This week, I am in Dallas, Texas for the National RWA Conference. If you’d like real-time updates on the writing conference, please check out the Manuscript Mavens blog, where all four of us will be posting updates all week, throughout the day, to share our thoughts, impressions, and ah-ha moments with you.

Also running on the MM blog is a Tooth Fairy comment contest–play to win! =)

In the meantime, I’ll be sharing a few of my Costa Rica photos with you here on this blog. (Link: my Costa Rica Thursday Thirteen post)

Today’s Costa Rica photo theme is: EXPLORING.

This is el Arbol de la Paz (tree of peace) on the route to one of the national parks. It’s super-tall, and 22.55 meters in circumference.


Here’s me out hiking the afore-mentioned national park. Aren’t those boots fetching?


This is a view of the rain forest canopy from La Fortuna. You can see a waterfall in the distance.


Costa Rica is full of single-car bridges like this one, made of wooden planks, which we had to share with a local man as we crossed in opposite directions.


Since it’s currently the rainy season in Costa Rica, you can see the storm clouds rolling in on the horizon. (If you squint really hard, you can even see the outline of Nicaragua in the background.)


That body of water behind me is Lago Arenal, the half-empty lake in charge of providing the surrounding area with electricity and drinking water. Boy do we need the rain–especially if the touristy beach towns get their way and pipe their coastal drinking water in from the already-depleted Lake Arenal.