When many people think of bald cypress trees they immediately think swamps and wetlands, maybe focused in on the areas in the southern US. But the Texas Hill Country has some stellar examples of these trees growing along their creeks and rivers, and the ones lining the Guadalupe River are excellent specimens to behold! Some […]
A Crisp Winter Weekend
Right when Forest started school I looked up his school calendar to see what holidays he had off this spring. Most holidays Chris and I do not get off–the perils of working in the private sector. Boy, do I miss all of those holidays I used to get at my job prior to this one. […]
Chinquapin Trail Loop at Huntsville State Park
As the saying goes, “What a month this week has been!” Let’s step outside for a bit, even if it is in retrospect, to last Halloween weekend at Huntsville State Park. It was our first camping trip of the season, the first since our last one in late February/early March before the pandemic closed everything […]
September on the Lone Star Trail
Whiteleaf Mountain Mint, Pycnanthemum albescens Digging back into some of my drafted posts, today we are going back to September and yet another jaunt on the Lone Star Trail. I really need to figure out what gaps we have left on this trail. We’ve very nearly finished a lot of the portion west of I-45 […]
Along the Nenana River
I still have a good handful of posts that share from our August/September 2019 trip to Alaska. There’s no reason I shouldn’t have wrapped these up a lot sooner than 1.5 years later but I hope in the coming months I can get everything squared away. I think part of the problem is I really […]
New Year’s on the Texas Coastal Bend
We checked in with an old friend yesterday, The Big Tree, aka: The Goose Island Oak. We hadn’t been by to see it since Forest’s second birthday, before Hurricane Harvey. Of course, we had plans to visit the year he turned three but Harvey struck the week before and shattered those plans. And it has […]
Escaping the House to Lake Creek Nature Preserve
On Saturday Forest and I escaped the house for a short hike. We had actually first escaped mid-afternoon on Thursday for a wonderful, warm and sunny hike to another nature preserve after a very frustrating online school morning. But otherwise we’d mostly been clinging to the house from online school to work, and if the […]
Finding Bartonia texana aka: Texas screwstem
The last two Octobers we’ve tried to find the Texas screwstem, Bartonia texana. And we had no luck finding them. But this time we were successful! Actually, Chris was successful because he went out a day before and spent more time looking and expanded his search zone and came home to tell us he had […]
A Bit of Wildlife from the Texas Hill Country
While I get things together to write blog posts, here are some videos to entertain you! First, Chris put together this video from the trail cameras. Lots of great animals to see and some LOLs at the 7 minute mark from some pigs! Some strong Texas leaf cutter ants at Guadalupe River State Park (Bauer […]
Eclosed on the Chinquapin Trail
A few weekends ago for Halloween we went camping at Huntsville State Park. On one of the days we were out we hiked the loop around the lake, the Chinquapin Trail. It’s one of the most popular trails and was very popular that gorgeous weekend. Out on the berm that creates the dam to Lake […]
