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On the mend
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed by email! Thanks for visiting! Last Thursday we went to the Ft. Worth Botanic Garden for a walk about the garden. I love this garden because it is free to get into and it has a lot of open space for picnicking and lazing about if that is what you are into. Many of the spring bulbs were up and in bloom and I loved these hellebore’s. See–I am trying to learn other plants! I ended up getting over the sinus infection crap for the most part, but Chris came down with it bad over the weekend.…
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Epiphanie Bags
Ok, so normally I hate doing these kind of posts, but I really want a chance to win a Canon 5D camera. I actually started reading Maile’s blog long before she became part of the Shutter Sisters. She had great blog entries and amazing photos and I’d comment occasionally. Then she came out with a camera bag line that was to die for. I have a big backpack camera bag that is waterproof on the bottom and is great for hiking but I really wish I had something better for just taking my camera around town. And then Maile came out with Epiphanie bags. And they are beautiful! They aren’t…
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Trout Lilies at Tandy Hills
When we came back to town I asked my brother and dad where some good places to hike were and one place they mentioned was Tandy Hills. This park is very close to where my parents grew up in E. Ft. Worth and where my grandad still lives and I had no idea this park even existed. It is tucked away in the Meadowbrook subdivision, which is a nicer, historic part of the area (go a few blocks and it might not be so great of an area) and once you get in to the park you don’t realize you are surrounded by the city. Well, except from some trash…
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Getting Excited
Despite being sick and tied to the couch watching movies all day long, I am getting excited. We had hoped to go hiking at least once while we were in Dallas this week, but I wanted to lay low until I got better. Chris ventured out today to the Heard Museum a stomping ground of his youth (I’ve been once, way back when we were dating in high school or college) to take some photos. He ended up spotting some trout lilies, flowers we had planned on trying to find while hiking around the DFW metroplex while we were here. We will try to go back next week so I…
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Resting
I started coming down with what I thought to be a cold but now think is a sinus infection late last week. It has since knocked me down and I’ve been hibernating in my in-laws movie room watching all sorts of chick flicks and BBC America for Dr. Who. It isn’t pleasant; I’m sick and officially have no insurance. It ended yesterday. The good part was finding out that the Minute Clinic at CVS is only around $60 for a visit for a cold related type things and if all they are prescribing are antibiotics and cough medicine, then you could escape a doctors visit for under $100. Health insurance…
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Preparing Maildrops
Well, one thing we learned with mail drops is that lunches are the hardest part of the planning process. And we bought slightly too much food. For Christmas we received money to go towards buying dehydrated food for our mail drops. Chris went online and scoped out deals and found a lot of food for good prices from a variety of vendors like Mountain House and Backpackers Pantry. We put them all in a box and brought them home. For breakfast and lunches we hit Sam’s Club, Walmart, Whole Foods and Tom Thumb to pick up all the things that we thought we’d want. I am pickier about lunch than…
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Snow Day
It feels like forever since I’ve written here. I better get used to it—you too—because after looking at our proposed stops it appears I might only be on once a week or even a bit longer than that. After leaving the Dallas side of the family on Tuesday morning we drove to East Texas, near Tyler, to see one of my bff’s Michelle at her house. We left early in order to beat the snow that was moving from the west across the DFW metroplex. We made it to Terrell, just east of Dallas on I-30, when the snow started. It snowed the entire day and melted as it hit…
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Trail Thoughts
As we wind down our first week here in Texas, time is inching closer to when we leave for Georgia for the Trail. We’ve tentatively set the date for starting for the weekend of the 13th of March. With all of the snow that has fallen this month and in January, it appears the trail conditions are fairly bad, especially in the higher elevations of North Carolina and up the trail. We experienced the blow-downs here and there are a lot of them on the AT in GA and NC right now, though local trail associations are clearing them out as they can. I think we’ve convinced my uncle and…
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Trail Q&A
Alright, I’m finally getting around to the couple of questions that were asked a few posts ago. I know the videos probably cover a lot of the answers, but I will take a few minutes to answer the questions now that we are semi-settled in again. Chris Hind asked: I’d like to know what backpacks and tents you guys will be using. We are using Osprey Atmos 65 packs. Mine is the small version, Chris is using a large. I got my backpack from my dad who got it off of Steep and Cheap and it wasn’t what he was thinking it would be so he gave it to me.…
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AT Gear Videos
Instead of listing everything out, which I know we’ll do eventually on our Trailjournal page, we did a video the other night in order to take account of everything we had. I know a few things got left out like our hats and mp3 players, but here they are. Off for a hike to Grapevine Lake…