Hello again! I know, it’s been a very long time since I wrote in my blog. In the spring, during the lock downs, I thought I might return to posting, but I chose to create a wonderful garden instead. It took up most of my time and was a very rewarding experience. We just ate the last (frozen) tomato soup and also finished the pickles I made from the abundance of tomatoes and cucumbers.
Anyway, in addition to the gardening I also walked and hiked a lot during 2020; sometimes by myself, sometimes with a friend or my husband, and I also hiked a lot with the Irvine Ranch Conservancy as a volunteer (and later as a docent) while we could still do it. At this moment Orange County is in a partial lock down, and we can only use public trails, not the IRC ones.

On the last day of 2020, my friend and I visited one of the Aliso and Wood Canyons Wilderness Park Trails (map).

We took a 5.5 mile hike on Wood Canyon Trail and Wood Creek Trail. We started the hike at Canyon Vistas Road. I was excited about this walk, because my friend saw a bobcat and a coyote on her walk here a few days back, and I hoped to see them as well.

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In my previous post I mentioned that we spent a few days in Las Vegas on a family trip. I had recently purchased a small, mirrorless camera for taking pictures during my travels and my hikes (which I will talk about later). I took hundreds of pictures during the drive to Las Vegas and in the city. I found it very easy to use, and very light to carry it around. (It’s a Panasonic Lumix GX85.)

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A lot of things have happened in the past few months. I want to share some of those things with you in my future posts, and I decided to start with my latest adventures.

For the Thanksgiving holiday my family drove to Las Vegas and spent a few days there. It was my first visit to this city, and to tell you the truth, it wasn’t my most favorite place. But I truly enjoyed the drive back home! 🙂 Southern California got hit by a storm, which caused very heavy rains in certain areas, and snow in others. We were lucky not to be in the storm, but we did see the aftermath of it while heading back from Nevada to California. Something that helped me create the following pictures was a wonderful traffic jam on the highway. Normally I wouldn’t consider a traffic jam wonderful, but since I was a passenger and I had my camera in my hands, I had a great time shooting the unusual scenery from the slow-moving car.

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Our family took a short trip to Texas; we visited Austin and San Antonio. I’ve already posted about the best part of San Antonio in my Lensbaby Circle post, but I didn’t have time to show images from Austin. So here we go.

We started out the trip at my husband’s most favorite place in Austin, at Franklin BBQ. This is a very unique diner, where they serve one of the country’s best BBQ. The caveat? You need to wait in line for 3-4 hours to get in the restaurant. The line is a social gathering, with many people visiting from different cities, states or even other countries.

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Welcome to my July 1st Lensbaby Blog Circle post, in which I’d like to invite you to take a short walk with me in San Antonio, Texas. My family was taking a five-day vacation in Austin and San Antonio, and I grabbed my Lensbaby Twist 60 to capture some great moments while walking on the famous San Antonio River Walk (Paseo del Rio), which is the largest urban ecosystem in the United States. The whole walk is 15 miles long, but we mainly just visited the downtown area. You can walk by the river, enjoy a lunch or dinner in one of the many restaurants, visit small gift shops, or take a guided tour on an electric barge. We walked around the downtown area twice; once in late afternoon then after sunset. The vibe was different, but we noticed that even at night the area is very family friendly.

I really enjoyed capturing the colorful barges, and I even took pictures of people, which is very unusual for me. We saw pretty flowers, some wildlife, and at night we walked up to San Fernando Cathedral where we watched a laser light show projected to the cathedral’s wall for a few minutes. Without further ado, enjoy a brief tour of the San Antonio River Walk.

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