Family Camping Trip - Colorado Bend State Park

We've all needed to breathe a little fresh air around here - especially considering North Texas failed to enforce pollution regulations when it had high levels of air pollution detected - gack!

 Check out Lincoln breathing in the "clean" Texas country air on our way south to camping a few weekends ago. Minneapolis and St. Paul are bustling big cities but with all the parks, lakes, and green spaces you don't always realize you are in a big city. Dallas on the other hand is a city of concrete, highways, and shopping. This sounds bad and it DOES have lots of funky smaller neighborhoods with small businesses booming and great green spaces and patios in a park, just not as much as dear ol' Minneapolis. We've been craving SPACE. Not just green space but air space and our OWN space. We don't really have our own backyard just one we share with the other tenants in our complex. From what we've seen around town though that the little park area we do have is generous compared to others. Most of the really nice neighborhoods don't even have big yards and the homes are just smushed in right next to each other. 

All in all we were craving some breathing room and decided to head down to "hill country." They call it hill country because it is greener, lusher, and hillier than most of the rest of the state and home to most of the Texas State Parks. You can see where it is on the map below. It is mainly the area West of both Austin and San Antonio. The drive from Dallas took about 3 1/2 hours to our campground at Colorado Bend State Park.  

As we drove we saw tons of cattle ranches along the curving country roads. We also stopped in a small town along the way and got an ice-cream cone at the local Dairy Queen as a quick refresher from the heat. This was interesting in itself because, I kid you not, these were some of the items on the menu:

- Catfish Fingers

- Frito Burger (with Frito chips on top of the burger)

- The Dude (Chicken Fried Steak Sandwich) 

Also, as I waited in line to order our small Blizzard, I realized that I would be the only one paying with a credit card. Everyone paid in cash and counted out coins that were jangling in their pockets for the exact amount of their order.  I know this shouldn't be so surprising but it made me realize how I rarely pay with cash....ever, and this town obviously did this all the time. Honey, we aren't in Dallas anymore. 

We continued on our way and finally made it the campsite after a TEN MILE gravel road that I would more accurately call a "rock road" since the smallest gravel was about the size of your fist. Makes for a bumpy entrance to the park for sure. 

We hiked one mile to our campsite (pictured below) and had a great view of the Colorado River flowing below. It was a beautiful site and a beautiful day! 

We had heard of a waterfall that was flowing a few miles up the trails so we got settled then set off to hike to it. We considered letting Lincoln off his leash and use the e-collar but with the risk of poisonous snakes and other things in the brush we decided against it. This was a good choice considering the wild life we saw on this hike!

The Colorado River was very low due to a sever draught across the state. 

Happy Spring! Blooming cacti!

As we got closer to the waterfall it got a bit rockier and more like a desert. 

We finally made it to the falls and Lincoln got to cool off in the water! He was so happy about it after 2 hours of hiking in 90 degree heat! 

Here are the "famous" falls. It was more like a trickle than the brochure let it on to be...but we made it!

I don't have any pictures but on our hike we saw probably 8-10 different ARMADILLOS. I'm not kidding they are the funniest creatures and Lincoln couldn't believe his eyes. He wanted to catch one so bad. 

Back at the campsite we started making dinner and relaxing with a glass of wine. We were at the "primitive" campsites but still wished they had a fire pit, picnic table, or other place to sit down to eat a meal. We ended up sitting on sleeping bag sacks and our little cooler. 

The sunset was pretty on the rocks! This made me think of our float trip for my mom's 60th birthday in Utah! 

All in all I think Lincoln LOVED camping. He loved that there were sticks everywhere, he could play in the water, and he could just watch birds and chase ants at the campsite. 

We were just there one night but it was such a beautiful night. The temperature didn't fall much when the sun set so we took off the rain fly to let more breezes through and lied looking through the mesh of the top of the tent. The moon was full and we were underneath that huge tree. It was just beautiful! Lincoln didn't sleep a wink the whole night. He sat upright just looking out the tent and protecting us. A couple times he would bark and growl at hearing something which is super rare for him. We're pretty sure he scared away a few raccoons from our food. Such a good pup!