Well readers, today’s links are all the same: albums from my recent vacation (fear not, we consolidated it down to 15-20 pictures per album)! What does this have to do with business, you ask? PLENTY, as you’ll see in a few upcoming posts. On a broad note, the concept of sharpening the axe is a perfect segue between my talk of business and my talk of vacation. That, and I know you’re all dying to see what I’ve been up to while I’ve been absent from the blog 🙂 So, without further adieu:

Pedernales Falls State Park: Our first stop was in Pedernales Falls, near Austin, TX. We decided to camp in the back country for 3 nights, so we loaded up our packs and hiked in 2.5 miles to pitch our tent. We went on a decent hike around the park and read books by the river. My husband was insistent on a hair-flinging picture in the river, so that was fun practice using the high-speed continuous mode for me!

Natural Bridge Caverns: We stopped at Natural Bridge Caverns en route to San Antonio. I’d been there when I was really young, but man, I was impressed at the caverns! My husband took some AMAZING pictures underground (fellow photography nerds will understand the difficulty in shooting in low/no light, sans tripod!). Natural Bridge is a living cavern, which means that water is still flowing to create the rock formations in the caves. I highly recommend the Discovery Tour if you’re ever in the area… but avoid the touristy “mining” nonsense that seeks to sell an over-priced bag of dirt in hopes of retrieving some “precious” rocks. It made me cringe, even as a marketer!

San Antonio: We stayed for 2 nights in San Antonio, at a place we found on Air BnB, which I also highly recommend if you haven’t used the site before. We strolled along the Riverwalk, ate fancy steak at Ruth’s Chris, and generally enjoyed some “civilized” fun between our camping adventures.

Seminole Canyon: We stayed for one “layover” night in Seminole Canyon to break up the laborious drive to Big Bend, and it was… interesting! It was really windy when we arrived, and, being a weekday, there was literally one other person in the entire park! It was a flat desert for miles, so I took some cool shots of the sunset and our tent. We went on a tour of the canyon in the morning, and learned about the wall paintings by indigenous people from 5,000 years ago!

Big Bend National Park: This place is HUGE! We stayed in the Chisos Basin area of the park, and we opted to car camp vs. backpack. Big Bend is gorgeous, with mountains and cool cactus plants all over. We saw rabbits, bears, lizards, deer, and a road runner during our trip. Our most epic hike of the trip was up the South Rim Trail, which let us climb about 2,000 ft., and hike 14 miles round-trip. We had a very scenic lunch on top of a mountain 🙂

We haven’t edited and posted the photos from El Paso, where our mutual college friend held her wedding. Her wedding was actually the impetus for the trip, and we shot quite a few photos of the wedding itself. I’ll be posting those separately over the next few weeks (or, you can just check back on the SmugMug site periodically until they post, if you’re just chomping at the bit!).

We had an amazing trip, and we took a TON of pictures with the Canon 60D, Tamron 18-270mm f/3.5-6.3 ll, and Canon 50mm f/1.8 ll. My husband is a pretty accomplished photographer (remember those insane cave photos above?), and I’m learning, slowly but surely! If you have specific questions about the trip, let me know in the comments or Twitter.