About an hour into my journey to climb one of many big hills, when the distance between the trail beginning and closest bus stop really began to set in, I found myself in the truly remarkable place of Wunderland. The inhabitants of the woods had set themselves up quite a lovely small town. With immense creativity on display in the construction of their homes either at the base of trees or on their stumps. Sometimes with tall ladders and long bridges between them. With carved mushrooms and pottery galore, turned into homes. What an incredible showcase in ingenuity.

If you ever find yourself in Wunderland don't forget to go by the guest book and send my greetings to all of its inhabitants.

Oh look at this ferocious creature that inspires immense fear upon only a glimpse. Who could have reached out and snatched me away. It is truly a wonder I survived despite being a mile away. I took this under extreme peril, peering through my infrared microscope through my magnifying glass and into a telescope.... What? You don't care about my harrowing escape? Well so be it.

You want to know what the petrifying creature is. What nonsense; just look at it! It's borderline orange, with no eyes, and an immense stinger behind it. And just look at that fang infested maw. I estimate with my laser sights that it is at least 10 feet across! Horrifyi-what? You think not? Orders of magnitude of err-unbelievable accusations! Well, if I won't be taken seriously I'll just let you be eaten by the furry devourer of attention.

Ever since I made peppermint cookies for the last tea party, I've been increasingly craving peppermint everything. Come Valentine's Day I needed cookies but there was no extract! Not in Tesco, the upselling cheese to me store, the health foods store with a conspicuous amount of chocolate, nor the overpriced coop that would fit in Austin. The English Market had almond, lemon, chocolate, orange, and a selection of vanilla. But no peppermint.

It was drab and continuously rainy the entire evening. This picture was taken at the lowest point, returning in peppermint defeat. In the apartment lobby a steak flavored pringle reinvigorated me and I went out once more. A candy store had sugar free, laxative effect warning, peppermint candies. But good enough to.

The rest of the night was spent crushing them with a pan and putting way too much butter in the dough. And now I'm stuck with 40 cookies that I struggle look at after the two hours I went through for them. At least I don't really want more peppermint anymore.

One evening during finals week at the very end of my freshman year, word spread around campus that the northern lights were fixing to be visible within the next hour or two. This happens every few months, with a picture or two from somewhere nearby making rounds. However, as campus is very well lit, the closest easily accessible dark location is the observatory in the woods next to Orchard Hill.

I went with a group on the long walk across campus in the middle of the night to hopefully see the lights. Alas, despite much hope and patience we had, whether anything would have been visible or not was made moot by the dense cloud cover. This was my view taken near the end at 12:34.

The small town of Kinsale lies about a 15-mile drive away. However, the road between it and Cork is twisting and constricted between river and forest and thus takes a good deal longer to travel than its distance would propose. Much of the traffic and delays that people have so far complained about in the south are caused less by I-35 type traffic and more by old, narrow streets.

I walked through narrow streets without sidewalks alongside manicured houses until arriving at Charles Fort, an English star-shaped fort from the late 1600s and in use for another 250 years. There were a whole lot of 20-foot drop-offs and holes for cannons along its multi-layered walls. I'll talk about its most famous siege in 1690 in a dedicated post.

Eventually, I found myself walking through a lot of mud and, after finding myself on a 20-minute detour and in front of a threatening farmer's warning signs, climbed up cliffs and walked along the Celtic Sea. When the sun became low in the sky and I had to turn back, I took one last set of photographs or what was still ahead of me, what would probably never be explored by me. The last one was this.

Although the fort had closed an hour before, when I passed it on my long walk back the fish and chips food truck in front was still open with a crowd. I ended up with leftover time waiting for the bus. Should have tried those chips at least.

This was taken on the edge of an RV park just outside the entrance to Big Bend. A small desert graveyard scrappy, well-kept, and with a clear sense of humor. I remember the wind knocking my poor thin tripod down again and again, and the paranoia that the cacti and other scary insects I saw glimpses of during the day were going to find me. The quiet is intimidating.

There were a number of people at the park who we learned were regulars, coming out regularly for weeks or months at a time. To a place with not much beyond desert shrubs broken up by isolated large plateaued hills. But with a beauty of sheer scale and undisturbed peace. Perhaps on the outskirts of where people venture I was hanging out with those who wished to ultimately stay a little while longer. With the wind as a greeting. Or something like that but less mushy metaphorical given that it was windy just about everywhere else as well.

It's not my place to disturb the dead. And it's not like another drink will kill them.