I had a fantastic weekend

I had a fantastic weekend that started Friday night with a trip down to Galveston to see Stomp. I’d been wanting to see the show for a while, and it didn’t disappoint. For the rest of the weekend, I was drumming on things and stomping my feet. (And for the rest of the weekend, I was harassed by Carter for going to see Stomp instead of going to the matchup of two 300-game winners, Clemens and Maddux.)
Saturday morning I was up bright and early to pick up Paul, Sonia, Debbie and Jason and head past Austin to Flat Creek Crossing, a ranch that shares a fence line with Pedernales Falls State Park. I’d been wanting to visit that particular park for a while, and it didn’t disappoint.
We arrived at the ranch about 3:00 Saturday afternoon after the drive from Houston with many stops along the way. The ranch owner immediately loaded us into his huge SUV and drove at breakneck speeds along the gravel roads to show us the cabin we could have for the night. Cabin turned out to be cabins, plural, and cabins turned out to be one actual cabin and one large lodge, complete with fireplace, kitchen, toilet with lizard in the bowl, dinner bell, and a dead antlered animal hanging on the wall. Oh, and a tricycle for Sonia. Oh, and air conditioning and heating. And not just a window unit, but central air. Yeah, this was quite a bit more posh than we’d been expecting.
It was awesome!!
We dropped our stuff in the lodge, changed clothes, and hiked about a mile and a half down to Flat Creek. Contrary to popular belief, Texas does in fact have some scenic areas, and Hill Country is one of them. We went swimming in the creek for a while; the water was chilly at first but not bad at all once you got in. We wandered up the creek for a bit before turning around and heading back to our little beach in the sun.
From there, we walked back up to the top of the canyon through an artificial cave near some cool canyon walls. We drove into Johnson City to get food for dinner, then returned to make hobo dinners (which turned out decently, but they took forever and the potatoes didn’t get entirely cooked) and s’mores. We would’ve built a campfire outside, but we weren’t allowed too. Ah well, we were still rocking out in our lodge.
We awoke bright and early (ok, at least it was bright) Sunday morning and drove next door to the state park to see Pedernales Falls! I’d seen pictures before, but from the photos the falls looked a lot smaller. In actuality, they’re big (if not a large drop) and very pretty. We ran around on the rocks and basked in the lovely sunshine. We climbed farther up the falls where there were pools, another small waterfall, and cool eroded rock. The area is very prone to flash flooding, and all the rock was very smooth. Debbie, Jason and I headed back down to the main part of the falls looking for Paul and Sonia, and then wandered down to the bottom of the falls where we found ourselves looking back up.
We found Paul and Sonia back up in the parking lot, where my Xterra was looking very rugged and cool. Jason, Paul and Sonia went down to the river to swim again, while Debbie and I decided to mountain bike for a while. Our planned hour-long trip turned into two hours, but it was very fun. On the map there was a “Trammel Crossing” which we thought meant, you know, a bridge across the river. Turns out there was no bridge, so we got to take off our shoes and wade across with our bikes on our shoulders. VERY FUN. Seeing us tackling the river made other people want to do it too.
After biking, we headed home to Houston with a stop at the Outback Steakhouse in Katy. Mmm. Fun was had by all, and attention other friend o’ mine who like camping — we really need to go back to this ranch sometime.
And all the photos are in the gallery, of course.