Yosemite National Park

We went to Yosemite National Park over the weekend... nothing big, just some car camping at Hodgdon Meadow near the Big Oak Flat entrance. We hiked part of the way up Yosemite Falls, but got a late start so we didn't finish. We also hiked down into Merced Grove, a small cluster of Sequoias that doesn't receive nearly the attention it probably deserves (though with bigger, more tourist-friendly areas like Mariposa Grove, I guess it's understandable). Anyway, here's some photos of our trip, including two amazing sunsets (I guess every sunset in Yosemite is amazing), and plenty of cute critters. Enjoy!

Yosemite

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

Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center

Just the pics.

Two weekends ago, we went out to the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center to experience our first Texas spring. The center was a lot smaller than we had expected (and for its size, I'm surprised it was seven bucks), but the gardens were pretty cool, even though most of the field weren't in full bloom. I suppose we should go back again in a two or three more weeks to really see rolling fields of blue bonnets and Indian paintbrushes.

Or we could just roll down the freeway, as we did this weekend, and enjoy the many colorful Texas wildflowers.

I suppose the most important part of the wildflower center trip was that we saw a huge ass rattle snake! No, it wasn't a 2-meter long king cobra, but it was pretty cool. Enjoy the pics and especially the video!

-mike

ps - full disclosure: that photo above was not taken by either of us.

Barton Creek Greenbelt

A few weeks ago, we went out to the Barton Creek Green Belt (link goes to annotated map) for some light hiking. Enjoy the pics!

As far as a review goes, I'd have to say that I'm pretty pleased with the size and proximity of the green belt (I think seven nearly-uninterrupted miles within minutes of downtown Austin), but disappointed in how filthy the place can be. Citizens leave all kinds of litter everywhere and too many people fail to carry doggy bags (provided by the city at the trail heads, even!) so you have to be careful where you step. Also, mountain bikers blaze down the narrow trail, so keep your eyes & ears peeled. I could see spending a few more days exploring other sections of the trail, but only really because it's so close, not because it provides anything novel or isolating. I give the BCGB a 4 out of 10 on my random scale of park reviews, mostly because it's too crowded. Let me put it bluntly: if my little brother and his wife (both big outdoors/hiking folk) came to visit us, I probably wouldn't take them here. On the plus side, we did get to see a pair of black vultures up close, as they were shoulder-to-shoulder in a tree right beside the trail.

Two Great Days

This time last year, we were in Southern Laos, spending time in Vientiane and at a somewhat-disappointing eco-lodge / rural village called Ban Pako. Lately, we spend a lot of time wishing we were traveling and re-living those amazing 240 days we spent in Asia, as well as all the fun we had planning and the great effort it took to actually make the trip. Last Friday, I re-read an old post of our friends J&M, who returned from Asia several months before us. The post is called "A Year Ago Today" and Jennifer pines for adventure of traveling, and more so about the hopefulness she experienced in planning the trip. We IM-ed about it a bit, and lamented that while both of us can regularly recall with vivid detail things we'd done one year ago or more, these days in the "real world" go by without fanfare or memorable experiences. The immediate and huge rewards reaped by traveling and living day-to-day from a backpack, on the other hand, are easy to recognize and I think in general, people take unfortunately little time to reflect on the purpose of most days. As Jennifer says,

I know there is more to life. And believe it or not, even though it may sound totally cheesy… we’re always standing on the brink of an adventure of a lifetime. Sometimes it’s just a lot more obvious. But doesn’t the challenge (and a lot of the fun) lie in finding what is not obvious?

I totally agree. And on that note, I'll explain why I've been talking about all this: This weekend, Justine and I had two of the best days we've had since returning to the States. We were productive, impulsive, got to visit some new places, and we were proud of ourselves for what we accomplished in two short days. These are exactly the kinds of feelings we had while traveling, and as a result, I'm happy to bring you a post about two great days we had in America!



On Friday night, we went out to dinner at our favorite Indian restaurant (which I reviewed in a post here) with some friends. Then, early Saturday morning, Justine, Emily and I went to the Center for Environmental Research (an Austin Water facility) at the famous birding location known as Hornsby Bend (at least one famous Hornsby is buried in the family cemetery here). We helped clear brush from a historic farmhouse that the city is trying to rehabilitate, then took a guided walk to the Lower Colorado River. We were lucky enough to see loads of birds, including osprey, American white pelicans, cardinals, crested caracaras, turkey vultures, black vultures, red-tailed hawks, and more. Also, the weather that morning was gorgeous.

After we returned, we were starving, so we headed out to our favorite taco truck around the corner, Torchy's. As soon as we got out the door, our friend Joel walked by on his way to Torchy's, so we ate with him and decided that it was such a nice day, we should have a BBQ at our house that evening. [Just last week, we had picked up a tailgate-sized Weber and were itching to get it fired up!] So a few hours later, Brandon, Joel, Emily & Alaina showed up for veggie skewers of eggplant, mushroom, potato, onion, garlic, and green peppers, coated in Justine's home-made olive oil with freshly-crushed rosemary. MMMMMMM!

So that evening went on pretty late, but we had already made plans to meet up with Alaina for brunch on Sunday morning. So, early the next morning (10 is early when you've been up drinking all night!), Alaina, Joel & Brandon showed up and we headed over to the Woodland on So. Congress for an early brunch (I had already had cereal, fruit, coffee and milk and had been up for nearly 2 hours, but anybody who has lived with me could have probably guessed that!). We had eaten there before with some other friends for dinner once, and they recommended the place as a good breakfast joint. Indeed it was! Eggs Florentine, grits with cheddar cheese, quiche, and a green tea vodka are a nice way to wake up in Texas!

Having returned to our place by noon, we decided to spend the rest of the day turning an old and unused garden patch in our communal backyard (our duplex and two others share a single large space... we're on the furthest west end and the garden patch is in the middle). This entailed ripping up weeds for several hours, tilling the dirt, composting and mulching, and then planting. But first we needed supplies, so Plant Escape and Home Depot were the next two stops. We got a few different types of tomato, some eggplant plants, and some peppers. The garden had some herbs and veggies that have survived from before (cilantro, parsley, sage, leeks, potatoes, celery, and possibly carrots) and we have some garlic and spinach growing in a planter box on our porch already, so we didn't need too much. The rest of the afternoon, we raked and pulled, pulled and raked, dumped rocks and old dried up tomato plants, moved bricks and garbage out of the plot of land and got very dirty and sweaty. We didn't have time to finish it, plus we don't yet have mulch or enough new dirt/compost, but next weekend we'll finish turning the soil and make a small raised area in the middle of the patch to plant our food. It was very fun.

Then we had another BBQ that night, just the two of us, and had a perfect ending to an amazing, productive weekend. On top of all that, we also managed to clean our place, go grocery shopping, spend some time reading, do the laundry, and all the other stuff we try to get done each weekend. It reminds me just how much you can experience and accomplish in just a few hours, and how by putting a few things together, and being impulsive, you can really get a lot out of an otherwise "normal" day... Thanks for reading!

[Enjoy more pics of the BBQ and gardening here.]

Elephant Plays Harmonica and Dances

Two videos for all you loyal readers out there. Scroll down and hit play to see a video of Justine freaking out about a King Cobra, and then click here to see an elephant playing the harmonica and dancing in Thailand.

King Cobra goes up a waterfall...

This is the video I alluded to in a previous post.

I was sitting on these rocks at Khao Sok National Park in southern Thailand, when Justine yells out to me. But I'm near a small cascade, so I can't hear what she's hysteric about. Moments later, I notice a HUGE king cobra, swimming down the river, just a few feet away from me. While Justine shot this video, I took a picture that confirms that indeed, this is a king cobra (see the post linked to above).


Here it is, in all its 2-m long glory!

Cute!

Same sea lion pup as yesterday, but while she was playing fetch with a stick (by herself!). Did you know sea lions nest in the bushes of sand dunes? Me neither.

Rare yellow-eyed penguins on the S. Island of NZ.

Kiwi Crossing, next 1250 km

The obligatory photo from NZ.

Justine is somewhere in this picture. Can you find her?

On the way to Franz Josef Glacier on the S. Island of NZ. That's it coming down the mountain in the back. The water behind me is a glacial river. Very cool ('scuse the pun).

The face of Franz Josef. See the cave at the bottom middle? That's where the river comes out of. Stunning, but the glacier has receded tons in the last few years. Less than 50 years ago (maybe less... I forget the date) the place I took this picture from would have been covered by the glacier.

Sea lion pup from the Catlin's coast (the south-east coast of the S. Island).



Low-res. image of a sea lion pup with his pop.