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April 12, 2011
Landmarks survive Fort Davis fires
Wondering what’s become of your favorite places in Fort Davis?
Beth Nobles, executive director of the Texas Mountain Trail, which promotes tourism in West Texas, sent a list of landmarks in the city that survived this week’s wildfires. From the McDonald Observatory to the Limpia Hotel (above) to the Fort Davis National Historical Site, many tourist sites are unscathed. (For more details, go here.)
Unfortunately, some 60 homes were lost in the blaze, including that of one of my friends and co-workers, who lived on Dolores Mountain.
Big Bend National Park and Guadalupe Mountains National Park were undamaged. They’ll be participating in National Parks Week with no-fee entry days April 16-24.
Fort Davis will need a few days to get the power back on and get life organized again, Nobles reports, but they’ll need you to come back and see them.
“You’ve read reports of a blackened landscape, yet it is important to realize ecosystem is very forgiving when it comes to fire,” the Texas Mountain Trail website reported. “A rain or two will get some green growing again, and the rebound will be swift and amazing…and Fort Davis will need you to come back and see that amazing rebound.”
Want to help those devastated by the wildfires? Donations can be sent to the Permian Basin Area Foundation Emergency Relief Fund or the Jeff Davis County Relief Fund at the addresses below:
- Permian Basin Area Foundation Emergency Relief Fund, 200 N. Loraine, Suite 500, Midland, TX 79701
- Jeff Davis County Relief Fund, c/o Permian Basin Area Foundation, 200 N. Loraine, Suite 500, Midland, TX 79701
- ALSO via Fort Davis State Bank: Jeff Davis County Relief Fund, P.O. Box 1809, Fort Davis TX 79734, Account #321028 (needs to be included)
Plans are also under way for a benefit concert in the region. To keep up with fire coverage, check Marfa Public Radio here or Big Bend Now here.
Below are photos of places that survived intact, from the website:
Indian Lodge
Jeff Davis Courthouse
Davis Mountains Lodge & Expeditions
McDonald Observatory
Fort Davis National Historic Site
The Old Jail
Chihuahuan Desert Nature Center and Botanical Gardens
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February 14, 2010
West Texas travel secrets
Looking for the best hiking, biking and birding spots in West Texas?
Beth Nobles, executive director of Texas Mountain Trail, will speak about “Undiscovered West Texas Adventures” at 7 p.m. Monday at REI Austin Downtown, 601 N. Lamar Boulevard.
The session is free.
From the national parks at Big Bend, Guadalupe Mountains and Fort Davis, to the state parks at the Franklin Mountains, Big Bend Ranch and the Davis Mountains, Nobles knows all the secrets of travel in the far west corner of the state.
The Texas Mountain Trail is a non-profit organization and part of the Texas Historical Commission’s Texas Heritage Trails Program.
For more information on Noble’s talk, call REI at (512) 482-3357 or go here. For more information about the Texas Mountain Trail, go here.
(That’s me looking over the edge of the South Rim at Big Bend National Park, above, and a desert scene below.)
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November 30, 2009
I'm back from Costa Rica
I’ve been in Costa Rica for the last week, hanging out in the jungle, spying on sloths and monkeys.
What an incredible place!
We spent a few days in the mountains near San Isidro, at an eco-lodge called Monte Azul. Then we moved down to the coast, staying at a very chic joint called Oxygen up the hill from tiny Uvita.
The highlight? An all-day visit to Corcovada National Park. It took 3 hours to reach the ranger station on the northern edge of this remote park, but the reward was incredible: Spider monkeys, coatimundis, scarlet macaws, poison frogs, sloths, huge blue butterflies and more.
I’ll be writing about my trip for the newspaper later this month. Stay tuned…
In the meantime, here are a few photos from my trip. I love that you can see the greenish tint to the sloth’s fur. That’s mold! The other shots show the beach at Corcovado, a scarlet macaw and a capuchin monkey.
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August 1, 2009
Heading away from this inferno!
Happy, happy, joy, joy!
I’m heading north, far away from this inferno we call Texas. My mom lives in South Haven, Mich., where high temperatures have been hovering in the very pleasant 70s all week. That’s 30 degrees cooler than Austin!
On the agenda?
Swimming in the lake. Running the Blueberry Festival 5K. Tooling around town on my aunt and uncle’s bicycles. Maybe some hiking at a nearby park.
Oh, and did I mention grilling on my mom’s deck overlooking the town marina? Ice cream at Captain Nemo’s? Reading books? Playing Scrabble? It’s National Blueberry Festival weekend, so I’ll be eating lots of my favorite fruit, too.
Anyone out there been to South Haven?
I’ll be out of the office, but will try to update the blog periodically.
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July 15, 2009
I'm off to camp
I’m heading out now to visit Camp Balcones Springs near Marble Falls. Every summer I pick three camps and pay them a visit. The stories I write based on those visits are featured in our Summer Camp Guide, which publishes in February.
I love it. I didn’t get to go to camp as a kid, but the last four years I’ve made up for all that lost opportunity.
Water slides, horse back riding, crafts, archery, secret camp rituals - it’s great fun!
So far this year, I’ve visited the John Newcomb Tennis Ranch and the Austin Film Society’s Summer Filmmaking Camp.
I’m staying the night at Camp Balcones Springs. I’ll report in tomorrow afternoon!
Did you go to camp when you were a kid? Do you have a suggestion of a camp I should visit next year?
UPDATE:
I had to post this, my favorite picture from my summer camp visit. I loved Camp Balcones Springs! (Photo shows me with the resident llama, Rider.)
Besides snuggling the llama, I swam, rode a zipline across a spring-fed lake, did something called “The Screamer,” made it halfway up a climbing wall and rode a horse. Great food, too!
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May 21, 2009
Cattle drives and safari tents
I’m back!
I just returned from a couple of days on the hoof, trying my hand at herding cattle on a ranch near Hillsboro, and then staying in a safari tent at Fossil Rim Wildlife Center near Glen Rose.
The Beaumont Ranch, where I donned my boots for a mini-cattle drive, and Fossil Rim, a drive-through wild animal park that does a lot of conservation work, are only about an hour apart, so I blended two trips into one. I’ll be writing about both experiences in upcoming travel stories.
I got the whole pseudo-Texas experience at Beaumont Ranch, where I spent the night in what looked like a movie front for a Western film. The room, called the Yellow Rose, was part of a fake cowboy town where you can stay overnight. Our room had a clawfoot bathtub and a toilet that worked by yanking an overhead chain.
The next morning, I climbed aboard a horse named Montana. We joined the ranch wrangler and another cowgirl in the west pasture, yipping and whooping to round up about 50 head of longhorn. Honestly, it didn’t take much. They bunched up and let us steer them to the east pasture with no problems. I guess I was secretly hoping for a stampede.
After that we headed to Fossil Rim, where we spent a couple hours driving the 9-mile paved road through the park. The highlight? The giraffes, which reached their long slender necks into the sun roof of our car in search of alfalfa pellets. Did you know giraffe tongues are more than a foot long? And blue!
That night, we stayed in the park’s safari camp. We were the only ones there, and sat on chairs sipping wine and watching a herd of addax, a type of antelope with long, sharp horns, drink at a watering pond adjacent to our compound. As the sun went down, we could hear two of the addax clashing horns and bellowing.
The next morning, we took a behind-the-scenes tour, where we learned all about the park’s conservation efforts. Fossil Rim has special facilities where cheetah and attwater prairie chickens are bred.
An amazing place!
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