3 posts tagged “texas”

Justin and I tent camped a lot when we were dating as well as the first several years of our marriage, before we got busy.  Before Sara was born, we resolved that Sara would grow up exposed to camping and the outdoors from the start. So we've gradually been easing her into camping, first a cabin "camping" trip to Buescher State Park near Austin, and this weekend, her first tent camping trip to Guadalupe River State Park.

I hope you enjoy the cameraphone photo gallery of photos I took with my Blackberry during our camping trip (until I drained the battery.) I sent some of the photos to my Twitter account as well as Flickr, so it was cool to have folks literally following our camping trip. Of course, this only works when you're a) at a park in close proximity to cellular telephone towers/with good cell coverage and b) close enough to home that you're not worried about depleting your phone's battery quickly. (UPDATED: Justin is adding some of his photos taken with a real camera. :))

I'll post a link to a proper trip report chronicling the trip on WildTexas.com soon; in the interim, here's a stream of consciousness trip report -- Camping w/ a 1 Year Old

In fairness to Californians...Californians have taken a slight beating in my blog recently (though I feel entitled, having been born there unlike the rest of you ;-)

Well, here you go--
Elderly Texas Woman Pulls Gun on Danish Journalist Near President's Crawford Ranch

I quote from the article:

[The Danish journalist said] "I was just so occupied dictating my story that I didn't really see where I went," Svensson told me later. "I was just walking and talking."

What Svensson didn't realize was that he had stopped walking a couple hundred feet away, on the front lawn of an elderly woman. An elderly woman who looked through her window and didn't like that a strange man was standing outside her house. An elderly woman who had, um, a gun.

Next thing you know the woman is outside, no more than a few dozen feet from the journalist, demanding that he leave. "Suddenly she comes out and she says, 'Get off my property. You're trespassing,'" recalled Svensson.

Svensson was too preoccupied to notice the pistol, and was not aware that Texas law gives homeowners leeway on using a weapon when someone is trespassing on your property. All of us journalists across the street were too far away to see the pistol at first, until a Danish photographer with a telephoto lens announced to a bunch of us that there was indeed a weapon in the elderly woman's right hand."

I went to Google Maps to refresh my memory on an intersection I travel regularly, since there is supposed to be a drop box for clothing and small appliance donations to a children's home there (at least per their mailing I just received.) Once on the appropriate map, I realized it had a Street View available, which I had not used (or noticed) before for San Antonio streets.

I got sidetracked while in Street View, and "drove" my cursor down Prue Rd., toward Fredericksburg Rd. Anyone that travels this area of town knows that road's been FUBAR'd for, what, almost a year now (maybe longer? My brother says it's not slated for completion until Summer 2010!?) Anyway, I wanted to see if the Street View just died at the roadblock, or if they sent some intrepid Google contractor bicycling past the road barricades with a camera mounted on his/her helmet. No dice, the map ends at the barricades. {grin}

I then went back in Street View to scout the intersection for likely drop boxes or collection stations, but I have come up empty-handed. Guess I'll have to go the low-tech route and pay more attention the next time I'm parked at one of the interminably long lights there.

One thing I noticed was the "coming" and "going" pictures for the same road segment in Street View don't appear to necessarily be taken at the same time. Case in point: arriving at the Prue&Babock Valero gas station from Babcock in Street View shows an unleaded gas price of $2.99, whereas arriving at the station from the Fredericksburg-side of Prue results in a price of $2.95 at the same station, as well as entirely different traffic/vehicles.

That brought me back to Google to learn what technology they're using to compile the Street View data. Guess I need to keep on the lookout for one of these in the future! (That thing should be mounted to a Prius or at least a TDI VW! ... /rant)

And of course, any exploration of Street View invariably leads to virtual voyeurism. Hey, dude -- breaking and entering? -- Google's watching! (See more here).