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This Is How We Read + Popular Books | A Month of Faves 2016
Today I meshing Day 2 and 3 together since they both have to do with reading. As usual, links are not sponsored. Day 2: – 5 Popular Books Worth the Hype #AMonthofFaves2016 I’m going to mix books from this year and in the past that have been hyped that have been fantastic, in my opinion. Read This Year +The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins +Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert Read Another Year +The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson +Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer +Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer Day 3: This Is How We Read #AMonthofFaves2016 – eg. Number of books read so…
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These Are A Few Of My Favorite Things | A Month of Faves 2016
Andi at Estella’s Revenge is doing a themed blog writing session for December and I thought it might be worthwhile to do a modified version here. I’ll be compiling several of the prompts into one day as time goes on because I do plan on writing about other things throughout the month. Here’s to day 1! The prompt: These Are A Few of My Favorite Things for 2016– eg. to eat, drink, wear, smell, see, do, enjoy, best thing I bought, most used gift received etc, favorite concert, outdoor activity, place visited, most squee worthy moment of the year, biggest change. Links aren’t sponsored. Monarchs: Oh man, this was a…
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Wildlife at South Llano River State Park
Aside from the plethora of Rio Grande turkey, deer were quite common in the state park as well. It was easy to spot them, especially in the evenings. We stopped at several of the bird blinds set up in the park and watched various cardinal, warblers, and other little brown jobbers feasting on the bird seed left for them and bathing in the bubbling water containers. We saw the western scrub jay and several of its friends and family members on our Saturday morning hike, where they were rowdy alongside the trail as they busted through the Ashe juniper scrub. The highlight of the trip was actually the trip to…
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Thanksgiving Camping Part II | South Llano River State Park
The sunshine from Thanksgiving Day had disappeared when we woke up on Friday morning. It was cloudy and dreary outside and quite chilly. When I packed for the trip I overloaded on clothes for Forest and blankets for sleeping. I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to convince Forest to wear a hat but in the end he managed to keep it on. I think he was actually cold and realized he was warm and cozy with the hat on. After sleeping in for awhile and being a little lazy in the tent that morning we managed to get up and eat breakfast before deciding on our…
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Thanksgiving Camping Part I | South Llano River State Park
Thanksgiving, and our typical camping ritual, came as a much needed respite this year in the post-election angst and haze of the last few weeks. Weather is always the factor on if a camping trip will happen this time of year; last year we were rained out and changed our plans for a weekend in Galveston. It appeared that the weather was going to mostly cooperate so we headed off for South Llano River State Park which is west of San Antonio off of I-10 near the town of Junction. The drive out on Thursday went as smoothly as it could go with a stop at Buc-ees to pick up…
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Magical Marigolds
I can’t remember where and when we bought these marigolds this year but sometime in the last few months they spread their branches and took over a corner of the garden. That was fine with us, really, because they looked good and really made the garden perk up a bit. My mom grew marigolds when I was growing up and when they went to seed my brother and I would pick the seed heads and spread the seeds in the garden where they would germinate the next growing season. Forest has also love the marigolds and cannot resist, no matter how much I tell him, to pick one. He smells…
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Monarch Life and Death
It’s been a couple of weeks since I’ve seen a lot of activity in regards to the monarch butterflies. About two weeks ago, when I took these photos, there was still some adults flitting about and at least one new caterpillar but since then it seems the majority have moved south towards Mexico. I caught the adult female above resting on the ‘Wendy’s Wish’ salvia one day at lunch and it was only later when I looked on a photo I took on my phone that I saw an empty chrysalis. Due to the docile nature of the butterfly at the time I put two and two together and decided…
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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…
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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…
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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…