New Hampshire

for our one year anniversary we had planned a couple different trips. one idea, to head to new orleans, was scrapped pretty quickly (good thing as hurricane issac hit that weekend). next plan was to head back to one of our favorite places salvation mountain, then head to the coast for some camping in san elijo. we were all set to go but something did not feel right, so we booked a last minute flight up to new hampshire to spend our one year anniversary weekend with family and friends, some of whom we hadn't seen since the wedding. 

our home town laconia is a place where you can swim in clean lakes and enjoy cool breezes. the lakes region consists of 273 lakes and ponds and laconia sits right in the middle of it all, definitely not a bad place to grow up. with a year passing since the last time we were in nh we forgot just how different the architecture is than the modern style here in texas. being an old mill town laconia is full of brick factories and colonial style homes. 

we made sure to take advantage of all the small town has to offer; antique shopping, insanely cheap lobster and trestle jumping.



view the whole set in the gallery.


 

 

Mustang Island State Park

we made it to mustang island this weekend to escape the heat of the city and for some swimming and camping. named for the wild horses that once roamed the shore and located in port aransas on the coast of texas, mustang island is a 5 mile stretch of beach that offers drive up camping and a tent view that can't be beat.

the swimming was a little warm with a temperature of 85 degrees, but was still great and a nice change from the 68 degree temperature of barton springs.

night fall brought a campfire, cooking and an amazing starlit sky.


we were hoping to see some of the perseid meteor show, unfortunately we weren't able to see any in the sky and only captured a few with long exposures.

sunday morning we woke up to see the sunrise over the ocean and do a little more swimming before we packed up.

we will most definitely be back to mustang island in the future. the only downside of this park is the fact that we'll be cleaning sand out of our gear for the next week.

more photos in the gallery!

 

Reimers Ranch - Hamilton Pool

the summer is getting hotter in texas and in search of some swimming we drove out to dripping springs, tx in search of some cool water. first stop was reimers ranch.what we found was more of the same, extremely low water levels. and much like last week we ended up just hiking the river.

next we finally made it over to hamilton pool. there's normally a 2+ hour wait to get in, but.....

we were able to get right in due to the fact that swimming is currently prohibited in the pool. definitely a cool place to check out regardless, but it's not the same without the picturesque water beneath the rock formation.

 check out the gallery for more pictures.

Salvation Mountain

With a rare three day weekend coming up, we decided we needed to take a super special trip somewhere. It wasnt until somewhat last minute that we decided to do the 1,200 mile drive to Niland, CA. Destination? Salvation Mountain. Salvation Mountain is a an adobe-clay mountain created by Leonard Knight with splashes of bright color and positive messages proclaiming his faith. We've been wanting to visit for quite some time now so we needed to make it happen.

We packed up the pups and left right after work on a Friday around 6pm. About 20 hours later we made it to Salvation Mountain. We wandered around the mountain for a couple hours. It was even more breathtakingly beautiful than we had imagined.