When I was out walking on Sunday, I came across this area that was filled with mushrooms. I decided I should take some pictures of them, because...well, mushrooms are kind of cool, and also, Rish Outfield is always using them in his Lara & The Witch story covers. I figured I could get some good shots, possibly, and he could use them if he decides that he wants them. So, here they are, my mushroom shots.
Any you like?
On Friday morning, when we were camping at the Frio River last weekend, we got up and started making breakfast. Our campsite neighbor came walking over.
"Excuse me," she said, "Sorry to be weird, but I was wondering if you guys wanted this picture I took of you."
She took a picture of us? That's kind of weird and creepy. Especially when you're out camping and you don't even have walls to put between you and your stalker. What was this all about?
"What?" we asked.
"Oh, last night, I was taking pictures of the Northern Lights, and I got one that had your family in it. I thought you guys might like to have it."
She held up her phone, and showed us a really neat picture. Both me and my wife filled with regret. The Northern Lights were visible last night? Here? Crap! We knew that they were supposed to be visible in a lot of the states they normally never visit. My wife had been glued to her phone for our entire five-hour drive over from Houston. One of the things she'd seen was a story about that.
"The Northern Lights are going to be visible in most of the lower United States tonight," she'd blurted out at one point during the ride. "I bet I know what state they won't be seen in."
With that, we'd all forgotten about the possibility at all. The Northern Lights were right above us, and we hadn't even looked up. I haven't seen the Northern Lights since I visited my then-girlfriend now-wife-of-25-years in Edmonton in January of 1998. They were right there above my head, in friggin' Texas no less, and I didn't even think to look.
"Oh, this picture is great. Thank you," we said.
She airdropped the picture to my phone, and I have it to show to y'all.
So great. You can even see Cassiopeia up there. My phone could never manage a picture that nice. One of downfalls of buying a phone about two years or more after its been released so that I don't have to pay $1,000 for the pleasure of owning one. Usually, I don't mind, but when I see a picture like this, I feel it a little.
The good news is that I just heard that there should be more instances of the Northern Lights making excursions down south over the next several months. Maybe I can manage to see them with my own eyes again, instead of just getting a picture of myself with the lights that I never looked up at.
PS - The saddest part is that I sat out there for another hour after everyone else went to bed getting in my 1,000 words on "Lazerfist Saves Christmas" and still never looked up in all that time. That bright light that you see around us had been turned off, and there was nothing to hinder my sight, but I still never looked up.
This past weekend, we took a trip out to Garner State Park along the banks of the Frio River in the Texas Hill Country west of San Antonio. We went here once before back in 2021, and the family liked it so much that they requested a return trip.
We did pretty much the same things as we did last time, though I did have my daughter who was off at college last time we went here with us this time, so it was all new to her. We camped in the same area.
We tubed down the river from the same spot.
The only real difference is that I am willing to actually let a picture of me in my swimsuit be seen by anyone.
I've managed to get in decent shape and stay that way for more than a year. That's a first for me. I'm still nowhere close to being all the way there. I'm even thirty pounds heavier than I was back in May, and I'm trying to get back down to that level, but I'm doing okay, and I'm going to act like it for once.
Not only did I get a couple of pictures of me in a swimsuit, I even went on the rope swings that my kids went on. I think the last time I went on a rope swing, it was still the twentieth century, which was about the last time I weighed what I do now. So, there might be a little correlation there.
I was sitting in my tube, and using my phone to record the kids swinging on the rope, and when they finally figured they were ready to move on, I suddenly thought, "Why the hell am I just watching? That rope swing is nothing dangerous. I may be almost fifty years old, but that doesn't mean a damn thing in this case. I can swing on that as easily as anyone else."
I paddled over to the shore, climbed off, grabbed the rope and took a shot.
It was nothing crazy, but it was fun, and I think I did a good job. I took another shot using the other rope. I didn't do quite as well with that one.
I should have tried to get my knees up and wrapped around the knot so I could hold on better. My arms weren't enough to counteract the centrifugal force trying to fling me off, so I just plummeted when it got too strong. That's not the point, though. The point is that I tried it at all. I tried it, and I was just fine. Life is better because of what I've been doing for the past few years. I'm healthier and stronger, and I won't quit improving. No matter how much I feel like life could be a lot easier if I just did all the same BS that the average American does. I'm not going to.
Sorry, I was just going to talk about going on a fun trip, and it turned into some rant about why I gotta keep doing my own thing and give the middle finger to the world that wants me to quit. I didn't mean to go there. I guess it was just on my mind.
Hope your day was fun, and you're having a happy life. Carry on.
When we went to Waterton Lakes National Park in Alberta while I was in Canada on my vacation, and in the town site, I saw this door:
Well, let me tell you, I've been living up to this advice my whole life. I mean, I...wait, why are you looking at me like that? What? Oh, right I suppose you have a dirty mind and immediately jumped to that. Jeez. It was nothing like that. Come on.
Anyway, my search for beaver finally paid off while walking in the town that my wife's parents live in. I went over a bridge, looked down, and there it was.
That's right. I couldn't tell at first, because of the way it was sitting, but that was a beaver. I'd followed it until I found it!
He started moving, and eventually...
You could see his tail. That's a beaver. I've never seen one before in my life, so I thought it was pretty cool.
Just thought I ought to share.
While in Canada, I went to Waterton Lakes National Park for a day with my two daughters. We went hiking to a couple of waterfalls there. It was a couple of beautiful trails. Let me share some pictures with you.
Sadly, there was a big fire several years ago, so many of the trees are burned out husks.
However, that opened up the ground to more sunshine, so there was a lot more greenery on the ground.
Each trail had a smaller waterfall along the way too. Here's a nice one.
I did a selfie in front of it, but you can barely tell it's me because of the shadow.
The first waterfall was Bertha Falls, a pretty nice one.
Then we went on an even longer hike to one called Lineham Falls.
There were actually green trees there, as well as another smaller falls along the way.
The actual waterfall we were in search of was much more impressive.
I love hiking and being in the outdoors, but we overdid it a little on this day. My feet hurt forever afterward. It wasn't until I was back at home for a full day before I felt like I was back to normal.
Make sure you look both ways when crossing the street, dear.
Saw this deer in Canada when we were there, and the picture makes me laugh.
This past week, I was able to get away from it all and go on a vacation. It was sort of a makeup for last year, really. Last June was my 25th wedding anniversary. That's one of those years where you're supposed to do something big and special. Well, we didn't. Instead, we just did a quick trip to a little town here in Texas called Fredericksburg. It's a nice place and all, but it's not anything that you would want to commemorate such a monumental achievement as being happily married for 25 years.
So, I decided that we would have a sort of makeup anniversary this year. I set aside the money, and my wife, the travel deal expert, did her magic to find us the best value for that money. What we wound up with was a cruise to the Bahamas leaving from Miami in early February. Not our anniversary, but that didn't really matter, since it was already too late for it to be the 25th anniversary anyway.
We flew into Miami last Saturday, and stayed at an AirBNB. I stuck with my healthy carnivore diet, but my wife likes to eat whatever thing the place we are visiting is famous for, so the first thing we did was go to a local cafe and get a Cuban sandwich. After that, we went out and spent some time on the beach. We checked out Crandon Beach.
It was really nice, and we enjoyed what time we had in the sun there. Sadly, it was kind of late already, so the sun didn't last long.
We left there, and headed to a grocery store to get some food we could cook for ourselves in our AirBNB's kitchen. We picked the wrong store from Google Maps, though, because we wound up stuck in tons of traffic on our way there and on the way back. We made it, though, and only spent about $50 on our food for the whole two days we were in Miami. Another plus of not staying in a hotel.
The next day, I talked my wife into going out to Everglades National Park.
I'm a huge fan of national parks. If you're a long time reader of this blog, then you probably know that already. The Everglades is one of the big, most famous ones, so I couldn't be just a short drive away from it and not head over to enjoy it.
It was pretty nice, although it wasn't my favorite or anything. It's pretty cool, but there are many parks out west that are so much more interesting and impressive. I think you'd like the park a lot more if you were an ecologist or biologist or a botanist or something. There was some pretty cool jungly places to hike through.
A really nice lakey, pondy area full of lily pads that was my favorite.
We saw a few alligators.
And a bunch of cool birds.
All in all, it was pretty neat, but that was it for our time in Miami. The next morning, we were getting on a big boat and heading out to sea.
