Children’s Adventure Garden at Dallas Arboretum
November 20, 2023 The Rory Meyers Children’s Adventure Garden at Dallas Arboretum opened 10 years ago, but somehow I’d never visited until last month. Why? I guess because my kids had outgrown children’s gardens by the time it opened, and so it wasn’t on my radar despite many visits over ...
Hiking and off-roading at the Needles in Canyonlands
July 17, 2023 Canyonlands National Park spreads across 337,598 acres in southeastern Utah, divided into 3 districts by the Green and Colorado rivers: Island in the Sky, the Needles, and the Maze. In early May, after exploring popular Island in the Sky, we drove to the Needles on another day ...
Bandelier cliff dwellings, Valles Caldera, and epic New Mexico scenery
November 13, 2022 In early September, at the end of our trip to Santa Fe, New Mexico, we drove out to Bandelier National Monument. We’d last explored its ancient cliff dwellings and pueblo ruin two decades earlier, and we wanted to hike and see it again. Bandelier National Monument We ...
Fantasy gardens at Paxson Hill Farm, part 2
February 11, 2022 The gardens of Paxson HIll Farm, which I explored during the Pennsylvania portion of my road trip last October, started out good and got even better. In my last post I shared the farm’s nursery, Shade Garden, Katsura Garden, and Temple Garden. Let’s move on to a ...
Going batty at Bracken Cave, where 20 million bats take flight
September 14, 2021 Austin is justifiably proud of the 1.5-million-strong bat colony that roosts under downtown’s Congress Avenue Bridge. I’ve watched the nightly emergence from the bridge as the bats take flight many times over the years. But when I heard that nearby Bracken Cave contains 15 to 20 million ...
TatTopia garden embraces stonework and sustainability: Denver Garden Bloggers Fling
July 09, 2019 When the construction dust settled at Tatiana Maxwell’s new energy-wise home, studio, and guest house in Boulder, Colorado, in 2010, the yard was just an expanse of bare dirt. Her first thought was to build an English-style cottage garden. But after brainstorming with stonemason artist Thea Alvin ...
Hamilton Pool swimming hole, a Hill Country blue lagoon
March 11, 2019 One of the most beautiful spots in the Hill Country west of Austin is Hamilton Pool, a turquoise swimming hole half tucked under a massive limestone ledge, from which a 50-foot waterfall sheets onto a water-smoothed boulder and into the pool. In the wet season, veil-like columns ...
Family Garden and berry-bright possumhaws at Wildflower Center
February 11, 2019 Continuing with my recent visit to the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, let’s explore the Family Garden and see how it looks in late winter. Again, possumhaw holly (Ilex decidua) berries blaze bright red, alongside early blossoms of coral honeysuckle (Lonicera sempervirens). The galvanized steel cylinder is ...
Spring-fed waterfalls and swimming holes at Krause Springs
April 02, 2018 For years I’ve wanted to visit Krause Springs, a spring-fed swimming hole and campground in Spicewood, Texas, about 45 minutes northwest of Austin. Last Saturday we drove out there, past bluebonnets splashing ribbons of blue along the roadsides. We arrived early, and for a short time, while ...
Bluebonnets, buckeyes, and more in bloom at Wildflower Center gardens
March 25, 2018 Ahh, Texas bluebonnets! They’re turning Austin’s roadsides blue right now, and early ‘bonnets were in bloom last week at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center. I wish everyone could experience a good bluebonnet season at least once in their lives. California poppies were blooming too, their orange ...
Going underground at Carlsbad Caverns
August 30, 2016 With the 100th birthday of the U.S. National Park Service this month, I’m pleased we were able to visit two National Parks on our recent road trip: Mesa Verde in Colorado and Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico. We’d visited before with our eldest when he was little ...
Rocky Mountain high by car and rail in southwestern Colorado
August 28, 2016 Colorado’s Rocky Mountains have been our summer playground many times, but we’ve always stayed on the eastern side along the Front Range, or in north-central Breckenridge, never on the western side. To see what we’ve been missing, earlier this month we rented a house in the Durango ...
A blooming good time at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center
April 14, 2015 Spring is the Wildflower Center‘s showiest season, and last Saturday I shared the gardens with many other flower-peepers. (Click for part 1 of my Wildflower Center visit.) In this post we’ll revisit the nearly 1-year-old Luci and Ian Family Garden, where Gulf Coast penstemon (Penstemon tenuis) was ...
Gorgeous weeds and walls at the Wildflower Center
March 19, 2015 With a hat tip to Phoenix landscape architect Steve Martino, who coined the phrase “weeds and walls” to describe his design style — planting native plants for toughness and building walls for structure — here are some of the beautiful weeds and walls at Austin’s own native-plant ...
Nature Nights introduces kids to the Wildflower Center’s new Family Garden
June 17, 2014 My kids are teens now and well past playground age. But I’m not! Since the Luci and Ian Family Garden opened on May 4, I’ve been wanting to check it out. I previewed the garden before it was completed in mid-March and could see it would be ...
Canyons, river, and sky: Big Bend country (Days 2-3)
March 20, 2012 Following up on my overall impressions of Big Bend National Park, today I’ll take you on a tour of the sights. Our first morning we drove up into the Chisos Mountains to hike the Chisos Basin Loop Trail. At an elevation of 4,500 feet over the desert ...
