Friday, February 21, 2014

Secret Beach

With the weather considerably warmer I was itching for a hike. We decided to tote Bo along so I decided on a trail that was reasonably short and led down to the Colorado River. It was a warm day and Bo loves hanging out in the water.

Recently, I had heard that this particular area of the Colorado had been opened for tubing and swimming....and then closed again. I wasn't following the story too closely, so I'm not really sure of anything other than it was coined the name "Secret Beach". You can read more about it here.

Although there were 2 1/2 miles of trail we opted to first take the short path that led down to the river....


Once we got down to the river we recognized it as an area we had already been to a couple of years ago, only we had entered from another entrance.

The water was vert low, I'm sure sparred by our current drought conditions.....




Not sure if I would swim here. Looks like moccasin river to me.

Looks like someone made a recycled sit spot
We didn't walk far along the river, just enough for Bo to frolic a bit. Not realizing how warm the day would be I wore my jeans and was working up a sweat walking in the sand. I decided that I really didn't want to walk the trail path in the heat without my trusty tank top and shorts so we headed back home.

Thursday, February 20, 2014

Gonzales For The Day

On our yearly visits to the Texas coast (the beach) we go through many small towns. Some of them seem worth taking the time out to take a look around and I make a note of them on my Texas To Do List.

Today we headed to Gonzales, Texas, only a little over an hour drive and home of the Come and Take it Cannon.  If you are interested in Texas history you can read about the cannon here.

We have noticed that the majority of small towns in Central Texas bear the same physical resemblance and are chock full of Texas history. Gonzales was no different, but despite the fact we all gave the day a thumbs up.

Our first stop was the Gonzales Memorial Museum.....


Come and Take It cannon



Toby has a healthy collection of arrowheads he found in areas of Alabama so he was a bit intrigued by this huge collection. I joined him a couple of times on his hunts in Alabama and found pleasure in it. We look for them here also but have never found any ourselves...yet....


The Eggleston House...



Interestingly enough a couple of the places we visited today are rumored to have paranormal activity and even had investigators in to investigate. This would not be the first time we have ever visited rumored "haunted" places in Texas. Unfortunately, none of us have ever witnessed a paranormal entity in any of them.

I guess that really is not all that surprising considering I question the existence of God. If I have trouble believing in a God head, then it would be safe to say that I would have to speculate the existence of spirit.
Either way, it makes a fun story.

We visited the jailhouse first. It was very old, dingy, and reeked of mold as it should have I suppose....


We were told that a few have committed suicide and/or were hung within the jail. Hence the reason for the supposed paranormal activity....


Hangings






After the jailhouse we took a little sightseeing walk around the downtown square...




Gonzales Courthouse
Next stop was the Pioneer Village. The lady taking our entrance fee assured us that one particular house in the village was occupied by a ghost and we would feel the negative energy. None of us felt a thing but it was still a pretty cool little village....


The "haunted" house


Checking out the sun dial




These kind of days are the highlights of my family life.

Saturday, February 15, 2014

Where is Everybody?

Something I've taken notice to lately is the amount of bloggers that have fallen off the face of bloggy world.

I have around 40 blogs on my blog reading list but only a handful even come through in my blog feed anymore. I even went to some of my old favorites only to find they haven't posted in years or more....which may explain why I don't get the comments I use to get on my blog.

Even some of my personal friends that kept a blog journal have gave up on blogging. Via blog is how I enjoyed keeping up with what was going on in friends and families lives who don't live close by.

I don't get it. Did I not get the memo that said to move on to bigger and better things?

Soaring Like A Bird in the Wind

We had another cold weather week and I was at a loss for any creative indoor activities to entertain us on our "weekend". I'm sure if I had tried hard enough I could have scrounged up something but quite honestly I was pretty un-motivated to even leave the sofa...


Toby has been covering up an old tattoo on my back so we have been spending some spare hours at the shop working on it. I have always considered myself a champ when it comes to enduring the pain of a tattoo but this particular one has been very painful. I do look forward to having the unsightly one covered up so I've been trudging on with the process until it's finished.  I have only one more planned to cover on my upper hip and I'm done with being tattooed. I'm not into body art enough to endure the process and pain. My goal is to re-paint my past mistakes and be done with it.

Skye has an app that gives her project ideas. She comes up with some pretty interesting ones....


For the past several weeks Toby and I have been making it a point to take our morning walks/run at East Metro Park at least once a week. The park is one of my favorite amenities in my area. It's not a populated park and we usually have it all to ourselves. It's the only place I can let Bo run freely off leash and this makes him love the park as much as we do.

Aside from having a few miles of trail that wind through a densely shaded disc golf course, I also love the concrete walking path where I can run freely without having to run around cars, shrubbery or being chased by yapping Chihuahua's or any other out of control animals.

I've also been doing A LOT of crocheting....

Finished afghan
Here's a tote bag that was pretty fun to make. I worked it up in one evening while watching My Cat From Hell  I want to add some crochet applique to this one to add a little personality but I haven't quite figured out what yet....


Today Skye and I decided to go shopping. We had a fun day eating unhealthy fast food and poking fun at all the men who looked to be at a loss in picking out last minute Valentine gifts for their special ladies..or men. Skye's fun to shop with. She knows how to put outfits together and likes to select styles for me also. Never thought I'd see the day.

And of course, Bo and beautiful sunsets....






Thursday, February 6, 2014

Bob Bullock

This week's weekly field trip was to the Bob Bullock Museum. It was too cold outside for any outdoor activities but I wanted us to get out and do SOMETHING.

The museum had and EXTREME MAMMALS exhibit and I thought it sounded interesting enough to keep us all intrigued...


The mop looking "teeth" on this whale wowed me.









I was pretty impressed with Skye's knowledge and familiarity with some of the creatures descriptions and special adaptations. Most of them I didn't even know myself. Apparently YouTube does a good job of being her "teacher".

Next, we looked around the rest of museum....






Skye wasn't real impressed when I was telling her this T.V. was like the one I used to have to watch when I was a kid. How we used to have to turn the knob and get up to change the channel, it was black and white and only had about 3 channel selections. Most likely how I felt about the stories my dad use to tell us about how far he had to walk to school as a kid.
It turned out to be a nice - and educational - family day.