Dangerfield State Park in November

Last November 9th Pepaw and I took {C} and the kids for a nice trip through the walking paths at Dangerfield State Park.  We wanted to see what the fall foliage would look like.  Here are some of the pictures we took on that trip. Hard to believe there is such colorful foliage so far south here in Texas...we had a great time!

Hollywood's Birthday

If you've ever checked out my blog list you'll notice a blog called "Little Wonders".  This is a blog about my daughter and her family. In the blog they each have aquired nicknames. My oldest grand-daughter is known as MOTS.  After walking 4.0 miles and going to the gym to work out we traveled to the Natatorium to watch her SMASH her previous best in the freestyle, set a new personal best in the backstroke, and participate in her first IM.  It was so much fun to watch her in a meet!

 My middle grand-daughter is known as Hollywood.  Today is her birthday - she is officially in double digits today.  When we were talking to her several weeks ago we asked her what she wanted for her birthday and her reply was, "I want to feed the ducks."  A simple request...so of course one that must be fullfilled!  So....that is what we did today.  Hollywood, Captain Chaos (our grandson), Pepaw and I all went to the park and fed the ducks.

After we finished feeding the ducks she decided on Panda Express for dinner...so off we trecked to the Express.  A quick stop by Kroger to get some cupcakes for dessert (along with a Tinkerbell candle) and the birthday was complete with all wishes fullfilled...Awesome huh?  What a great way to spend the day!

Mr. and Mrs. Cotton Boales

Well, yesterday was the big day!  Cotton and Angel tied the knot! Angel worked so hard on the planning and it REALLY showed.  The ceremony was beautiful, the venue amazing and I honestly think everyone there had FUN!  I did pretty well through the ceremony - teared up just a little, I even did well through their first dance, cutting the cake, the toasts... all of that... BUT I totally lost it for the mother son dance!  I knew I would.  I am so happy for my "little" boy.  The woman he chose is a wonderful partner for him and they are such a match made in heaven - I just cried and cried tears of joy for them both.  It was fun once I got myself composed, LOL.

They did an "anniversary dance" for all the couples there. That was fun too - they played the same song that was played at our wedding.  All the married couples came out to dance, then the DJ dismissed them - first the couples that had been married less than a day, then anyone not married for 5 yrs, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30...until it was just Grandma and Grandpa and Pepaw and I.  They slid right into our favorite song together  "You're My Best Friend" sung by Don Williams so Pepaw and I stayed on the floor a little longer and danced to that one too.

Later they played "The Monster Mash"....that was the one song Pepaw had requested - and we all got out there and just had fun with it!

I don't want to share too much here because I want to tell the story in the pictures we will get...but these were too good not to share!

Here is a picture of the newlyweds they took on their phone during the dinner....

May you have MANY happy years together Cotton and Angel!

Return to Gorman Falls

We decided about two months ago that we wanted to return to Colorado Bend State Park near Lampasas, TX to hike and see Gorman Falls again.  It had been quite a while since we had been, and this makes a perfect "getaway" for us.  When we tried to get reservations all they had available were primitive sites a mile from the trailhead which meant I would get to test out my back again by packing in some of our equipment.

We got up bright and early (about 3:00 am) Sat. morning and set out.  We knew we wouldn't get sunrise pictures this time, but that was OK, we just wanted the early morning light at the falls.  This would be our first trip here since I got my camera and I was really excited to try my hand at "blurring" the water.

We got to the park and drove immediately to the falls trailhead, loaded up the camera equipment, and set off on the 1.5 mile hike down to the falls.  We were really kind of surprised that there weren't more cars there already - we were all by ourselves!

We made our way down the trail and finally heard the falls - turned the corner and we could see the top of the falls, made our way down the slick rocks and we were there!  A little disappointed because there was so much vegetation it covered up some of the views, but I was able to get these four shots I was pretty happy with!  Hope you like them too....

(Don't forget to double click the first photo if you would like to see them larger!)

This was the first shot I tried.  I moved to the left of the falls and was able to get the light shining through  both the water and trees.  I later decided I should have taken this one using my other lens, but by the time I figured it out the light had changed.  I still like the way the picture turned out though.

I moved down to the bottom of the falls and got this shot through the trees.  See what I mean about the vegetation?  This is so much prettier when you can see the calmer pool below the rocks, but there just isn't any way to show that in April.

As I walked around looking at various ways to take the pictures I heard some more water flowing just below us closer to the river.  I walked down a steep path to the river bank, climbed out onto a rock in the river and was able to get this shot of the water rippling over the rocks and down into the Colorado River itself.

This is possibly my favorite picture this trip.  I just love the way the colors are so warm...really shows that early morning light.

We really intended to get more pictures of other areas of the park this trip as well, but things just didn't work out that way.  I was very happy to get these four pictures - after all, we were only there one day.  I think we'll be going back in the fall to see what it looks like then.  It may be even prettier!

Running Again!!!

I am so excited to say that I am now back in training!  I simply don't do well just "running"...I just seem to need to have a race that I am training for.  So......since I am officially starting all over, I just registered for a 5K to train for.  I have set it up to have plenty of time...It isn't until October 27th....I should be plenty ready by then!  (In fact don't be surprised if I don't sign up for a race or two before October if I find another I really like!)

This will be the inaugural run of this race and it will be run at Texas Motor Speedway - with a NASCAR type theme for the entire race.  The course is actually a little over two laps of the 1.5 mile mile oval.  There will be lots of Race Themed activities going on as well. The folks from the Cowtown Marathon Series are helping out so ... THIS should be FUN! 

Now - I have already started my Couch to 5K training program.  (C25K) and it has been going pretty well.  Week 1 Day 1- 5 minute warm-up walk, then I ran/walked for 15 minutes at a 1-1:30 ratio, 5 minute walk cool-down,  for a total of 1.76 miles.  This morning I did W1D2 ... messed up a little as I didn't know I had to change the days myself - so I did a 4 minute walk warm-up before I realized I was doing Day 1 over again!  Re-started 5 min walk warm-up, 20 min run/walk at the 1 - 1:30 ratio, cool-down walk for a couple of mins. for a total of  2.50 miles in 31:55.  I was pleased that I already saw some progress, AND that it wasn't too difficult - even ramping it up a little.  Hope that continues to be the case...we'll see.

I'll try to faithfully post about the training and how it is going...as well as if I decide to try some more races in between...if only for my own historical perspective!

Would love to have some of you join me - we CAN do this!!!

Run on!

Our Last Day in the Mountains

We woke up early again for our last full day in the mountains.  Back to Skyline Drive and the cell tower to try for a little bit different view for our sunrise pictures.  We were sure hoping for another show like our first morning there.  It was pretty, but not as "fire-y" as the first morning.

As we were driving back to the campsite for breakfast I saw a deer along the side of the road.  Pepaw stopped the car for me to take a picture, but the silly deer wouldn't strike a pose for me!  He kept moving down the mountain, I kept taking pictures and Pepaw would move the car to try to help me set up the next shot.  Of course I didn't get a really good picture - but I did get this REALLY artsy shot...I decided I kinda liked the thing...accidental or not!

After breakfast (sure missed those scouts and the REAL breakfast burritos!) we were anxiously looking forward to going to the Davis Mountain Preserve - a little different view of the mountains, so off we went. 

We stopped at a small scenic overlook/picnic areal for a few pictures.

 View of the valley and rock formations

 Our Small visitor

The mountains on the other side of the valley

We were a little disappointed at the preserve.  Between the fires last summer and the drought of the last couple years it was pretty brown.  You could tell that when the conditions were right it would have been a beautiful place for pictures with Aspen, Juniper, and Ponderosa Pines, but as it was...not so much!

We headed back to camp to rest a bit - but ended up back on top of Skyline Drive again because we noticed some really GREAT cloud formations and couldn't resist going up to take a look!

Now I've told you before, I'm not one for the purely scenic shot - I like the plants and trees so much...I'm going to let this Yucca show you how the storm built up while we were there.  Utterly COOL!

We were actually so engrossed in getting our pictures that we missed part of the growing storm.  I happened to look up and see lightening across a valley to our right...I wasn't too worried - it was far away - until I looked up and noticed that there were new grey clouds right over my head AND it began to start to rain a few drops!  I covered my camera with my jacket and headed toward the car looking for Pepaw as I went...saw him heading toward the car too with his camera covered and pulling out the trashbags.

We got the cameras and tripods covered with the trashbags and stood next to the car as the rain came faster and faster.  All of a sudden I felt a HARD drop - looked out at the parking lot and saw...HAIL!  The sun was at our backs...and hail was in our shadows!  Amazing.

As the shower passed by and the rain stopped we were able to get back to taking pictures of the clouds again.

Of course we HAD to stay to see the sun set on our final full day in the park!

I'll try to show you the effect of the sun setting on those beautiful clouds...although my pictures don't really do it justice!

So you can see how as the sun got lower it turned from gold to pink, and the clouds did too!

My final shot of the day - had to go back to my plants...



What an amazing, heart pounding, thouroghly outstanding end to our fabulous Spring Break in the mountains!

Spring Break Day 3 - Historic Ft. Davis

Today was such a great day, from sunrise to sunset full of amazing photos!!!

We got up bright and early as always to catch the sunrise.  We chose to go to the same spot as yesterday since we had such good luck there.  It was pretty, but not as colorful.  Still beautiful and inspiring though.

After taking the pictures we hopped back in the car and headed back to the campsite for our breakfast of dehydrated eggs and coffee.  We had just finished timing the rehydration of the eggs when the boy scouts next door came trooping through our campsite.  Boy were we surprised when they told us they had cooked WAY too much food and offered us home-made breakfast burritos!  They were so good and a welcome treat!  Thank you Scouts!  One boy was amazed we were having coffee while camping...pretty funny!

After cleaning up the site we jumped into the car for a little outside the park photo-walking.  We had seen some amazing formations along the highway on our way to and from the park, so we drove on over to shoot some pictures.

I just love these lonely trees atop the various mountain formations.  They look so beautiful against the Texas sky!

The next two trees just looked so colorful against the rock formations I couldn't resist!

After our short jaunt outside the park, we headed back to do what we had come to do - hike a mountain.  We were determined to complete Indian Lodge trail.  We could start at our campsite and walk to the the trailhead at the Indian Lodge and the end of the trail was right across the street from our campsite so we would end up back at the tent if everything went as planned.  This is a 1.7 mile hike, so we were pretty sure we could handle it. 

Remember the picture of the beautiful tree in front of the cobalt blue Texas sky from day 1?

This is pretty much the beginning of the trail.  You hike up the left side all the way up to the top.  You can actually stand by the tree and look over the valley below, so beautiful!

This is the same tree from the trail on the day we hiked it.

Some of the flora along the way...

I scared Pepaw a little here as I leaned over a boulder to catch a shot of the narrow view of the valley below...pretty cool, huh?

Once we got past that particular formation we just kept going up,

and up, and up.  Notice that same formation in the center of the picture below!

Higher and higher we climed, until...

we finally reached the peak!  We added our rocks to the "pile" and continued on. 

This is actually a shot from the "backside" of the mtn. we would end up climbing down to get back to camp.  From here you can see the entrance to the park and Skyline Drive going up the other mtn.

It only took us a short 3 hours to walk the 1.7 miles - of course part of that time was taking pictures...but it was a 463 ft. climb! 

After our hike we decided to drive on into Ft. Davis for a cold drink.  While there we went to the National Park - Historic Ft. Davis.  We got there just in time to see them fire the cannon.

This is an amazing experience as you watch a video about the history of the fort and then walk through some of the refurbished buildings.  It was amazing to look at the artifacts they've found while the archiologists have worked on bringing the fort back to as close to original as they can.

Old Glory never looked better.

One of the buildings they're working on.

After our trip we drove back to the park and up Skyline Drive to the "cell tower look-out" to take our sunset pictures.  It never ceases to amaze me, the variations the clouds go through in a very short amount of time. 

And the final BLAZE of glory as the sun disappeared behind the mountains and the sky LIT UP!

Time to call it a night...