On The Trail // Aransas National Wildlife Refuge

I'm back from vacation!  In case you didn't know, Matthew and I spent all of last week in Rockport, Texas visiting family, going for hikes, and spending so much time in the sun that I got the worst sun burn of my life...which wasn't so great...but I had a blast!



One of my favorite days was spent hiking through parts of the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge.  A few of the trails were impassable after a point due to fallen trees and high waters, but the parts we did get to hike through were really nice...minus the massive cloud of mosquito's that trailed us the whole time!  They were seriously crazy that day.



We saw a TON of Six-Lined Racerunners, which were way too fast for me to ever get a photo of, a few deer, the cute little Millipede above, and soooo many butterflies and dragonflies :)  We saw a few other creatures, but I'll be sharing them in a separate post scheduled for early next week!

So I mentioned that I got the worst sunburn of my life while on our trip.  My legs were much better in this photo since they had been healing for a couple of days, but the day after this I ended up getting second degree burns (raised blisters) on my right shoulder.  They're still there and they look way too gross for me to want to share photos on here.  Next time I'm wearing long sleeves and sitting under an umbrella while on the beach.  The sunshine hates my skin.

Matthew took charge of my camera for a bit and got a shot of this gorgeous butterfly!  I don't know how he got it to sit still long enough, but I'm so glad he did.  We saw so many of these, and I just wasn't able to find one that was sitting still for a photo.

The last photo was one of my favorites.  There were pretty patches of flowers all along the roadside while we were driving to different trails throughout the refuge, and when Matthew spotted these with the ocean in the background, I just couldn't pass it up and I love how it turned out :)