The Invaders Are Here: Bon Appetit!

A blogging friend made me aware of this article in the New York Times about eating invasive species such as feral pigs. Feral pigs are a problem here in Texas and it makes perfect sense to eat them. They’re free-ranging, organic, with no added hormones or antibiotics. So eat them invaders, y’all!

Gruene Market Days

Yesterday T and I went to the Market Days in Gruene, south of Austin and pronounced as ‘Green”. The weather was mild and the market was colorful.

Photo Challenge: Up

This is not the sharpest of photos, because I took it with my cell phone at a traffic light here in downtown Austin. At dusk, the grackles congregate on the power lines, preferably along the roads and above parking lots. The sound is indescribable–loud but pleasant, like the sound of the shower in the morning. On hot days it almost makes it feel cooler.

To Kill a Mountain Lion . . . With a Spatula

(image from realaspen.com)

We moved from the Rio Grande Valley to Austin almost seven years ago. From the beginning, I was afraid of encountering a mountain lion. T always laughed, but I insisted it wasn’t unthinkable.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Reflections

I was very tempted to use a bridge photo, but that would be a spoiler for a future post. I like this one, too, though, because it shows reflections of different things in different sections.

In Yellowstone National Park, dogs are allowed in cars and campers, but not outside except for in the campsites, on leashes. I took this picture of a small dog in a huge RV in a parking lot near a waterfall. I was wondering when I was going to use this picture. Thanks for the challenge!

 

Autumn Morning

The view from our window this morning:

Thanksgiving 1: Green

I think I’ll do a few posts abut what I’m thankful for, on our way to Thanksgiving. I’m thankful for all the green around me, here in the Texas Hill Country.

It’s the Invasion of the Invisible Spiders

Those of you who’ve been following my blog for a while know by now of my weird fascination with the underbelly of Austin’s Mopac Bridge. Every now and then I just have to spend an entire post on this butt-ugly structure that I somehow cannot get enough of.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Renewal

(Image from Wikipedia)

The lava flow of the Valley of Fires in New Mexico was formed about 5,000 years ago; it’s one of the youngest lava flows in America. The vegetation still looks like it started popping up rather recently. And in geological time it has.

Click here for a short but informative video about the Valley of Fire.

Hamilton Pool: An Autumn Walk

Another beautiful spot only 30 minutes from our house is Hamilton Pool. It’s a small park, with a path going along a small stream to the Pedernales River in one direction, and in the other direction it goes to the actual pool.

Early Morning Walk

I thought you might like something nice, after the last post. This morning, after dropping the kids off at school early (their math teacher has office hours at 7:30 am), I went on a brief walk around Town Lake here in Austin. The sun was only just up when I started, and it was slightly misty. I only had my phone with me, but I’m always amazed that the pictures aren’t half bad.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Silhouette

My then boyfriend T in our canoe in Algonquin Provincial Park in Canada, 1991. I actually took this picture in broad daylight, so it’s technically a pathetic failure but I love the result.

Pedernales Falls Milked for All They’re Worth 6

This is the last Pedernales Falls post. Well, the last one about this spot in the state park, anyway.

Toward the left of the main stretch of rocky falls is one of my favorite spots:

Pedernales Falls Milked for All They’re Worth 5

It doesn’t look like the water is very forceful, but people kept drowning around here. The water has formed big holes in the rock under water, and there are treacherous currents. So since the end of the seventies, swimming is no longer allowed.

Pedernales Falls Milked for All They’re Worth 4

When you get down the rocky kind-of-stairs, you come to a sandy beach. This part was a setting in the movie Sharkboy and Lavagirl by Robert Rodriguez. And that’s the only interesting titbit of information you’re going to get. Time to explore.

Just a Little Something on the Side

Don’t worry, I will continue what probably seems like my endless series of photos of Pedernales Falls later (I aim to bore, but you love me anyway, right?), but I just had to give you this link to a another blogger’s post about a famous Dutch person. Dutchies, don’t get proud just yet…

See you later on the rocks.

Pedernales Falls Milked for All They’re Worth 3

The Pedernales River winds across the Texas Hill Country, and at Pedernales Falls State Park it has a wide stretch of rock falls. The word “falls” suggests water falling from a height, but it’s actually a gradual sloping stretch of rock about a mile long, that the water runs over, or slips over. So it’s not as vertically spectacular as, say, Niagara Falls, but it’s still pretty grand, in that low-key Texas Hill Country way. In short, I’m building it up, but I don’t want to set you up for disappointment, either. Because then you might voice that disappointment, and I don’t know if I could handle that, since I’m really rather fond of Pedernales Falls.

Pedernales Falls Milked for All They’re Worth 2

After driving to the parking lot nearest the falls, you have a three minute walk through a cedar forest. On an overcast day it’s always slightly claustrophobic. When the kids were younger, I insisted they stay close, because I was worried about mountain lions. T thinks that’s very funny. But just the other day a mountain lion attacked a horse closer into town than Pedernales Falls. You just never know in woods like these…

Pedernales Falls Milked for All They’re Worth 1

I’m going to be very busy with translations this coming week, and I took about 100 photos yesterday when B and I went to Pedernales Falls, so I’m going to spread them out.

Some Black and White Rockies

The Rockies: Bear? Where?

So we saw bison and elk, and two wolves at the river’s edge. They were playing and taking their time, and people were taking pictures from the other side, but just when I was finally almost close enough to start taking killer photos, they decided to leave. Aaaarrrghhh! The photos of the elk in the previous post were my photography high point of the vacation, and these wolves were my biggest photography frustration.

The Rockies: Elk

The other animal that we saw a lot of in Yellowstone was elk. Apart from when you’re in the car, it’s not a good idea to get too close to bison, but I got pretty close to a beautiful male elk. I think I was about eight feet away at some point. That’s also not recommended; the grammatically annoying signs everywhere say that “all wildlife are dangerous”.

The Rockies: Bison

Apart from the mud volcano and the mud pots and a few fumaroles at the beginning of our day, we mainly saw animals. So many that we never got to the next geothermal feature. And mostly we saw bison.

The Rockies: Mud Volcanoes and Sulfur Pots

The next day we woke up to find ourselves in a wonderful campground, with lots of trees and little trails going off behind our site. Not that we spent any time there. We left after breakfast and didn’t come back until well after dark.

The Rockies: Jackson Hole and on to Yellowstone

So the last three posts were all about one day, and it still wasn’t over. We got to Jackson Hole in the evening. You can tell by the gas station that it’s a prosperous town.

The Rockies: Oh, the Horror!

This series of posts wouldn’t be complete without me complaining at least once. So here goes.

I didn’t fully appreciate how clean Colorado is until we crossed the border into Utah. And Wyoming is worse. Every roadside and every rest stop is trashed. When we got down from the RV, we immediately had to watch where we walked, to avoid all the broken glass, and I regularly picked up trash that was in the way of a good picture. And all this despite the steep fines for littering.

The Rockies: Or Rather, The Plains

I drove after the stop at Big Sandy Reservoir, and being in control of the breaks meant that I could pull over a lot to take pictures.

After that reservoir we drove through the endless plains of western Wyoming. You can drive for tens of miles and not see a single structure, other than the barbed wire fencing along the road.

The Rockies: Big Sandy Reservoir

After our afternoon and night in Rock Springs, Utah, we drove on up to Jackson and then east to Yellowstone. B was no longer nauseous. He was drinking water and holding it in, and eating some jello at my insistence. He still didn’t feel all that great, but that was understandable after the day before. He got to lie on the couch while we drove, strapped in, of course.

The Rockies: Dinosaur National Monument

We backtracked slightly the next morning to squeeze in Dinosaur National Monument before going on the Yellowstone national Park, or at least Jackson, Wyoming.

The Rockies: Let’s Just Forget About Counting Days

Okay, where were we? After State Forest State Park we drove clear across northern Colorado to Utah. Not so many spectacular mountains, more rolling landscapes of the high desert.

What Happened? All Will Be Revealed

Hi folks. Just a short note to let you know I have not forgotten my blog. Nor have I vanished from the face of the earth. I have a legitimate reason for suspending my Rocky Mountain trip updates for a few more days. So don’t unfollow me just yet. More will come, I promise.

The Rockies — Who Gives a Heck What Day

After Rocky Mountain National Park, we drove to State Forest State Park, where we were practically guaranteed to see moose. That would be nice, especially a bull moose from a little closer up. But no such luck. Not a moose to be seen.

The Rockies: Day–I Have No Idea What Day

The next day we spent driving back east to Estes Park from our campground in the western part of RMNP. We had seen two bull moose the day before, but from such a distance to be uninteresting in photos. So imagine our surprise when we saw a mother moose and her baby calmly munching willow leaves not more than twenty feet from the road.

The Rockies: Days — I Lost Count Already

We took the smaller scenic route to Rocky Mountain National Park from the Black Canyon (highway 50 east to just before Salida, and then north on 24 through Leadville to the last bit of Interstate 70, but honestly, I think going straight up to Interstate 70 from Montrose would have been more scenic. Except for Blue Mesa Reservoir, the biggest body of water in Colorado. It goes on and on as you drive east on 50 from the Black Canyon, and it’s worth seeing. Especially if you’re used to lakes always being surrounded by trees. Here the desert comes right down to the water’s edge.

The Rockies: The Black Canyon of the Gunnison

The next day T had to work, so he stayed in the RV while the kids and I went along the rim trail that ran from just outside the campground to the visitors center. The walk was about one mile along the rim of the canyon, but it took us an hour and a half, because there was so much beauty to take in, and so much breath to catch, since we weren’t used to the altitude. Here are some of the many, many pictures I took during that walk.

The Rockies: Day 2

We spent all of the second day driving from Durango to the Black Canyon of the Gunnison. We had driven the road from Durango to Silverton before, and we had taken the old train as well, but it’s spectacular every time.

The Rockies: Day 1

For the next two weeks I’m having a photo blog of our trip to the Rocky Mountains.

The first day we left Austin in the evening and drove to Fort Stockton, in west Texas. I didn’t count that first day. But the next morning in Fort Stockton, I was the first one up, so I took a walk around the campsite. It was just an ugly campsite in the middle of nowhere, for people on their way from somewhere to somewhere else, but there was a very short trail into the desert. The sun wasn’t up yet, so I was hoping to see some critters.

Lazing on a Saturday Morning

Just a picture I took around Monterey Bay, California, years ago.

Armadillos and Music

Two of the great things about living in Austin are the wildlife and the music. One of my favorite Austin bands is The Austin Lounge Lizards, and one of my favorite Austin Lounge Lizard songs is “Arnold”.  I feel like I’ve posted this before, but I can’t find it. And if you’ve listened to it before, I know you will love to listen to it again.

Pictures for the Fourth

Well, it’s the Fourth of July, Independence Day here in the States.  I just saw a post by an American blogger friend in the Netherlands, who posted some beautiful landscape photos of Tennessee for the 4th. I’ll do the same. Not of Tennessee, because it’s one of the few states I haven’t visited yet, but just from all over.

Click on the first picture to see them bigger. Enjoy.  Happy 4th.

Natural Bridge Caverns

Yesterday we went to Natural Bridge Caverns, in the hill country between Austin and San Antonio. The natural bridge was formed when a sinkhole appeared, leaving the natural bridge on this photo, and the entrance to the caves.

Mount Snowdon in the Spring

Well, I’ll wait with the scathing post. I was cleaning up the slides I’d scanned a while ago. I used to have slides instead of photos. So I saw them even less than photos. That’s one of the things I love about a blog. I can see my favorite pictures and share them with whoever is interested.

Anyway, I didn’t clean my slides very well before scanning them, so I was doing that in Photoshop last night. Amazing!

I Can Prove It!

Finally, I managed to take a picture of the deer along the side of the road in our subdivision.

They barely look up when I drive by, but when I slow down or stop, they are all on high alert. I have tried before to take a picture through an open window, but that never works, so this time I kept the window up and just drove by really slowly, clicking my phone camera as I went.

That’s as good as it gets.Three of them are pretty clear, but there are two or three more among the trees that don’t really show.  But at least it’s proof for my friends and family in the Netherlands who probably think I’m exaggerating about the deer.

I’ve got a small translation, so the coming two weeks I won’t be writing much, and I’ll probably be posting a photo every now and then at most. I’ll try to keep up with all the posts I’m following, though.

The Road Goes on Forever and the Flowers Never End

Because of the rain we’ve been having, we had a beautiful spring with lots of wildflowers. Right now the second round is just as amazing, if not more so. Let me take you on a little 20-minute drive starting from our subdivision and heading south and back. I took these photos yesterday, and with all the stopping and walking back and forth it took me two hours. It was hot, windy, and I sprained my ankle in a ditch, but the pictures are worth it, I think.

Under the Mopac Bridge

I am absolutely crazy about Austin. One of my favorite things, which I don’t do nearly enough, is walking a big oval around Town Lake, the wide part of the Colorado River that runs along downtown.

I take the kids to school, going north on Mopac and then into town. After

It’s a Rain Party!

Texas was in a serious drought for over two years. Really serious. Ranchers had to sell off their cattle because there was no grass for them, and buying food was getting too expensive. Lake Travis, the source of most of Austin’s drinking water, was scarily low.

But it’s over, it seems. We’re not out of the woods yet, because Lake Travis still

Hill Country Flowers

Photo from Wikipedia

Lady Bird Johnson was the wife of president Lyndon B. Johnson, who was born in Johnson City, west of Austin. As First Lady she promoted the Highway Beautification Act, and in 1982, together with actress Helen Hayes, she founded the National Wildlife Research Center, a few miles from our home in southwest Austin.

The Joplin Tornado

I’ve posted before on my frustration about above-ground power lines and how dangerous they are in a storm. And in certain footage of the tornado that ripped through Joplin, Missouri, two days ago, the first thing you see when the tornado touches down is a power line being snapped.

Memories of Grass

Isn’t it amazing how smells can evoke memories? The first time I remember experiencing this was when I lived in Australia.

Battle Scars

We went to the swimming area of Pedernales Falls State Park