hurronnicane

By spaghetti bowl I only meant that when you look at the mtb trails on a map that most people do out there it looks like a bowl of spaghetti. I personally like spaghetti a lot. I agree that Reimers is under rated! It is one of the closest trail systems to me and I am always finding new things to do. I hike it a lot too just because I love all the stuff under the cliffs. ‘Discovering’ the gravel options has allowed me to get my wife back out there to ride. We rode there yesterday and rode the All Purpose Trail and the spurs including the one of the Hoge loops. We ended up with ten miles and it was a great outing! It was cloudy and cool, the flowers were great, saw a fox and a crested caracara, and despite the mtb parking area looking very busy, we saw only two people the whole time.

The wildflowers at Reimer’s are quite nice. I went yesterday and for a change of pace did the all-porpoise trail with all of its spurs before tackling the spaghetti bowl of trails. While the all-porpoise trail is nobody’s idea of gnar, it is a pleasant six mile loop and I was glad to have checked it out.

Hackberries get a bad rap. While they can be scary once they are tall and leaning towards your house, they are great for wildlife, fast growing and tolerant of really mediocre growing conditions. Since oak wilt came to our property I look at Hackberry seedlings differently. Too many live oaks and not enough forest diversity leaves you really vulnerable to disease, ice storms, etc.

Today’s wildflower was Damianita. Chrysactinia mexicana

If you haven’t been to Muleshoe this Spring check it out soon! The bluebonnets are peaking and amazing.

Tyler State Park.

Behind the Pine Curtain.

We just had Brian Nash with Nash Brothers Land Services spend a day at our house chipping cedar and removing a big tree limb that was resting on the roof of the barn. We had a mountain of downed limbs and trees that we had cut in preparation for them and they got it all done! They also helped us last year as we cleaned up from Uri. Brian is a mountain biker and great guy and they do really good work.

What a picture perfect day!

The only recurring nightmare I’ve had in the last 30 years involved getting my bike stolen.

Today was a Zero Day. No chainsaw, no stacking firewood, no dragging brush. Felt so good to be in the woods!

This was our third significant ice storm in the 26 years we have lived here. There have been several smaller ones as well. We have ten acres that includes a large number of live oaks and junipers and they took it in the shorts again. We also had serious damage to some of our big cedar elms that had survived the previous ice storms. We were still cleaning up some of the last of the 2021 ice storm when this one hit. It is so hard to see all the beautiful trees so badly torn up. During the middle of this slow motion disaster I realized that not only was I looking at months of cleanup at the home place, but that my PTN (personal trail network) was going to require a huge amount of effort to reopen. A neighbor has allowed me to cut and maintain trails on their property and my trails have slowly grown to about five miles in length. It took a huge effort to get it all restored last time. Our first big storm was in ‘97 and I was thankful to be fit and relatively young as I waded into the cleanup. I still feel pretty fit but I am 26 years older as I begin this journey again.

An interesting read.

Babushka.

Though we don’t have any on our property there are quite a few of them near our house west of Dripping Springs. We have a neighbor who has been growing them from seed for a number of years to sell. As dry as this year has been I was surprised that they flowered and produce fruit this Fall.

Good question. I’ve never tried it.

Later in the day, I rode at Lindsey Park. I didn’t have enough daylight to see it all, but it had some fun stuff.

Today, I tried two more Tyler area trails. The first one was Faulkner Park.

Behind the Pine Curtain. Tyler State Park.