• Local Adventures,  Texas

    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…

  • Gardening

    Mini Harvest | Carrots

    We planted the carrot seeds on October 3rd and they are just beginning to come into harvest time. We picked a few of the larger ones to determine if the rest were ready but from the looks of it I think we need to wait another week or two for them to fatten up. Any good ideas for carrots besides decorating them on a bed of lettuce?

  • Outdoors

    Backpacking | Beginnings

    Was going through an old hard drive looking for gallery worthy photos for the website and instead it sent me back into nostalgia. From January 2007… The sketchiest place we’ve ever pumped water from…but there was no other water! These are at Kissimmee Prairie Preserve State Park during our first ever backpacking adventure together. Who knew it would evolve to getting better gear… and walking to Maine…. and the length/part of the width of Florida? Go put on an old external frame Kelty and see what happens…you just never know!

  • Texas,  Travel & Places

    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…

  • Food,  Thoughts

    Thoughts of 6+ Months of Being Vegetarian

    Two years ago I spent a week as a vegetarian. We were still living in Florida at that time and Chris had been sent to work in New Jersey for a week. I’d been toying with the idea of being a vegetarian for awhile, mostly because I’d become interested by learning from my friend Eliana who went from being a vegetarians to becoming a vegan, and I wanted to give it a whirl. Chris being gone seemed to make it a perfect time to put it all on trial. The week was spent well and I learned a lot, mostly that I could be a vegetarian and it wasn’t nearly…

  • Family

    The Places We Live | Pt. I

    As someone who loves being home, wherever I am….since we were married in 2002 we’ve lived in two different apartments, a townhouse, a 70s ghetto house, a tent, two hotels, our parent’s houses, and most recently the small place we are renting now…the abode that we spend our time always forms memories. Every time we packed up a house I would walk room to room and remember the different things that happened in the room, the little memories that were made. This summer when my mom and I went to visit her cousin and and daughter Elizabeth we all got to talking about the old places the grandparents had lived…

  • Food

    In the Kitchen | Orange Marmalade

    A coworker gave us a bag of oranges from a tree in her backyard. I thought Chris might make juice with it since he made juice with oranges from natural areas in Florida, but apparently those were sour and made for orange-ade’s and these, well, these were for making marmalade. He spent half of last Saturday researching recipes and watching YouTube videos before making a batch. He had to re-cook it a bit because the first round didn’t gel, but it worked out! Now we have jars of marmalade for a good while!