Pedernales Falls State Park: Returning at long last

Apr 14 2014

 Question. If you’re retired and live on 14 acres of completely private, wooded, rolling land where every day is birdsongs and great views across the pond, can you really call getting away taking a vacation??

I don’t know, but I’m doing it. It feels kind of decadent, almost selfish, but at the same time it’s been 10 months since I last had the van out and that’s way too long. My excuse is that it’s been a busy year, so busy I had to postpone one long trip and had weather (boy it was a rough winter!) nix another shorter one the day I was to leave. But this evening I’m sitting in a campsite in Pedernales Falls State Park.

https://www.tpwd.state.tx.us/state-parks/pedernales-falls

 

Pedernales Falls isn’t all that far from Austin and only a little farther from San Antonio, but it has a nice campground and great trail system. Like several of the Texas State Parks, this one used to be a ranch that was sold or donated to the state. Its claim to fame is the Pedernales River which actually drops over some limestone ledges at the north end of the park forming the ‘falls’.

It was a wet and windy drive over here. The wind was forecast and expected but I had hoped to miss the wet as the front causing it was supposed to go through overnight. As often happens around here the front slowed down and if I waited around for it to go on by I would end up working my way through Austin late enough to catch some heavy traffic, so I left after a late breakfast and punched through the rain until I came out on the other side. It was 70 degrees and cloudy when we got up this morning and it was 40 degrees and sunny after I cleared the rain. A serious late season cold front!

But the next few days, sitting there under the trailing high were forecast to be just about perfect. Low 40’s overnight, 70’s during the day. A bit of a change from the last time I tried to get over here a few weeks ago when the hilly roads were all closed down due to a nice slick coating of ice.

 

Tonight I’m backed into one of the nice, widely spaced, well wooded camp sites where I spent what was left of the afternoon walking the campground and catching up on some of my two month backlog of magazines.

Tomorrow I go hiking