Atlanta Area: Emerald Green Urban Wilderness

Posted on April 30, 2012 by keely

I am pleased to report the American Wilderness is alive and well in Atlanta, Georgia.

I took my second trip of the year out to this area and spent a lot of time hiking in neighborhood parks close to the North Druid Hills area.  Next time I go, and if you go, I recommend checking out the Hahn Woods area.  I didn’t get a chance to actually go into it, but I drove past it and it looks like it has all the elements of a Muir-like retreat.

Where I did go:

DeepDene Park

Upper Bridge

Creek Crossing near the Lower Bridge

This tree seemed huge to me

Fernbank Museum Hiking Trail

Mari and her oldest son

Lullwater Park

Trail to the Cache I was seeking

I took most of the pictures on my trip during a behind-the-scenes zoo tour my friend arranged for us.  It might be beyond the scope of this blog, so I am deciding what to do with them.  More information later as I find the time…

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Buescher State Park: Lost Pines

Posted on April 16, 2012 by keely

On Saturday, we drove up to Buescher State Park to hang out with our friends.

Okay, so we got a “smilie” for it, too, since it was a geocaching event.  An event, for those of you who don’t geocache, is a gathering of other geocachers.  Usually our events in the Houston area are hosted in restaurants, but some are at parks.  Some of them revolve around a common interest or activity.  We passed up a dog park event and a canoeing event this weekend to come to this.  This one was a camping event, and it is the eighth camping event our group (usually Diane, gsguru, specifically), has hosted in the past couple of years.

Anyways, after much back and forth, we decided not to camp, but to hang out for the day, go for a nice hike with some of the group, and participate in the potluck dinner.

We stopped on the way to grab the cache at the location I talked about in the previous entry.  Then, we stopped again for lunch at Hruska’s.  If you are ever on 71, you have to stop there!  Delicious treats abound.  Apparently, they have been using the same polish recipe for their kolaches since 1962.  They have 16 different varieties.  The hamburgers are also outstanding, and so are their specialty fruits and nuts.

The wildflowers along the drive were putting on quite a show.  Not many bluebonnets, but at least a dozen other varieties.  Finally, we got to the park and checked in with our friends.  For a while, dogs outnumbered people at our campsite (eight furry folk in attendance!)  After some time, we left the older boy with Diane and set off on a four mile hike with our dogs and two other ladies:  ”Gigi and JoJo”, from Austin, and Arlene, of “davarle”, from the northwest side of Houston.

The hike we were doing was primarily motivated by the desire to find a series of Harry Potter themed caches in the back of the park, but in the end, it was really the therapy of the woods and letting the dogs have a fun romp that was our reward.  Here are pictures from along the way:

The Finding of the Pond

 

One Giant Leap for Dog-Kind

Follow the Leader

Gigi and JoJo

 

Arlene laughs

 

The trail continues

 

Along the way

Happy Breeze

 

Me and my shadow, Raine

This hike really carved this park into our hearts.  The terrain was awesome and the woods calming and beautiful.  We want to come back when the ravines we saw have water flowing through them.  We want to come back and rent one of the nice little mini-cabins (#3 specifically) and stay the weekend.  It was less than two hours from our house, and even better than Lake Texoma SP.  Come see for yourself!

Posted in Dogs, Geocaching, Texas State Parks | Leave a comment

Columbus, TX: Texas History and Paddling Trail

Posted on April 15, 2012 by keely

This is the view looking out of the entrance to a Texas Parks and Wildlife Canoe Launch area in Columbus, Texas.

During the struggle for Texas Independence, it is said that the army of Santa Anna camped on one side of the Colorado River here, while Sam Houston’s army camped on the other.  They crossed paths nearby in a place now called Beason’s Crossing, and later met up at San Jacinto to end the battle to the benefit of Texans.

The Columbus Paddling Trail starts here, and weaves for 6.5 miles around a bend in the river, ending at Beason’s Park (where the above Crossing was, but which is now a shady place to have a picnic and recreate).  You can rent yaks and canoes from Howell Canoe Livery, located across the Colorado from this TPWD canoe launch, which you will find along 71 Business in Columbus, just across the North Bridge.

Here is more information about the paddling trail:

http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us/fishboat/boat/paddlingtrails/inland/columbus/

We had, of course, stopped here for a geocache find.  But now that we know what is here, we might bring the canoe out, or rent some yaks, or hide some caches along this route.  The bonus for us, besides learning some about Texas history and paddling trails, was seeing sensational wildflowers here.

Here are some photos Jason took:

White Prickly Poppy : Argemone albiflora

 

Violet Wood-Sorrel? Oxalis violacea

Firewheels, or "Indian Bonnets. Gaillardia pulchella

The North Bridge

Posted in Paddling Trails, Plants, Urban Wilderness Areas | 2 Comments

George Bush Park Hikes Series #1

Posted on April 12, 2012 by keely

I’ve started to realize that George Bush Park is underappreciated.

We go there a lot, but it rarely gets my blog love.  Sometimes it is hard to drum up excitement about going there.   Some of this is due to its proximity – it’s so close that it feels like going to our backyard, and how exciting to talk about is that (unless you have a really cool backyard)?  Some of it also is about the terrain.  It is kind of a prickly sort of place, with the potential for lots of thorns and pointy branches and pokey things.

But we forget, until we get there, that it is actually a beautiful place.  Often when we are hiking in the park, I hear a refrain from this song in my head, an Antje Duvekot song called “The Bridge” (although I see online the same lyrics for a song by Shaye called “Beauty”, unsure about the true songwriting credit), that goes

You will find beauty in the toughest of places/and I will be thinking of you out there

This day we went was unseasonably warm, and towards the end in the bright sunlight, Rascal and I were having a hard time.  We both have our reasons why.  We still have to get our track log off the GPS to find out how far we went, but I think it was around four miles.  We found a cache, but we also found lots of places caches weren’t, and maybe could be, if we can get some of our own put together to hide.  But mostly, this day was for the dogs.  Here are some photos of the day:

Finding unHouston

 

Rascal

Raine

Rascal Finding Beauty

This hike: Parked at the new “Freedom Park” area, in the back right hand corner.  Walked along the pipeline until reaching a collection of downed trees.  Found a path to the right, followed this down to where it opened up to the bayou, turned left at the bayou and walked along it for some time, then turned around and came back out the way we came.

Posted in Hikes Around Houston | Leave a comment

Wilderness, Chicago Style

Posted on April 1, 2012 by keely

There was a gathering early this week in the suburbs of Chicago of representatives from each of the North American sites of my company, and I and my boss, Iris, were of the two from our site mandated to go.  Neither of us really wanted to, didn’t want to miss time with our family or even work for it, but in the end we were glad we went.

One of the highlights for me of this trip was being able to go caching in Illinois.  I didn’t have that state colored red on my caching map yet.  I perked up a little about the trip when I noticed that the hotel the conference was at was surrounded by woods.

Oh, and what a woods they were.  Here are photos from the Allison Woods, directly in front and across the street from the hotel.

See the deer?  I was very excited about my deer encounters.  Initially, when I entered these woods, I was with three colleagues from Montreal.  I was trying to explain the game to them, and the talking we were doing probably scared the deer off.  After the three got too cold to continue the walk, I went off by myself, and was surrounded by the silence of the woods.  It was very comforting.  There was a smell in the air, and soon I realized it denoted the presence of the white tail deer. There were a couple here, a couple there.  And then there was the moment, after finding a cache 500 feet off the trail, that I found myself stalking three of them, just hoping to get the right shot…with my camera…

and one parting last shot:The day after this, I went for another walk in the woods, on a trail that picked up behind my hotel.  The first day I had gotten four caches, this second day I got five, dressed in business casual clothes the whole while.  I initially was trying to find someone to hike with me, for safety’s sake, and at first I wasn’t having much luck, but suddenly I found myself leaving the hotel with a big group who had all decided to take a walk: fifteen or so colleagues of mine, all dressed similar to me, in our work clothes we had been wearing all day in the meeting, tromping off through the woods.  And these woods were a little bit messy.  The first cache or two, they were with me, and I explained what geocaching was all about.  Later on, they were not as interested, so I went off by myself and just met up with the women of the group later on for dinner.  Here are some shots of those woods.

Really, I was surprised to see so much wood and wildlife in what I always considered to be a very urban environment – the city of Chicago.  We were not downtown, though, but out in the suburb of Northbrook.  It is relieving to know there are parts of the world where the wilderness seems to be thriving, despite human encroachment and development.

Posted in Travels, Urban Wilderness Areas | 1 Comment

Bluebonnets and Washington-on-the-Brazos State Park

Posted on March 29, 2012 by keely

My best friend and I were looking for a place to take the kids last Sunday where we could all enjoy the outdoors and also find some wildflowers off the beaten path to take the obligatory kids-in-bluebonnets pictures that it seems like everyone who calls themselves a Texan has to take at some point.

I decided to pack us a picnic lunch, and borrowed my parents van for the day so that all six of us could ride in one car.  Jen and I and all four kids were like a mobile party on wheels heading northwest from Tomball.

First stop:  this field off 362 just north of Route 2 (north of Field Store, south of Whitehall). Last week when J and I stopped here, we had the place to ourselves at first, but this time, already there were three families there.  We headed further down the country road (turn right at the “fresh farm eggs” sign and continue on down past the third or fourth house.

Here are my favorite photos from there:

Aj and I, in his "angry youth" stage

 

My boys

 

My sweetest boy

 

After this diversion, we continued on our path to visit Washington-on-the-Brazos State Park, “birthplace of Texas independence”.  This location was the original capitol of Texas, and during Texas’s Battle for Independence from Mexico, the fledging government’s leaders were gathered here in a small log cabin, hashing out the details of the Declaration of  Independence that they all eventually signed after 17 days, and which remains on display in the museum here.

This park offers a sample of Texas’s past through its Barrington Living History Farm.  We made our way through this farm with the kids, after having a (hot) picnic lunch at the picnic area in the park.  Families with kids be aware: although the playground at the picnic area is a nice feature, there is little shade in this area (well, especially following a drought year), and all the playground equipment is metal, including the slide.  Hot sun plus metal slide can equal burned butts.  But….luckily our kids were smart enough to think about this and we didn’t have any incidents ourselves.

The Barrington Living History Farm is also bereft of shade, although if you stand in the dogtrot of the main family house, a cool southeastern wind is much relief.  Even on this lovely spring day, the temperature was almost into the nineties.

The first thing we checked out was the barns, corn cribs, slave quarters, and animal shelter areas of the farm.  We learned a lot of facts about oxen, hogs, life in the mid 1800s.  Costumed volunteers helped history come alive by involving themselves in pastimes of the age.  One man was carving wooden spoons, while another was cooking ham and beans over a cooking fire and drying venison jerky.  After this, we went to the main house, where Jen watched a sewing display, and I watched the kids who were watching a couple of musicians play songs of the day, and teach them the difference between modern instruments and their old fashioned ones.

After this, we went to the Star of the Republic Museum.  The favorite part of the museum in the kids opinion was the Discovery Center.  We spent quite a bit of time in here, assembling a faux log cabin  out of giant foam “lincoln logs”, learning about ancient medicine, playing with puppets, and playing with antiquidated toys and musical instruments.

Here are some of the favorite photos of the day:

All in all, it was a very enjoyable time with the kids.  I would recommend this park as a great place to enjoy the spring and fall months (although it might be a bit hot in the summertime).  Right now is a great time to enjoy this park, because as you can see in the picture right here, the bluebonnets are blooming in the park (and allegedly, some rare white bluebonnets or even indian paintbrush may be found in the park as well).

Posted in Texas State Parks, Travels | 1 Comment

Country Roads and New Friends

Posted on March 24, 2012 by keely

Sometimes I have read that all you need for geocaching is a sense of adventure.  I always found that kind of interesting because I thought everyone HAD one of those.  Turns out, not so much. A love of nature and appreciation of the outdoors is also not as common as I would have thought.

That’s why finding someone else who has those qualities is like finding a rare coin, something to treasure.  Last weekend, I got to spend time with a new friend whom I met through blogging online who has those same inner qualities.

We invited her to join us to watch the bird banding and take a short walk around the Gulf Coast Bird Observatory.  We were kind of late (typical) and missed a lot of the banding, but my new friend got some good pictures.  See here.

Then we took a hike with her through the Wilderness Park next door to find this geocache J and I had our eye on.  Allegedly it was a four mile round trip hike, we might have made it more with circling about looking for the right trail to cut in.  Afterwards, we went out to eat at a combination greek/cajun seafood joint that also required a sense of adventure, I think, but turned out to be a real treat, just like my new friend.  I am so glad we got to meet in person and look forward to more outdoor adventures with her.

On the way back, J and I took the scenic route and stopped a few times for various distractions: wildflowers in bloom, a line of geocaches, a historic church, a pileated woodpecker sighting.  My favorite part was when I was looking for this cache near this old white church in the picture, when I heard this splashing sound behind me, and turned to see that I had spooked the largest herd of deer I had ever seen.  There must have been about a hundred of them, moving around in the forest on the other side of an eight foot fence. I am not sure if this place behind the fence was some kind of exotic animal ranch or a paint ball facility, as some had mentioned, but to watch that many animals take to the hoof at a time was kind of cool.  I also was hearing the high pitched screech of a hawk, and identified not one but two red shouldered hawks, flying back and forth from the tree I was near to another one across the road.  I felt like I was really intruding upon the animals environments out here but both incidents were cool to watch.

Here are some of the flowers we saw in bloom along this drive (Cow Creek Road south of Brazos Bend State Park and northwest of Lake Jackson), and along our drive the next day out 362 from Fulshear to Whitehall and back through Waller and Tomball.

Tomorrow I am going to go out looking for wildflowers again, with my best friend and our children, so hopefully I will have some more pictures of post of spring’s best gift in Texas.

Posted in Birding, Geocaching, Plants | 1 Comment

Ray Roberts State Park – Isle Du Bois Unit

Posted on March 13, 2012 by keely

It was a wild wet weather weekend.
Yet, there we were, tent camping in the midst of all that.  Because we’re nature freaks.
No, really, it was because it was a weekend we could not miss, being the first Mega Event (a geocaching event drawing more than 500 particpants) in Texas since GeoWoodstock IV back in 2006. And, because it was the Texas Challenge, an annual competition among regions to see who can find the most caches in a four hour window. We go every year.
This was my fifth time to compete in the Challenge, and it might have been my best year. My oldest son did the competition with me, as well as a mom and teenage daughter that live relatively close to me. The four of us found 22 caches in that time frame, and hiked almost the entire time.
Here is my son along the trail:
He did pretty good with the hike. However, the weather was not our friend this weekend. It started raining about one hour into the four hour time span, and did not stop for about 24 hours straight. His hands got really cold, and he began whining about this about halfway through. He was a good sport though and kept up with us right until the very end, when he decided he had enough and headed to the first aid station about 15 minutes before us.
Our team won this year! We had a really good strategy for communications and technology. We also had this really awesome group of cachers that totally kicked ass and scored 35 caches each, and there were 7 people in their group. The winning region is determined by the team that has the highest average score per player. The bottom 20% of scores are tossed out, and individuals can earn bonuses by being the first to find a cache, and also the team earns bonuses for finding their “evil hides” – really hard cache hides that take an eagle eye to spot.
Here is our winning team (SouthEast Texas region) before the event started. Our team colors are pink.

The trails in this park are really nice. It seems small on the map, but when you are on foot, it seems to go on forever. Some portion of the trails are paved, but then there are several smaller footpaths (or game trails?) that go off of them. The scenery was awesome…however, it was impossible to get pictures during the Challenge because we had to move so fast and there was no time for idleness. Afterwards, it rained so much and was so cold that we could not go back out to explore. Plus, there were activities for the event, and dinner.
My idea of using our campstove to prepare hamburgers, skillet potatoes, and beans was out of the question, so we headed into Pilot Point for dinner (and to sit somewhere dry and warm for a while). Who knew Pilot Point was Texas horse heaven? There are 25,000 horses and 300 ranches in that tiny town – 7 horses per person in that town! It was really a pretty drive around town.
The park hosts a lot of deer – whitetail I am fairly sure, although they could be mule deer. What do you think you see in that first picture? We saw some but saw evidence of a lot more. Coyotes could be heard singing at night and at sunrise. There were some very noisy ravens. I had to take this picture as it was the overriding nature theme of the weekend.
Both mornings, I was up before the sunrise, listening to the birds wake up and trying to distinquish which ones they were. This birding thing is really hard for me sometimes! I think I saw tufted titmice as the sun came up Sunday, and saw some cardinals. There were other birds but I did not identify them.
We had about an hour in the morning Sunday where it cleared up and we were able to get packed up. Then we were in this big rush to get home so we could unload and get dogs and all this. I really wanted to get pictures of wildflowers and saw some cool ones on the way up there, but we were in too much of a rush both times. We want to go back out for a leisurely drive Sunday and see them, hopefully in nice weather this time.
Here is my parting shots – the best nature shot I got all weekend, and me with the “trophy” of the weekend – the infamous “Golden Ammo Can” – and our team captain.

Posted in Geocaching, Travels | Leave a comment

Country Drive: Fulshear to Bellville and Back Again

Posted on March 4, 2012 by keely

WIldflowers are starting to come out, the weather is fabulous in Texas, and these two things inspire us to get out and explore.  Armed with cameras, binoculars, and the GPS, we set out this Sunday morning to celebrate God’s glory in what J calls his church – Nature.

We are having a coffee issue at the house, so our first stop is at the Essence Cafe in Fulshear.  This is a full service dining cafe, but you can get orders to go, including delicious frothy sweet frappucinos, which we did get, and gourmet lunch boxes, which we didn’t.  The lunch boxes may be an idea for the future, though:  chips, cookie and a drink as well as your pick of gourmet sandwiches such as Country French, Smoked Salmon, and the like.

After this, we headed north up 359 to I-10, then a little west towards Stephen F. Austin State Park.  We didn’t enter the park proper, but we drove right past the historical area commerating this public figure of Texas statehood, which was befitting since this weekend was the 176th Anniversary of Texas statehood.  We should have stopped to pay our respects, like many others – the parking lot was nearly full – but we didn’t, thinking we might come back around.  Instead, we got out nearby in a pull out for the Brazos River to let the dogs out for a romp, and find the Brazos River Run cache.

We were seeking birds, butterflies, and flowers today.  Didn’t get any pictures of the first two but we did see quite a bit.  The birds spotted were the usual suspects:  doves, chickadees, wrens, cardinals, pyrrhuloxia, grackels, sparrows, blackbirds, turkey vultures, and a few gorgeous red tailed hawks that we watched circle about with our binoculars.  I cannot even claim to be able to identify the multiple butterfly species we saw. Here are some of the plants and flowers that caught our eye:

Butterweed

Packera tampicana

Butterweed, surrounded by annual phlox

Phlox drummondii

Some may be interested to learn that phlox engages in an interesting genetic interplay in Texas, by which the plant blooms red in areas near Austin in order to naturally prevent two species from interbreeding.  See more info on that here.

Here is my favorite wildflower:

Castilleja indivisa

Acacia farnesiana

I really enjoyed the sweet acacia (species above)  trees today on the horizon, although this species is apparently considered a trash tree.  The little gold pom poms on the branches are really pretty close up, and the splash of color on the branches broke up the barrenness of the scrubby Texas plains.

Another sight that I found enchanting was the forests covered with a layer of buttercups shining in the sun.  Here is J getting the shot I wanted while I took his picture from in the truck.  J is the photographer, I usually want to just tell him what I think he should photograph.  I’m the “artist”, he’s the “medium”.  He would prefer not to get in and out of the vehicle, though, so lately he has been telling me how to take the picture, mechanically, so I can do it myself. I took all the pictures in this blog myself, mostly with his camera.

 

We had a great time exploring, and even hid a couple of caches while we were out there, and made plans for where to go next time we went that way.  Next drive, though, I want to go further north, so we can capture some bluebonnets with our lens.

Posted in Geocaching, Plants, Uncategorized, Urban Wilderness Areas | 1 Comment

Bear Creek Park and Some Fun-gis

Posted on February 22, 2012 by keely

Monday was a holiday for me, but not for J.  The kids were still gone, and I had no idea what I was going to do with myself.  I considered some more mundane pursuits, but ultimately decided I really wanted to play outside, after spending most of Sunday indoors.

So I posted a thread on the Houston Geocaching Society forum, and next thing you know, I had the company of two fun guys on a Monday morning, and we set off to explore the inner boundaries of Bear Creek Park.

Bear Creek Park is on the west side of town, and boasts 2153 acres of fields and forests.  It is a multi-use park, with soccer fields, equestrian trails, and even a little mini-zoo, with a small collection of exotic animal exhibits.

  We started near this cache I had found years prior, and then walked back into the forest and in a huge circle for about an hour and a half, finding five caches.  We were roughly near the equestrian area.  This park is in a flood plain and with all the recent rain, it was downright swampy back there.  Good thing we all had boots on.  The water was ankle deep in places.

The caches near here named little piggy 1, 2, and 3 were very cute.  There was a lot of bird activity going on, but I forgot the binoculars.  Mossies were terrible.

There was a lot of fungus among us.

After this, we decided we were tired of the sloshing about and headed for what we thought was a drier series of caches: The Elements Series.  This is a series of 100 caches along a reservoir, each highlighting a different periodic element.

We found about 15 of them, and would have found 20 except the water was too high, and the caches were now watercraft-accessible only, unless you wanted to swim with the snakes.  This took us another couple of hours.

I saw many signs of wildlife out this way, but no actual animals except the birds.  The bird activity was gratutious.  I think I even spied a loggerhead shrike from a distance.  At one cache, we spooked a flock of vultures that was about 50 members deep. 

Fresh deer scat:

               The feral hogs have obviously been wallowing out this way, and left deep impressions on the sides of the reservoir.

(and…the rest of the story will have to continue after a game or two of Uno with the boys and bedtimes)…

Posted in Geocaching, Uncategorized, Urban Wilderness Areas | Leave a comment