Tame Little Fishies

My fish are so tame they often swim into my hands looking for hand outs. It's funny how they will jocky for position to get the best spot possible for munching on whatever tid bit I'm offering them. They are so cuddly I think they love me. Ok, well they probably don't love me, but surely they like me. I am the one that feeds them afterall.

The two that are in my hand are fish I raised since they were newly hatched. I wonder how many other fish owners experience the same interaction.

Finally! Photos!

Lost Pines Forest. What a lovely place to hike.


Friendly millipede along the trail. Much to everyone's surprise I picked this thing up. They were all worried I was going to get bit, but it's centipedes you have to be cautious of, not millipedes. This guy was almost 3 inches long and fat!


These red berry bushes were all over the place.


I love big hollowed out trees.


Funky huh?


Erosion. It's beautiful. The muddy little puddle however isn't so pretty.








A den of some kind.


Dried up creek bed covered in a carpet of pine needles.


Tree fungus. It looks like little shells have taken over.


Tree bark from a pine tree in the lost pines forest.

Can't upload photos!

I've been trying for several days now to upload photos onto my blog but for some reason it isn't working. I've got several new ones to share but no telling how long it will be before the photo feature is working again. Bummer.

7 or 8 miles turned 10!

Mykel and I went hiking this past Sunday in the Lost Pines Forest at Bastrop State Park. Now I know why they call it the lost pines. We ended up a little disoriented along the trail somewhere...probably more than half way in and ended up doing an additional loop of trail turning our hike into a 10 miler. It was up and down alot, but really great. I was tired, but not near as tired as the 7 mile hike which I thought was odd. I supposed different terrain makes all the difference, even though we did have several good hills. The ground was fairly soft however and that made for better shock absorbtion on the body.

We found two geo-caches on this hike that were kinda fun. We logged our find but didn't leave or take anything. I must remember to bring stuff to leave and always forget!

Yesterday I went on a 5 mile hike in my neighborhood and concrete is much harder than natural ground to walk on. My feet were killing me after that one. I am going somewhere today, but not sure where yet. :)
I'll post pics of Lost Pines in the next day or so, so check back.

7 miles in Hill Country

This past Sunday Mykel, Thomas, and myself, headed out to Pedernales Falls for a hike around Wolf Mountain. We did some Geocaching on the trip as well. The first 5 miles or so I found to be challenging but very doable. The last 2 miles however were grueling for me and I was never more glad to see the car! I am still sore from that excursion and here it is Tuesday.

Anyway, I had a great time and the scenery was beautiful of course. Texas hill country is really something special and I loved the panoramic views of the Pedernales Valley below us. We also stopped by some ruins left by old settlers from around the 1800's! I've got pictures of what was left of their lives. Who knows what happened to these people or what their day to day life must have been like, but I do know they were ranchers. I can't find any history or more detail than that, but the bits and pieces of what was left of their home and the things in it were quite fascinating to me. There was even a fragment or two of their china!














Not much left of this old house.













Some old rusty nails, fragments of metal, and some glass



























In this picture of the artifacts you can see a piece of china with a little pink flower. I thought that was really cool.



The next shots will be of the scenery along the hike. The Pedernales Falls park is thousands of acres of hill country that only wildlife lives on. At one point in the hike we heard a large animal crashing through the forest. It was either a wild boar or a deer. That was a little exciting.













dried up creek bed. I would have liked to follow it a ways, but time was short













Mykel and Thomas go around a wall made by the settlers I was talking about.





















A place to rest. This is Jones Spring.














A little off trail. We were headed to a geocache.















More off trail scenery














The Valley below. You can barely make out the river.








Hot, tired, swollen, achy feet. I took my shoes off while sitting on this observation deck near the end of the trail. I'll spare you the photograph of my bare feet...it wasn't a pretty site!