We walked today

Hello, everyone.

I am delighted to say that we got out of our house and walked today. It was only 2 miles, but it felt wonderful!

A housekeeping detail: y'all will notice that I've added a "search" box for the blog on the side. If you're here wondering about socks, or octopus, or shoes, or Madrid, well, the search box should be your friend. If it doesn't help, post a comment and let me know what you were looking for.

And if there's a town on the Camino that you don't see me talking about in the July-August-September posts, feel free to post a question in the comments on a recent post. If I can find anything we noticed about it, I'll talk about it. And if we didn't go there for an actual reason, I'll probably talk about that, too.

Weather here was Chamber of Commerce great today. (It was extremely dewy last night, but neither rain nor clouds today.) My sweetie's orchids had a great time, hanging under the lemon tree on their accustomed branches. We are expecting that tomorrow afternoon they will have to come inside for some days. It's supposed to take a chilly turn and nights may be back in the 40's (F) for a while.

A Texas picture:

Near Lost Maples

This area is in the hilly country west of San Antonio. The Lost Maples are a relict population, they say, left over from an Ice Age time when the bigtooth (?) maples were growing all over the area. Now they only grow in the Lost Maples Park area. (There is another "lost tree" area in Texas. East of San Marcos there are the Lost Pines. The tree and gardening books say they have a similar origin.) The nearest decent-sized town to Lost Maples is probably Kerrville. It's a pretty area. I'd like to go back, with water bottles in the car!, and do some walking. When we were there, we didn't know just how remote Lost Maples works out to be. We had the silly idea that there'd be a concession nearby when we found the place. There isn't. And 3 PM with no water bottles is no time to be taking a walk out in the wilds of west Texas!

This was the scenery when the cameraman turned 180 degrees to get the other direction. The fence marks somebody's property line. You will notice that the area is fairly arid. The Lost Maples may have moisture, but they're a lot lower down on the hill and they have a canyon with at least seasonal water in it.

I can't tell from this picture if the shrubs and trees in the background are the standard southern/western Texas scrub vegetation or not. There are a number of lime-green blobs that might be Brasil trees. But it's impossible to tell.

One thing anyone can see from this picture: we weren't prepared for anything like a hike that day! Flip-flops? Not even. But when we set out on this drive, it was to get a look at the area more than to do a big hike. Or even a medium-sized one.