Visitors Center at Guadalupe Mountains National Park somewhere around 11am MST. Patrice and Justin were going to be meeting us in a few hours and I was surprised that we’d arrived at the visitors center so quickly. That and we didn’t anticipate a time change though I should have figured that we were going far enough west to have one. The extra hour was definitely a bonus. Inside the center we filled out our backcountry slips and took a look around the exhibits, watching the video in the small room behind the main desk. Killing time, we decided to get everything together so we…
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Quick Thanksgiving Re-cap
Husband flew home from Pennsylvania after a flight delay on Tuesday night. Delayed our intention of leaving for far west Texas until the wee hours of Wednesday morning. As in 2 a.m. wee hours of the morning. Arrived in Mountain Standard Time at Guadalupe Mountains National Park and was thus happy to receive an extra hour of hiking. Our friends Deal and Steadee who we know via the Appalachian Trail met us out there and we then climbed up the tallest mountain in Texas. Got my ass kicked by said mountain. Had salad for lunch…I wonder why mountain kicked my ass? Hrm, let’s see here…. Saw a beautiful sunrise from…
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A Central Texas Autumn
Last weekend we went to Pedernales Falls State Park for our first camping trip of the season. It was beautiful and while the Pedernales River was not running much (hey, Texas is in a major, major drought!) it was still wonderful. It is only about three hours from our house so even though we set up the tent in the dark it still wasn’t a terrible drive from the Houston area to west of Austin. I’m always upset with people who gloss over autumn in areas that may not have major leaf shows like the northeast. Fall happens in different ways in the south and the drought is making it…
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Surfside
Two weekends ago our friends Meghan and Jesse came down for a mini-vacation to Jesse’s parents’ beach house. They live in the D.C. metro area and so I used to try to see her when I went up to D.C. for work when I was in Florida, but the last time I saw them was in Harpers Ferry last summer while we were on the A.T. It was nice to meet up with them and their extended families and some of their friends. Here’s a bit of what we saw: The house is right on the intercoastal waterway so we watched barges and boats coming and going. Chris got some…
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Wordless Wednesday | Moody Gardens Rainforest Part I
*Ok, nearly wordless, but the next several Wednesdays will be from the trip, so they will be wordless. I worked at Moody Gardens in 2001-2002, my senior year of college, as an Interpretive Naturalist, the people who man the touch tanks and talk about the exhibits. We recently went back for a visit a few months ago. The aquarium was still the same, the same smell, the same sounds, and mostly the same exhibits, but the rainforest was completely re-done after Hurricane Ike did some flood damage to it a few years ago. Here’s some of what we saw.*
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Local Flavor
Last weekend we moved to our new house in far-far-far Northwest Houston. So far out we’re not even in Harris county, but we’re close enough to all of the far suburbs that it is easier to call it Houston. Except we’re in the ‘country’. There are more country-ish places out there, but this is pretty much the most country place we’ve ever lived except the hotel we stayed at in San Augustine, Tx last fall for work. *That* was country. We were out in the nearest big town to us, Tomball, checking on various things like furniture and getting the various sundry items to fill up the house so it…
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Wordless Wednesday | Firestone Building Downtown Fort Worth
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Watson Rare Native Plant Preserve | Part 3
In case you missed it: Part 1 & Part 2. Wrapping up our tour of the Watson Preserve a few months later… We begin the final part of the tour through the pitcher plant bog that was actually quite dry. A bud of the Calopogon tuberosus orchid. Love the orchids intermingled with the pitcher plants in this one. Pitcher plants certainly have their own personality. Love the unassuming yellow colicroot, Aletris lutea. And the beautiful pitcher plant flowers… I also love finding the green lynx spiders tucked under and between leaves. They can be finicky to photograph that’s for sure! I really should stop and take photos of myself more…