Doughnuts

MMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!

 

(Cambodian-owned doughnut shop around the corner from my parents' house in San Jose....)

Lake Buchanan

Last weekend we took a trip out to the Canyon of the Eagles Lodge on Lake Buchanan, about 2 hours NW of Austin. The lodge was okay... a bit expen$ive and only served terrible food (with equally terrible service), but the setting was excellent. Wildflowers in Texas are in bloom and birds a-plenty! Plus, we got to chase an armadillo around for most of an evening and got some swimming in, as well. It was a very relaxing weekend.

We took a short hike on Saturday, which is a majority of the photos in the album below. Besides the flowers, we got down to the waters edge and observed a flock of pelicans and turkey vultures co-mingling. As you'll see, the area is full of wildlife, and we have shots of numerous different animal tracks coming to the water. The last photo in the set is of the Buchanan Dam, because there are no natural lakes in Texas (well, there's one but it's on the boarder with Louisana).

Anyway, enjoy the photos... the wildflowers really are stunning.

Photos:

LakeBuchanan

Clickable/Interactive Map:


View Lake Buchanan in a larger map

Texas Blind Snake

Last night we found this juvenile Texas Blind Snake on our porch:



We have another shot of him next to a penny, but this one is a better photo of his whole body. These guys only grow to a maximum of about 10 inches, but I'd guess this one was more like 1.5-2. Although I wanted to keep him (and probably name him Seattle, since I like naming animals after cities), Justine took him down to the creek near our place and set him free. It's probably for the better... our cats would have destroyed this little guy, who eats insect larvae and earth worms.

According to the Austin Reptile Service, these guys are commonly found in / around homes in Austin right before it starts to get really hot... well guess what? It's getting damn hot already! To learn more about blind snakes, visit you local wiki (entry on blind snakes)!

-mike

Pdernales Falls State Park

Saturday we took a little hike through Pedernales Falls State Park, about 45 minutes west of Austin. Here's the pics:

Pedernales Falls SP (Apr. 2009)

Unfortunately, our SLR died (probably shutter failure, which makes sense, since we've snapped literally 20,000 photos on that baby since April 2006). Below is a picture set from when we went backpacking in the park for New Years' 2008. Some of you may remember the story, which involved temperatures dropping below 20 degrees on our first night out and since we don't have cold weather gear, we were forced to leave the next morning. Below that you'll see a map, which shows in blue the ~5-mile hike we took on Saturday and in red the short hike up to Wolf "Mountain" in December 2007 (mountain is in quotes here because it's not really that tall... more like Wolf Dirtmound). The park is mostly oak and juniper/cedar (for some reason, they confusingly call juniper trees "cedars" in Texas) forest with a big winding river running over slabs of granite. It was a good hike and we saw lot of wildlife, including a painted bunting, a cool lizard, a ribbon snake, and a white-eyed vireo. Too bad we couldn't photograph any of them!

Pedernales Falls SP (Dec. 2007)

Click on the colored icons/markings to get information about those places and some images.

View Pedernales Falls State Park in a larger map

Lake Georgetown Hike

LakeGeorgetown

Last weekend we went hiking on Lake Georgetown, north of Austin. It's not a natural lake -- there was only one in all of Texas... then oil were found. So like all other "lakes" in Texas, this one is a dammed up portion of a river, in this case, the San Gabriel. It was a really great day and we wanted to get out and do a short hike. This was about 5 miles of flat terrain and culminated in a cool water feature, which you can see in the album posted above. One great thing about Lake Georgetown is that you can overnight there on the 26-mile trip around the lake and it's free! We might have to do this some time, but it would have to be soon... Summer be a-comin'.

More Crazy Weather

Hat tip to cousin Sarah, who sent me this figure today from the Austin American-Statesman newspaper:

Yep... it was 67 degrees this morning when I woke up, a nasty drop of about 25 degrees by lunch, and there's a good chance of "winter mix" precipitation for this evening (meaning hail or sleet)!

(See this post for a related figure)

Holiday Greetings

From Batman and Krusty (and MS Paint)

Texas Weather Is Confusing

I present to you this data on the running temperatures here in Austin over the last 5 days or so... It was nearly 80 degrees yesterday and then it snowed last night. Go figure.

Mexico City Skyline

250-degree (or so) panoramic using 18 shots and stitched together using autostitch.

Click the image above for a larger view, click here for a huge (1.5 MB) view.

Mexico City Photos

Finally, some photos. I hope to get a post up about our experiences on Sunday, but I'm not sure if that'll happen. In short: We love cities, and unlike big Asian cities, Mexico City is laid-back and slow-paced. It's easy to navigate -- it has an excellent subway system and wide pedestrian walks -- and everyone we met (few of whom spoke much English) were really cool. We got free shots of Mezcal at Los Danzantes in Coyoacan, hung out at a hip hole-in-the-wall bar where we me some cool folks, and saw a bunch of other really cool sights and places. We had a great time and I wish we could have stayed longer. Enjoy the photos!