Friday It's almost 10° warmer this morning. Still, it's much more seasonable than the above 70° start we've been having. The Christmas Day forecast is out... The low Christmas morning will be in the '30s. The high Christmas Day will just reach 50°... About what it is right now. It…
A wintery looking start to a wintery mix of a day morning coffee muses.
It's another overcast morning in the hill country, a chilly morning coffee muses.
Low forties, overcast with rain about on radar, hill country morning coffee muses.
Cold, wet, windy hill country morning coffee muses.
Loading the car for a roroad trip morning coffee muses.
Early Birthday Road Trip No pictures yet, I'll work on adding some in the morning. It was overcast all day. A long gray road trip... The Wildlife Refuge was almost empty of birds. The most common birds were ibis, I also saw a couple Mississippi KItes and a Crested Caracara.…
Motel Room Morning Coffee Muses Trussville, Alabama. It's just a Quality Inn back off the interstate. Old style motel, well maintained rooms, restaurants within walking distance... even for me. We've stayed here before. It's only a place to lay your head between two long days on the road. If I've…
Our last morning on the mountain, getting ready to head home...
Just Another Rainy Mountaintop Morning Coffee Muses
Thursday morning on the mountain Another late morning start to my coffee muses... The Day is starting out the warmest we've felt yet. 60° right now but breezy still from last night. Mt Airy was warm, over eighty, but not too bad. It was a nice little town, we had…
Slept In On The Mountain Morning Coffee Muses Late nights and mountain air conspired to keep me in bed till well after sunrise this morning. The morning temperatures aren't quite as cool and the forecast is for a bit warmer today. The forecasted high is 72°... yesterday's high was 65°.…
Mountain Sunrise Morning Coffee Muses Boy the sun rises early here. It's a chilly start to the morning here on Tom's Knob. It's 51 and change to start the day. There's a hound baying up the road. Unknown birds singing to the daybreak. Now there's another dog answering the hound.…
First Mountain Morning Coffee Muses A beam of sunlight streaming thru a hole in the blinds woke me this morning. I stumbled to the kitchen and started the coffee maker before wandering outside with my camera. The above is the sight that greater me. And the big image at the…
This isn't a coffee muses... I'm having water after unloading the car. More Photos Here And... enjoying that view. Later, I'll be enjoying that hot tub as the evening temperature drops thru the fifties before settling into the forties... catch you all tomorrow...
I've forgotten how long I've been doing this as an annual tradition. It goes back well over a decade. This years trip felt more like my hunt for spring flowers than my birthday.
I seldom find myself rising with the sun... At least not since the fall of 2008. And so, I don't see all that many sunrises. Be that as it may, this shot from just around the corner from my house, is still one of my favorites... Alvin Sunrise
The entire (well mostly anyway) reason for our jaunt up the road to the middle of the country wasn't to see the famous Arch. It wasn't to celebrate history. It wasn't even to find a cooler climate, though, that seemed to happen on the one day that mattered. The reason for the trip was to visit the special facility the citizens of St. Louis had built for the simple pleasure of watching the summertime antics of a flock of red birds. Cardinals of the subspecies Americanis baseballus St. Louis.
A cool front was moving through the area as I watched that morning. The day promised to be pleasantly warm and not as uncomfortably hot as it had been all week.
We headed north out of Houston on Tuesday before the sun came up and hit Oklahoma soon after noon. I had routed our trip to take advantage of the Arkansas Mountains...We had reservations at Queen Wilhelmena State Park for the first night of our travels.
The heat of the day arrived at about the same time I arrived at Brazos Bend State Park just the other side of the Brazos River from us off of FM 1462 and FM 762.
Just to give you an idea of the area of the state we were covering here is an image of the page in The Roads of Texas - 5th Edition map book I use to travel our state... So, now that we have visited Friendship and Bryant Station it's time…
This past week my wife expressed a desire to visit the cemeteries where ancestors are resting up around Milam County in central Texas. Since the weekend was one of the few our daughter was off (thus no need for babysitter Paw-paw), I suggested we enjoy the the last of the…
Some of the shots I took yesterday as I played on a roadtrip into Texas Spring... I try each year to make a day trip into the closest wildflower country to my home. The trip takes about two hours just to start seeing good fields of color. Usually, I begin…
[ti_billboard name="Spring Day"] We took a drive around the county yesterday...Me and my Nikon. The slideshow above has some of the results...I hope you enjoy.
The Weather Yesterday, when I went through my daily email, this is what I saw from the weather gurus at My-Cast.com... Currently (on Fri 6:22AM CST from Pearland Regional Airport) Thunderstorm Temp: 70° Dewpoint: 64° Wind: S 10 MPH Today's email brought this... Currently (on Sat 6:06AM CST from Pearland Regional…
I realized yesterday about noon that it was exactly six months since my birthday. Since this was an auspicious anniversary being as how it marked fifty-five point five years on the planet, I decided to honor the day with half a birthday road trip... I learned something from this short…
We had a "cool" front blow through here this morning...Cool is now at 71° and rising. The front brought an hour or so of rain and then clear blue sky. The real sign of spring though is the cardinals, you know...Red birds chasing other red birds out of their perceived…
We cruised through East Columbia on the way home. East Columbia is one of the earliest settlements in this part of the state. It was founded in 1823 as Bell's Landing.
Through this all, I couldn't bring myself to document the damage with my camera...It was enough just to see what was what...So on I drove. All the way around the island...through the Strand...Along Broadway...And finally over the new Causeway...And here was where the totality of the destruction hit me...
Driving toward Kerrville along the Guadalupe River somewhere west of Hunt... From Coffee Muses
The Podcast I listened to yesterday that really caught my interest was this one... Tiny Texas Cafe Fills Up After Barbecue Award : NPR All Things Considered, July 18, 2008 · Barbecue is religion in Texas. Every five years, Texas Monthly goes on a quest for the Holy Grail —…
A shot from last year's trail ride by my office on the southern edge of Houston. On the trail ride, cowpokes draw a crowd | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle On Tuesday, Davis and about 200 other cowpokes from the Southwest Trailriders Association ambled along highways to join 12 other groups…
It was just eight days ago that I took myself off on my annual Birthday/Photo Roadtrip. This image is one of the ones I captured on that day. This shot was taken in San Bernard National Wildlife Refuge but it could have been taken in a number of other locations…
More from my birthday roadtrip... This photo was taken at about the location of the cross hair on the map below, facing west across the Brazos River. The white smudge on the horizon is smoke from one of the many grass fires that were burning that day along the coast.…
From my Wednesday drive... Deserted beaches are why I spend my birthday watching waves...Texas winter weather is what makes it worthwhile. Handbook of Texas Online - SURFSIDE BEACH, TX SURFSIDE BEACH, TEXAS. Surfside Beach, also known as Surfside and Follett's Island, at the mouth of the Brazos River on the…
No matter what the weather brings tomorrow, I will spend the day on my annual photo road trip/beach meditation party. This will be the third annual event. A holiday from work I present to myself. A day of wandering the countryside of my life. If the prognosticators are right, the…
The pace at work since the new year has been quite frantic. I find myself sleeping late almost every morning. It's cutting down on my musing time as I have my toast and coffee each morning. Some mornings it seems like I barely get through the email and important reader…
We seem to be having another of those foggy fall mornings...The temperature is predicted to be rising through the weekend. I have even heard predictions of 70's this weekend. So it looks like fall has teased us again. Just another example of the many changes life puts us through. Life…
The Floyd Country Store on a frosty Sunday morning. The Jacksonville Cemetery in the foreground. The Barbershop... The Stoplight... Farmer's Supply... Oddfella's Cantina...
I passed this old farm as we drove south on the Blue Ridge Parkway from Floyd to Boone. I nestled down a bit off the road behind a line of round hay bales. Just enough of a glimpse out of the passenger side window to force me to turn around…
This week's challenge: 'Travel'. Eight States, ten Days, 1750 miles, five hotel rooms, from heat to freezing to fall comfortable to snow to fall comfortable. That's Travel...And here's my Vacation Slideshow for proof... . Please read our Participant Guide before deciding to submit a link. Your link must be to…
Pushed through to home last night and arrived about 10pm...I see why I have a love/hate relationship with the American Interstate Road system. While they let you cover immense distances in a single day they are essentially...boring. Long corridors through the countryside, shut off from the real world by a…
One of the places I have tried to hit in North Carolina for a number of years has been Roaring Creek off of 19E out of Elk Park. Roaring Creek tumbles off the southeast side of Roan Mountain feeding the North Toe River. Each year something has come up to…
I cannot complain about the weather here in northwestern North Carolina on this autumn day. The rain, light as it is, is desperately needed. But it sure puts a "damp-er" on the quest for pictographs. Of course any trip to this area by the Boyd's means a stop at the…
As we left Virginia behind today Mother Nature gave me a perfect picture postcard view of Mabry Mill. Actually the two colorful trees in the background are about the only two left in the vicinity with much color but they were in the right place at the right time for…
A while back I wrote a review for Fred First's, A Slow Road Home, at the time we had only met on the pages of each others blogs and through the exchange of emails. This is what I wrote back then... Today for lunch I joined a friend I've never…
Driving South on the Parkway through Humpback Rocks brought a surprise this afternoon... It must have come down pretty good overnight since it had been melting for a while by the time we got there. But everyone traveling up the Parkway was having a lot of fun playing in the…
We spent yesterday at Jefferson's Monticello... Today we head south down the Blue Ridge to a introduction to Floyd, Va...See ya down the road.
No not really. It just hit me that it made more sense to run the Interstate up to the terminus of our trip and then begin working our way south rather than vice versa. It should cut almost a days drive off the trip home this way... So yesterday was…
Sunrise this morning was spent at Craggy Gardens on the Blue Ridge Parkway. The weather was clear and cold. I didn't know how cold until I got back in the car to drive back down...The temperature was 19°. Here's what I saw as the sun came over the horizon... And…
I closed yesterday with a shot of sunset so lets open the day with the morning sunrise fro the other side of Asheville... Heading back to breakfast I stopped at the French Broad River Overlook and caught this... Now its time to get ready for the Biltmore Estate and any…
We drove into the darkness on Sunday to get to Birmingham. The only observations from the drive on Sunday were we both commented on how dry Mississippi looked. It was a noticeable change right at the state line. The roadside went from green in Louisiana to brown looking in Mississippi.…
I am just finishing up with email and all before I throw the final items (like this computer) into the car. We are hitting the road in the next hour or so for our first stop in or around Birmingham. We could probably go further but we don't have anything…
The long overdue trip into the Blue Ridge Mountains is almost here (knock on wood). I almost feel like I shouldn't even think about it unless I jinx the whole affair. This trip is about as unstructured (and unplanned) as any we have ever done. No kids(?), no agendas, just…
The weather out is delightful, even the humidity has fallen below 90%. Morning temperature is 64°. The skys are clear and the day has yet to break. We should be heading into a beautiful weekend. It could be time for a photo road trip... ++++++++++ Well...It looks like the Industrial…