I met my friend Ellen at my work parking lot on Friday noon.
We moved most of my stuff into her 4-runner.
She was bringing 5 loads of firewood that took up a lot of space. I
dreaded telling her I had just read last week that you should always get local firewood
that way you don't introduce invasive species.
We had a lovely afternoon driving north on Hwy 183 through the
hill country of Texas. We didn't even make a wrong turn, of course GPS
helped. There are several stages of arrival at Colorado Bend SP.
You have to drive through private property and are admonished to stay in
your vehicle and not stop or picnic. We drove over a low water crossing,
up some hills and down others. Finally we are in the park grounds but
it's 5 miles to headquarters on a dirt road up and down hills. The final
hill down is a long winding steep one.
We got to the Headquarters and asked about the cave tour but it
was full. We also asked about the hiking tour to Gorman Falls which was
the one highlight I didn't want to miss. It was schedule for 2 pm
Saturday. We think we can make that with no trouble. He further
informs us that just last week you could walk across the river and not get the
soles of your feet wet but now it is at least 12 ft deep and flowing fairly
swiftly. I notice the kayaks for rent.
The park ranger told us we could have our pick of campsites, most
were still open. He directed us to the walk-in sites. We are used
to campgrounds where you have a small driveway to park your car and your tent
pad is 10 feet away. This time the campsites are up to 100 yards away
down at 15 foot slope! After viewing each campsite and reviewing its
merits we decide on a corner one. Close to the entry. Boy were we glad we
didn't bring as much gear as usual. Hauling all our gear down will only be
surpassed by hauling it back up! The only blessing there is there should
be less of it. But the view!
We set up camp in record time. Practice makes perfect, after
all this is our third camping trip together. Ellen likes using the
matchlight charcoal to start our fires. It is very fast and
dependable. We discover there is no cell service in the bottom of all
those hills. I however have Wi-Fi on TPWD private network. It never
occurred to me it would be the same password as at work.
Well, Ellen likes to call her hubby twice a day when we are
camping. But with no signal we hop in the car and drive up the
hill. We are distracted by several deer nonchalantly grazing just a few
yards away! We take pics, drive a little way and more deer! More
pics, continue to drive up out of the canyon while I watch the bars of
signal. After we climbed up that steep hill we finally had 2 bars of
signal. There is a convenient pull over spot that has quite the panoramic
views while she explains the situation to hubby, I'm taking more
pics. After all I had been told by several people to take pics. I
often live in the moment and forget. On our way back to camp a red fox
ran across the road, he was beautiful!
Back down to camp it's time to sit and relax and enjoy our
view. Then I notice, it’s the golden hour, not really an hour but a
few minutes when the sun is setting and everything takes on a golden
glow. Out come the phones for more pics! Now it's time to cook
supper. We decided to make it easy and have hot dogs. I checked the
weather channel ap on my phone and it said thunderstorms at 9:45. We had
seen and been thankful for bands of dark clouds when hauling our gear down.
We weren't worried we had withstood a little storm on our Guadalupe River State
park trip in June. We had our hot tea/coco and went to bed.
I kid you not, it started raining at 9:39! It started
raining in the tent soon after. At first we thought it was just a few
drips but soon learned it was steady drips and our sleeping bags were
soaked! We grabbed our clothes and headed for the car. We tried to
sleep in the very nice front seats that lay back. After several hours I
suggested we try the back with the seats down, at least we could stretch
out. Without any padding it was quite torturous and cold. We tried
to pad and cover ourselves with our clothes but you can guess that didn't
work. Finally when I got up to use the restroom I noticed the sky was
lighter in the east. I got back in the car and told Ellen I was calling
it morning and we could get up and start a fire and have our tea/coffee.
The long hard night was finally over.
As we drank a couple hot cups we watched the teenagers from A&M
Corpus Christi who had invaded the camp. They had more than 15 tents!
I finally started breakfast. Nothing is so wonderful as bacon frying on a
chilly misty morning. I guess I'm part Hobbit! After breakfast of
bacon egg & cheese tacos we hung our sleeping bags et al out to dry and
made another run up the hill to call Tim. At that point Ellen decide she
would like to fill the car with gas, driving up the hill all the time was
really burning it up. So we made our way to San Saba. It took the
better part of an hour! We stopped at the first gas station which was FULL
SERVICE! A really nice fellow pumped the gas and chatted with us about
the park. He invited us to the San Saba Pecan Festival. Apparently
San Saba is the pecan capital of the world. We instead went to the
grocery store and bought more water.
After making a couple of sandwiches for lunch and letting it
digest we looked at the time and it was ten till two! If we wanted to
make our tour we would have to bust ass and change to our hiking boots.
The meeting place for the hike was nearly to the front of the park. We
pulled in as the ranger was closing the gate. I told Ellen to flash her
lights. Then ranger saw us let us in and told us to follow her down to
the trail head. Another ranger gave a little talk about the previous landowner
and the delicate nature of travertine falls. The rain leaches calcium out
of the porous limestone and forms the falls, very much like stalactites in a
cave. After she finished and we were all milling around 3 other park
rangers pulled up with some more hikers who had just finished the cave tour,
man were they muddy, all but one of the rangers. That gave us second
thoughts about the cave tour, not to mention they said part of it was only 18
in high and you had to slide down.
Anyway, our hike to the Gorman falls was somewhere between hiking
and climbing. Luckily at the steepest part the park had installed hand
rails. What a sight to behold. Even Ellen said it was worth the
non-sleeping night in the car. We took lots of pics. Chatting with
some of the rangers on the way back I confessed to being a TPWD employee also.
When we got back to camp we laid down on our mattresses that were
warm and dry in the sun and nearly went to sleep. We put everything back
in the tent and zipped it up hoping to keep some of the sunny warmth knowing it
would be even colder that night with the clear blue skies. We dined on
steak, sauteed mushrooms and only burned on the outside baked potatoes.
It was pretty good except the usually tender New York strip steaks were rather
chewy. So there were
lots of partially chewed pieces and gristle to take home to the pups.
As we sat around the fire we decided our camping trips needed to
be 4 days instead of three so we could do more things. We would have
loved to kayak and hike more but time slips away. We also decided our
next trip would be in March for Ellen's birthday. We are planning to go
to Pace Bend Park, a Travis county park on Lake Travis. They have and
entire series of Hobbit/Lord of the Rings geocaches. I've been wanting to
show her about geocaching.
We slept well that night, it was cold but we were prepared and
were snug in our dry bags. The next morning we skipped our usual hot
breakfast for blueberry muffins and granola bars. We were packed up and
on the road before noon.
