Third Day Of Spring Thunderous Storm Arrives In Wichita Falls As Predicted

Arriving right on time, as scheduled by the National Weather Service. An epic thunderstorm, dropping a downpour of rain, hail and lightning strikes. With a lot of loud booming.

The view you see here is what I saw upon opening my front door. Impossible to get to ground level without getting drenched and pummeled with hail pellets.

Right now the storm seems to be abating as quickly as it arrived. 

If I make it to ground level I don't know if currently a moat is making it difficult to get to my means of motorized motion.

I shall soon see. Maybe...

Remembering Driving Chandler Boulevard In Arizona

Melancholy Microsoft OneDrive Memories from the Day, in my email this morning. This memory is from March. I do not remember what day in March. But, I do remember the year.

2019.

So much has happened since March of 2019. Covid. Becoming an orphan, Sister Jackie, who is driving mom's vehicle, with me in the backseat, and mom riding shotgun, is now a grandma, heading north, on Chandler Boulevard (I think) in the bustling Arizona town of Chandler.

Grandma Jackie's grandson Cade, is the newest member of the family.

Baby Cade is now around a half year old, I think.

From July of 2017 and July of 2019 I visited Arizona multiple times. Usually for a month. Doing a lot of driving, on Arizona's excellent smooth roads.

Every time I'd return to Texas, and get back in my Texas driver's seat, I was jarred, thinking something was wrong with the vehicle, due to the ultra-bumpy ride. Then I remember, I am back in Texas, where the roads are in bad shape in places. Such as the entry to the freeway one comes to when leaving the Wichita Falls airport.

I have found most Texas highways of the state highway sort, to be roads in real good condition. The roads in some Texas towns, such as Fort Worth and Wichita Falls, not so much.

Wichita Falls still has some city streets which are made of brick. Driving over a brick road is extremely bumpy...

Perplexing Survey Experience With Walmart

Perplexing email this morning from Walmart. The email asks that I confirm I visited the Greenbriar Road Walmart on March 12, 2024 to begin a survey about my Walmart shopping experience to get a chance to win a $1,000 gift card.

I never win anything, ever, that I can remember, so I clicked to Begin Survey.

After answering several questions that seemed totally easy to answer, the survey suddenly took a perplexing turn which I can not figure out.

The survey mentioned several items I bought that day and asked me to rank them.

How does Walmart know what I bought that day and thus able to link that information to my email address?

The only identifying element is I do use a debit card. And that debit card does have my name on it. 

But how could that debit card lead Walmart to my email address?

If this survey was from Amazon it would not be at all perplexing. Amazon knows my email address, as it is linked to my Amazon account.

I have no Walmart account. 

Even if I did have a Walmart account that still would not explain how Walmart linked my purchases that day, to me, and my email address.

There likely is a simple explanation which I am too simple to figure out...

Last Week Of Winter Wichita Bluff Nature Area Nature Communing

On this third Monday of the 2024 version of March, it was back to the Wichita Bluff Nature Area I ventured today, for some hilly nature communing.

As you can see the sky is a bright clear blue, except some white exhaust spewed from a Sheppard Air Force Base jet.

The temperature was in the mid 50s zone, not quite back to chilly winter-like, but nowhere near being in the HOT summer-like zone of the past couple weeks.

Spring is scheduled to arrive later this week.

I hiked to the highest point on the bluffs, looking east at the stunning skyline of beautiful downtown Wichita Falls on the horizon.

It has been several months since I went hiking the bluffs. It was quite invigorating. The distance to the Wichita Bluff Nature Area, from my abode, is the furthest distance of any of my local hiking destinations.

Tomorrow, weather permitting, methinks I shall be back at Sikes Lake. I was there yesterday. Several goose spooking coyotes have been installed around the lake...

Microsoft OneDrive Memory Remembering Biking Lover's Leap In Waco

Another Microsoft OneDrive Memory from this Day that I remember, sort of.

I know that is me looking at the lens of my antique, long gone, Casio digital camera, with its taking a selfie feature, well before such became a common thing.

And that is my long gone Schwinn Moab mountain bike behind me. That bike died five bikes ago, with the aluminum frame braking whilst I was having a fine time on the Horseshoe Trail in Grapevine.

I am fairly certain, in this photo, my bike and I are in Cameron Park in Waco. That park has some of the best mountain trails I have pedaled on. The trails have names and markers indicating their difficulty level. If I remember correctly, and sometimes I do, one diamond meant easy trail, two diamonds meant less easy, on up to five diamonds, which indicated difficult, for expert riders only.

I remember finding the one and two diamond trails treacherous enough for me. I did not attempt any of the three, four or five diamond trails.

There is a cliff in Cameron Park, called Lover's Leap. The leap is into the Brazos River, far below. If I remember correctly one of the five diamond trails took off from Lover's Leap...

Lovely Linda Lou Takes Us To Daffodils & Mount Rainier

 A couple days ago I posted a blog post titled Seeing Real Islands From Summit Of Washington's Mount Erie in which I made mention of the fact that a time or two I had been surprised to see Mount Rainier, to the south, from the Skagit Flats.

And then yesterday, the Skagit Valley's lovely Linda Lou, text messaged me the photo you see above.

The Skagit Flats ablaze with the yellow of thousands of daffodils, with the Mount Rainier volcano hovering in the distance.

I surely do miss living in a zone of multiple scenic wonders...

Seeing Mount Baker Takes Me To Fir Island & Fort Worth's Imaginary Panther Island

I never tire of seeing photos from my old home zone, especially photos of Mount Baker, a volcano I used to be able to see from my living room windows in Mount Vernon.

I saw the instance you see here, this morning, on Facebook. The view is either from some location on the Skagit Flats, or from Fir Island.

Fir Island is a real island, not an imaginary island, such as one day the town of Fort Worth, Texas hopes to see.

Fort Worth's imaginary island will be claiming to be such after a cement lined ditch is dug, with Trinity River water diverted into that ditch.

Ironically, Fir Island also is created by being surrounded by river water. At Fir Island the Skagit River splits into two forks, the North and South Forks of the Skagit River.

Wikipedia has an article about Fir Island. The article makes mention of the worst natural disaster I have witnessed up close. In the early 1990s a Pineapple Express brought extreme flooding to Western Washington.

The flooding was so extreme that the flood level was predicted to inundate downtown Mount Vernon. So, hundreds of people helped build a sandbag wall to try and hold back the flood. I was watching the 11 o'clock news when it went live to Mount Vernon, showing the feverish activity, filling sandbags, including sailors from the Navy base on Whidbey Island.

By midnight I was in downtown Mount Vernon, helping to build the sandbag wall. The wall was complete around 3 in the morning.

The flood crest was expected to hit Mount Vernon around 11 in the morning. At that point of time I joined the huge crowd, waiting on high ground for the crest to happen. You could see the river was about to go over the sandbag wall, when, suddenly, the river level dropped a couple feet.

No one knew what had happened. Soon, there were sirens blaring. At one point I remember seeing a helicopter with a cow strapped in below it. I do not remember how long it was til we learned the dike at Fir Island had failed, flooding the island.

There is currently no Wikipedia about Fort Worth's imaginary Panther Island. I doubt there ever will be...

Hiking The Lucy Park Jungle With Nephew Jason In Hawaii

With the National Weather Service issuing a dire warning about possible extreme downpours, flash flooding, strong wind, hail, thunderstorms and possible tornadoes it was to Lucy Park I ventured today, under a semi-cloudy sky, for some high-speed endorphin acquisition, hiking the Lucy Park backwoods jungle.

You can see via the photo documentation that the Lucy Park backwoods jungle is in jungle restoration mode, with the ground solidly green, and with leaves slowly returning to the trees.

Hot today, in the 80s, but saw no slithering reptiles. Not even a lizard.

Meanwhile, in tropical Hawaii.

Email from my Favorite Nephew Jason, this morning, currently way closer to the equator than his regular location in Washington

I do not believe Spencer Jack is with his dad, this time, in Honolulu. Spencer Jack's dad confirmed what Spencer Jack's grandma told me a couple days ago, that being that Spencer Jack turned 17 about a week ago.

Seems like only yesterday I met Spencer Jack for the first time. In August of 2008, at Bay View State Park, in Skagit County, in Washington. Spencer was around two years old at that point in time.

I next saw Spencer Jack in March of 2012, in Arizona. Spencer was around six years old at that point in time.

My most recent Spencer Jack sighting was in August of 2017, at Birch Bay, slightly south of the border with Canada. Spencer was around 12 at that point in time.

The older I get the faster times seems to fly by. I do not like it, not at all...

Lake Wichita Park's Mount Wichita New Parking Lot Finally Open For Business

At my old age it does not take much to please me. Way back before Thanksgiving of 2023 a paving project began in Lake Wichita Park, installing a new entry road and parking lot.

The project was estimated to take around five weeks to complete.

And now, several months later than five weeks, the project is complete, and the new parking lot is open, giving close access to the towering monolith known as Mount Wichita.

I was at this location just two days ago, and found the entry still blocked, so, it was pleasing to return today to find the parking lot open, with a lot of others also enjoying finding the parking lot open.

I know a new parking lot seems like no big deal. But, this location has been annoying since I first discovered it soon upon moving to Wichita Falls. Prior to its current brand new condition, the road and parking lot was a pothole infested, dirty, dusty, rocky mess, requiring going real slow and carefully navigating around the worst of the potholes.

Extremely windy today, with the temperature in the 80s. I had a mighty fine long walk, acquiring oodles of endorphins via the aerobic stimulation...

Seeing Real Islands From Summit Of Washington's Mount Erie

Saw that which you see here, yesterday, on Facebook. The view from the summit of Mount Erie, looking south. Mount Erie is public park land owned and managed by the city of Anacortes.

Mount Erie is on an island. Fidalgo Island to be precise. 

Seeing this photo put me in mind of a town in Texas called Fort Worth. Fort Worth has been trying real hard to have itself an island, where no body of island-providing water exists.

This attempt to make Fort Worth, what would amount to being an imaginary island, has been going on for over two decades.

During those over two decades the main progress towards having that imaginary island has been the building of three simple little freeway overpass type bridges, built over an astonishing seven-year time span, over dry land, intending, eventually, hopefully, to connect Fort Worth's mainland to that imaginary island.

I have long opined that apparently most people in Fort Worth have zero clue as to what an island is. Yes, it is a chunk of land, surrounded by water, but an island is not a chunk of land, rendered to be an island, due to digging a cement-lined ditch and diverting river water into that ditch.

In the above photo you see several real islands, in addition to the one the people in the photo are standing on. They are looking down on Lake Campbell, with that lake having an actual island at its center.

That island on Lake Campbell is an island on an island. 

Looking south from the top of Mount Erie ones sees several other islands. Those islands are in Puget Sound, located to the east of Deception Pass. Deception Pass is to the right of the photo, with that big chunk of land towards the upper right being Whidbey Island. That being another actual real island. A really big actual real island.

Wikipedia has an article about Mount Erie, which I found interesting. A blurb from that article...

On a clear day, Mount Baker, about 43 miles (69 km) to the northeast, and Mount Rainier, about 117 miles (188 km) to the southeast, can be seen from the summit.

I have been at the summit of Mount Erie countless times. I do not recollect seeing Mount Rainier and Mount Baker from the summit. I likely do no recollect seeing those two volcanoes, from that vantage point, because it was not unusual to see those two volcanoes from various Washington vantage points.

The one sighting of Mount Rainier that I do remember as unusual was seeing that volcano whilst on the Skagit Flats, with the mountain being a distant white pimple on the horizon.

If you ever get to travel to Washington, and to Fidalgo Island, you'll want to visit Anacortes and the famous Fidalgo Drive-In, operated by my nephew Jason and his first born, Spencer Jack. After having a cheeseburger and blackberry milkshake, make your way to Mount Erie. It is a fun twist and turning drive to the summit, where you'll find a maze of trails and bridges across chasms. 

Mount Erie was one of my favorite go to places when I lived in the neighborhood...