Road Trips, New Art and Other Mayhem

Had a busy weekend this weekend. No major hikes yesterday, but took the foster dog for a short walk. Turns out its about a half a mile to the end of our block and back. I also got my new Merrell Boots and they are more comfortable than I had hoped, so I'm really enjoying wearing them around and walking in them.

Then last night we went to Austin, or actually Buda, TX to see my step daughter and have a birthday dinner with her. It was nice seeing her and her partner and the drive up was pleasant enough. Coming home was a little more harrowing as we went through a lot of construction which driving at night through narrow lanes with orange barrels everywhere is stressful. I wasn't even driving as driving gives me a lot of anxiety most of the time. So wife drove and we were both tense, but we made it safely.

Saturday we went on a nice hike and hit a different trail than usual. I think it was actually part of the same trail, but that trail is about five or six miles and we usually don't go near that far. So we found the Aqueduct which I learned was put in back in the 1700s and used to be a place people would dump bodies before parks and developments were there. Just cool seeing something that old. But also near the parks are old Spanish missions which the one closest to us was built in 1797. We plan to walk a trail near there soon so I can get some photos of it.

I grew up in Indiana and years ago would walk some trails there, not as intense as what I'm trying to do now, but nothing in Indiana was as old, cool or historic as all the stuff here in Texas. Especially in San Antonio.

So on Saturday's walk, we went 1.29 miles which is a record for us. We'd previously barely done a half a mile and almost a mile. I was rather shaky after because I forgot to eat ahead of time. This week I plan on getting one of those backpacks with a 3 Liter water bladder in it, a cooling function and pockets so I can put some protein bars so if I get shaky on a hike, I can have something to keep my strength up and stay hydrated.

Its like each time I go out I figure out something else I need in order to do this safely and effectively. I really enjoy it though and want to be able to go further and do cooler trails. As the summer gets hotter I'll need better clothing. Like not so many  black shirts and I ordered some shorts for walking as  I only have long athletic pants which are also black. I found some cool shorts at Wal-mart that were on clearance for 1.99 so going to try those out and with my big floppy hat and water backpack I think I'll be set.

Other than hiking adventures I've been experimenting with various AI apps to see which does the best photos. I used Grok, ChatGPT/Dall-e 3 and Midjourney. So far Midjourney is the handsdown best and more powerful one. GPT comes in second and Grok is not very consistent though does some cool ones. I don't remember which images I did where, but here is some of the art I've done the past few days.

I have more, but these are some of the best ones. I now have a print store open if you see anything you really like. I tried to keep the prices as affordable as possible. They are print on demand so they will ship directly do you from the printer.

Today is my wife's birthday so we are pretty much just resting and watching movies. I have some work stuff I need to catch up on, but tomorrow I hope we can go on a nice hike again or something. I'm rather shocked at how much I'm enjoying this. So that has been the past few days. Between all of that and spending much of Friday and Saturday night upgrading my site to a business level so I can take on email subscribers and embed a print store. It was more work than I thought but now I have it all up and running it seems to be working well. Now we'll see what happens as I'm getting a better picture in mind of what I want to do with this blog. But I'm always fluid and changing so this blog may very well too.

Thank you to everyone who has stuck with me so far. I appreciate all of you. Feel free to leave a comment on how your weekend went or any adventures you've been on recently. Until next time!