Trying not to waste the few remaining days I have before going back to work , I took advantage of a wonderful, sunny day to explore a park that I have not visited before. I checked out St. Edward’s park, on the Bull Creek greenbelt. What a great bunch of trails!
It was beautiful. I only made it throughout the brown trail, which I found pretty challenging. I’ll definitely be back to explore the trails north of the creek.
Here is a shot looking across the creek over the canyonlands.
Category: Fun
Yet another little luxury.
Monte and I are thankful for many things – very fortunate and blessed.
Annddd, with that being said… we indulged this Christmas in a 12V television & DVD player for the boat. Actually, each of us bought the other a TV and wallmount for the boat, heh heh 😀 That was worth a chuckle on Christmas morning. We picked the best of the two and returned the other. And today we went to the boat again so that Monte could finish up the wiring, and we brought a DVD to try when we fired everything up.
It works GREAT! I’m looking forward to trying it out while at anchor in our favorite cove.
A walk in the woods.
The cold and rain finally let up here in Austin, after a week. So, I set out to explore the new North Walnut Creek trail that was supposed to be recently finished. I was looking forward to a 6+ mile walk on the new trail. The nice, new trailhead at Balcones Park:
The lovely paved sidewalk ended about 100 yards later and the rest of my walk was through muddy, rocky trails. Walnut Creek was flowing pretty good due to recent rain, so I wasn’t always able to cross where the trail crossed. My shoes and feet were wet before too long. I got pretty messy, but it was great!
I was taken aback by the amount of trash near the trail. We’ll have to rally the troops to clean it up. This was one sight – the tire has been there a while…the tree has grown up through it.
And, I guess if you must deface things with spray paint, the least you can do is make it pretty and add a thought provoking statement…
AND While I was out and about, I found 7 geocaches. 🙂
A fun Sunday!
Playing hooky.
It’s COLD in Austin today! And since we are both off work, we decided to make it an adventure. We took the Austin MetroRail train downtown to check out the Austin Boat Show at the convention center.
Commuter rail is really only in its infancy in Austin. It doesn’t go to too many places, but it’s a start. People can and do debate the pros and cons of what Cap Metro has implemented. We have never tried it though, til today. Here are some things I observed:
– no park & ride parking lot at Kramer station. we had to drive around to find a free spot on a street nearby.
– a day pass is $5.50 per person (actually valid for 24 hours), easy to purchase at the kiosk. though one of the 2 machines was out of order at that station.
– trains don’t run into the evening (i.e. past 6:30 pm) on weeknights. but, since today was Friday, trains do run til about midnight.
– the train was nice, on time, and warm.
– the cars have wireless for passengers to use.
– there are bike racks inside the train car.
– there were not many riders – each train appeared to only have 2 cars.
– the ride from Kramer station to downtown station, which is right outside the convention center, took about 25 minutes, with only a handful of stops.
– overall, it was a nice commute. I’d ride it again.
After we got downtown, we were only 2 blocks away from one of my favorite restaurants, Chez Nous. And they had just opened for lunch! So, we had to go in. Delicious, as usual.
The boatshow was nice. Lots of power boats, travel trailers, and our favorite vendor: Texas Sailing. Go check them out! The show runs through this Sunday.
First Sunday!
The Texas state history museum offers free admission to all exhibits the first Sunday of every month. Today we headed downtown and met Laura to see 2 new exhibits: Fly Girls of WWII, and the 300+ year old shipwreck of La Belle. Both worth the trip.
Afterwards, we hit happy hour at Clark’s. Half-price off all bottles of wine! Oh and the food is good, too. 🙂
A very nice Sunday.
Ohmigosh, 2015 already!?!
I want to wish you a most happy New Year and all the best to you and yours in 2015! I have been away a while. Partly due to distractions. But also partly due to the fact that I had run out of online storage space for my blog @ wordpress, and I wanted time to think about how and or whether to upgrade the options for my blog.
In the end I decided to simply buy a storage upgrade (to add an additional 10G to the default 3G limit). When my domain options are up for renewal next year, I might consider upgrading to Premium on wordpress, which includes the increased storage, but I bought myself some time.
I think last we crossed paths out here in the blogosphere I was headed home from a long visit in Seattle, back to Austin. Suffice to say I have not been idle.
The day after coming home, we left for a fantastic week in Paris – a trip we took with little pre-planning; celebrating a birthday in a place we both love. And since then: Thanksgiving, family visiting, Julie graduated and left Austin to take the next step in her life’s path (sniffle), Christmas & New Year’s, and we have spent some fun times with friends.
Somewhere in there 2014 slipped away. Today I find myself on the second day of a new year — a few weeks delinquent in blog posts but looking forward instead of behind.
Here are just a few picks to fill in since last I posted:
Bon Anniversaire!
Post-Thanksgiving Day sail:
A day trip through the Hill Country and a hike to the top of Enchanted Rock on a clear December day with my sister & brother-in-law:
Christmas Eve:
And New Year’s Eve:
I can’t wait to see how 2015 unfolds….
Happy Birthday!
Happy birthday, leetle seester!
Caching in the cold.
Fran and I went geocaching today. This cold front brought temps in the 20s overnight. And apparently it stays below freezing in parts of the woods.
This is one of the ponds we encountered, covered in ice.
A great day.
Today Mom and I headed to Seattle Center to see the amazing Chihuly Garden and Glass museum. Fran, Aaron and Colleen joined us. It was an amazingly clear, sunny day. We also went up in the Space Needle to see the 360 degree view. I took too many pictures to share here, but will leave you with a few.
Factoid of the day.
Because I’m wont to do such things when bored, I googled some mushroom terminology on the web. You know…inquiring minds, and all….
And so now I know that this is a troop of mushroom clusters. 🙂
Bonus factoid: After writing the text above, I wondered if the correct term was “inquiring minds” or “enquiring minds.” So, I googled that too. Apparently, there may be a difference in some British texts; but I think I’m ok. You get the idea. 🙂 🙂
Twelve-o-lantern.
Mom and I are ready for Halloween. And….GO HAWKS!!!!! 🙂
Maize maze.
After the Seahawks pulled out an ugly victory from the jaws of defeat, we headed out to a nearby farm’s corn maze. I’ve never seen one before. It was huge – a whole field of full grown corn with several miles of trails cut through, forming a maze. Big and small kids were walking in all directions inside, trying to make their way through, while finding all the checkpoints. Fun!
A view from inside:
A view from outside:
And the route we logged going through the maze, from my mapmyrun app: 🙂
A view from the penumbra.
Crazy weather here. It rained and poured this morning. Then we had an hour or two of sunny blue sky, which afforded a glimpse of the partial solar eclipse through a hastily-made pinhole camera.
Then the cloud bank rolled in again with rain. I’m glad mom had a chance to watch it, if only for a half hour or so.
Pretty cool.
The next solar eclipse will be on August 21, 2017. Mark your calendar!
Girls’ trip 2014 – Destination Washington, D.C.
Last year five of my girlfriends and I went on a trip together to San Diego and had a really great time. We said we’d try to make it an annual thing. And we did! This year’s destination: Washington D.C.
The fall weather was beautiful. We rented a townhouse on Capitol Hill just south of Lincoln Park – about a mile and a half walk to the Capitol buidling. What an amazing place to live.
The Highlights:
We walked about a hundred miles (!), mastered the Metro, and took in some amazing sights. We visited the Library of Congress & National Gallery of Art, and their outdoor Sculpture Garden. We took a 3-hour Segway DC Monuments & Memorials tour with CitySegway (I highy recommend them, and our wonderful guide, Ray). We caught a showing of the Broadway musical Evita at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. We drank a couple barrels of wine. And danced the night away in the townhouse. We we sure crammed alot of fun into a 4 day weekend.
The Eats:
– The night we arrived we ate at the highly touted Spanish tapas restaurant Jaleo (2 blocks from the Archives metro station). This madrileña gives them a bleh and a thumbs down. Service was ho hum, their traditional tapas like gambas al ajillo were not traditional at all… (made with red, spicy pepper sauce with no garlic!). When we complained, the waiter said they’ve changed the way they prepare them now and we should have ordered them traditional if that’s the way we wanted them, even though that’s how they were described on the menu. We shared a pan of lobster paella which tasted like new orleans dirty rice made with a burnt roux. Sorry José Andrés, you let us down.
– for breakfast the next day, Friday, we ate at the Madison Cafe atop of the Library of Congress’ James Madison Memorial Building. What a great, unassuming breakfast stop, with reasonable prices. Spectacular view of the Potomac, but apparantly you’re not supposed to go out on the patio unless accompanied by the Capitol Police (oopsie).
– for lunch on Friday’s sightseeing marathon (seriously, Laura’s pedometer said we walked about 23 miles that day!), we happened upon a really wonderful farmer’s market/outdoor food court in the Federal Triangle – Capital Harvest on the Plaza. In contrast to last night’s meal, the paella I got here on a paper plate was perfect and the real deal. They are open Friday’s through the end October.
– for dinner on Friday night we ate at the fabulous italian restaurant Graffiato (a short walk from the Gallery Place/Chinatown metro stop). Now this was a great meal! The service was fantastic. We tried nearly everything (watercress salad, caesar, mussels a la vodka, potato gnocchi, homemade pasta, white house pizza, and even more that I don’t recall) and came away wanting more. Delicious!
– Saturday morning we walked to the nearby Eastern Market – a historic indoor/outdoor food and arts market and a hub of the neighborhood on Capitol Hill. We bought ingredients for our planned dinner-at-the-townhouse later that night. The menu: spinach soup, grilled salmon steaks, asparagus risotto, green beans with lemon vinagrette and goat cheese. We outdid ourselves!
– for brunch on our last day, we headed to Le Greniere, a fantastic french bistro on H street, about a mile walk from Union Station. Their weekend brunch menu has a great variety of delicious choices. My croque-monsieur could have fed 2 or 3. 🙂 excellent service and brunch menu. We were all thankful for the walk afterwards.
And then, *poof* it was over. Til next year!
Some of the sights:
Sheila365 