Our winter journey continues!

We flew back to Dallas today after spending Easter weekend on Wheeler Rd. We had a great visit with our family and grandkids, and with Grandma Goodfallow, Doug, Stan and Jacob plus Jeremy and his wife Laura who announced that they are pregnant!! What a surprise and a blessing. Where one life ends, new life begins. Too bad Bill can't be around to see his newest great grandchild, but I'm sure he will be looking down and smiling!
We drove back to Brighton on Monday and spent the night with Laura and Sean, Kara and Nolan. This morning we were dropped at the airport in Detroit and flew to Dallas via Charlotte, North Carolina! It was a routine flight with just a short layover and we were back in Dallas at 4:20.
We are back at Quail Crossing in Waco now and will continue with our camping reservations through the end of April. Our next adventures will be on the Texas coast at North Padre Island and we hope to do some beaching, shore fishing and relaxing these next few weeks.
We brought back with us a school project for Kara where we take "Flat Kara" (a picture she drew of herself), and take pictures of her in unusual locations. We plan to have some fun with this assignment.
Hope everyone has a great spring!

The guys on Easter weekend.

 

The family on Easter Saturday. My how we have grown!

 

We took a walk on the Lake Michigan beach on Easter Sunday and enjoyed being back on home turf and getting outside. 

 

Flat Kara at Metro Airport in Detroit. This kid is going places!

A picture from the Pedernales River from Pedernales Falls State Park before we left Texas.

I promised Nolan a picture of a lizard, so here is a picture of a lizard, Nolan!

 

And our journey continues.....

Back in Michigan

Driving from Waco to Dallas this morning made us realize how mobile we are getting. It was a two hour drive from our campground west of Waco to Dallas, then we parked our truck at a Marriot hotel where we arranged parking for the next five days. We caught their shuttle to the airport and caught our flight to Detroit without incident. Tom picked us up at the airport and brought us to his place in Washington. In the morning we will complete our trip to Maple City and home on Wheeler Road.
We are looking forward to being with the rest of the family for Easter weekend and seeing Grandma in Leland.
We were met by rain in Detroit, and it looks like some snow up north, but the weather has not been as bad as the predictions were making it out to be.
Happy Easter to all.

We're going to miss you!

Bill Goodfallow would have been ninety two in August. So many years of life!
He always loved having friends and family around him, and always made everyone smile! What a wonderful father-in-law and father and husband and Grampa he was. He always had a story to tell and if he didn't have a new one he would tell you one of the old ones AGAIN! But we always loved to hear them and we would always laugh with him and share the joy!
Rest in peace, Bill, and know you will be missed, but always loved by so many!!

Mr. Goodfallow turning 90 in 2014. Betty and he were inseparable for 65 great years!!

He always kept us all laughing..

Surrounded by family on his 91'st birthday.

May God bless and keep him!

Jockying around towards Dallas

We are working our way towards Dallas right now, probably the Waco area to make arrangements to store the camper and catch a flight out of Dallas. We are going back to Michigan for a few days to be with family for the holiday and to visit with Grandma. We are all saddened by the loss of Nancy's father on Sunday and need to get back to see everyone.
My main inspiration for keeping this blog going is now gone. I enjoy keeping everyone up to date with our travels and posting pictures that I hope might spark the imagination. It is also meant for our family to know we haven't fallen off the face of the earth and are still on course and semi-sane even though we wander like gypsies in the mountains and deserts.
We will see everyone in the north country this weekend and hope all goes well. Pray for old man winter to treat us gently!

Lost Maples State Park, in the hill country of south central Texas

We are north west of San Antonio in the "Hill Country" of Texas for a while. Several days here at Lost Maples S.P. then on to the Austin area for a week.
This is an interesting part of Texas that we have not seen before. The small mountains with many canyons and valleys remind us of West Virginia or the Smokey Mountains. We have mountain laurel in bloom here and it is reminiscent of the south in the springtime.
We took another mountain hike this morning and enjoyed some awesome scenery and great views on the mountains. Not as dramatic as the Chisos mountains of Big Bend, but a lot greener with lots of oaks and maple.
Weather remains good, eighty in the daytime and sixties at night. They are calling for a thunderstorm today or tomorrow, but Monday is sunny again.
Hoping that everyone is well back home.

Our camp at Lost Maples

The Sibinal River flowing through the canyon

Redbud in bloom on the hillsides

Nancy standing next to some mountain laurel. It was in bloom everywhere!

A side stop on the trail

Monkey rock was pretty awesome! The kids loved it. Its about sixty feet tall!

From the top of the mountain looking down on the ponds along the river and the trail below

ANother view of the Sabinal River. Spring fed out of the mountains, it runs crystal clear.

Seminole Canyon State Park

We are here for two nights, leaving in the morning to go a little further northeast in Texas. We were at this park three years ago when we came out west. It is out of the way between Big Bend and Laredo, on the Rio Grande at the Mexican border.
We did a long hike this morning along the rim of the Seminole Canyon and south to where it meets the Rio Grande. There is a cave there with some beautiful petroglyphs from the ancient people that inhabited this area up to thirteen thousand years ago.
In the afternoon we drove about a mile west to where the Pecos River converges with the Rio Grande and we saw a herd of goats grazing along the bank there. This is fairly flat country, but wherever water flows it carves deep canyons out of the limestone to form deep gorges. There are wild boars and mule deer here and a lot of desert vegetation and cactus. An interesting area, but quite out of the way from anything.
The weather is staying nice, in the eighties and sunny, but a bit breezier the last two days.

Quite a lot of this variety of cactus was in bloom. The deep red color of the flowers was very striking in the desert.

This is a view of the Rio Grande River looking west at the southern border of the park. Mexico is on the left hand side of the picture. We saw a small herd of horses grazing on the Mexican side of the river here.

This is the Seminole Canyon which runs through the State Park. There are a couple of caves here with petroglyphs (cave drawings), that date back many thousands of years to the ancient inhabitants of this region.

  

92 Degrees and Sunny!

We knew it was going to be haot today, but not THAT HOT!
We spent the day in the Chisos mountains today in the park. It was a bit cooler up there and we had an awesome hike. We did nine and a half miles up and down the mountains and got a good workout. We made it back to the parking lot just as our water ran out (and our legs)!
We had beautiful views and a good trail.
We leave in the morning heading east again to Seminole Canyon State Park.

Sunday we took a ride to Terlingua Ghost Town, an old mining town in the desert where they used to process mercury (quicksilver).

The old gas station at Terlingua

I sat in this bar stool and I looked like a horses' arse!

Nancy found a bar stool of her own!

Colored rocks along the trail in the Chisos Mountains

A view along the trail

The pinnacles along the trail in the Chisos Mountains, Big Bend N.P.

Saturday at Big Bend

We took a ride and did two hikes in the park. The first was to Dugout Wells which was a spring fed oasis in the desert. Settlers built a small ranch here and it was a stop for weary travelers who were crossing the desert.
The second hike was at Grapevine Mountain, and we hiked up the hills to "Balanced Rock" a huge boulder balanced precariously on top of two other huge rocks. We had beautiful views here of the mountains around us and the desert below. The temperature got into the high eighties so we were treated to a beautiful warm day with clear blue skies.

The windmill at DugOut Wells

Rainbow cactus in bloom.

This park has more varieties of cactus than any other place in the U.S.

The rugged Grapevine Mountains

Balanced Rock, a favorite hike in the park

Nancy on the back of Balanced Rock

A lizard along the trail

These rock were veined with dark colors, it looked like massive tree trunks with rings.

Davis Mountain to Big Bend

We really liked Davis Mountain State Park, we were only there for one night, but wished we had longer. The park is nestled in the Davis Mountains which were very picturesque with lots of things to explore. On Thursday morning we made the 150 mile drive from there to Big Bend National Park. This is one of the biggest national parks in the country with a very beautiful diversity of geography. They have the Chichauhan desert, the river bottoms along the Rio Grand River and Mexican border, and the Chisos Mountains in the center of the park. A mix of habitat that lures over 400 varieties of birds and many species of plant and animal life.
We have made a couple of hikes and are planning to explore new areas in the five days we have here.
Yesterday we drove to the Boquillas River crossing area where you can legally cross the river into Mexico. Boquillas is a small village with just over two hundred residents where you can shop for trinkets, have lunch and walk the streets in town. This border crossing was closed after 9/11, but recently re-opened and now helps with the towns economy and tourist trade.

A flowering yucca cactus at Davis Mountains S.P.

Some type of Buckthorn in bloom.We saw quite a few new types of plants at the Davis Mountains

Desert Lupine in bloom

Another yucca. They looked like pineapples on top of the yucca plants

The Davis Mountains

Arriving at Big Bend

They are not pigs, they are related to antelope! Peccaries or Javelinas

A  look at the Rio Grand River. I threw a rock across, again.

Cactus and palms at the hot springs in Big Bend N. P.

Canoeing on the Rio Grand

The ochitillo bushes were starting to bloom

A Mexican entrepreneur set up a small gift shop on the U.S. side of the river.

This was his headquarters on the Mexican side!

The border crossing at the park

Boquillas Canyon and the Rio Grand

The end of another fine day