As you can tell by the title of this post, I’m a bit behind on posting about my park adventures, but that’s a good thing, right? Better to have too much to write than nothing at all?
A few weeks before 2015 ended, I noticed that the homepage for the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department mentioned First Day Hikes and I was intrigued. I’m not sure how long TPWD has coordinated this, but it was the first time I’d heard about the first day hikes. After digging around on the TPWD website, I learned that various state parks in Texas were offering special hiking and/or running events on New Year’s Day. #firstdayhike is part of a broader effort to encourage people to not only spend time outdoors, but to also support our Texas state parks.
We ultimately decided on visiting two state parks on New Year’s Day: Longhorn Cavern State Park and Colorado Bend State Park. The two are relatively close to each other so it made sense to hit them both up on the same day. Plus, LCSP has minimal hiking trails as it is, and the short trails were closed when we went, due to recent rains.
Longhorn Cavern offers a variety of cave tours throughout the year, from your regular run of the mill tour to a spooky paranormal tour (the cave is said to be haunted). The park only offered its regular cave tour on New Year’s Day since it was a weekday and holiday and it did not disappoint! Our tour guide was funny and knew the history of the park and the cave inside and out. We saw a single, tiny sleeping bat and a piece of gum that has been hanging in the cave for close to 80 years – no joke!
We learned about the immense and incredible work of the Civilian Conservation Corps* (CCC), which cleared out the cave and helped build many of our state parks, and also learned about the geology of the cave itself. LCSP is known to have hosted musicians for special performances in the cave and at the time of the tour, our guide told us he was working on booking Willie Nelson to do a special show some time soon. If they book Willie we’re definitely going back.
After the tour, we had a very, very salty (but delicious) pretzel with cheese in the park’s cafe before making the drive to Colorado Bend. We had planned to leave Austin earlier than we did in order to arrive at CBSP in time for their special guided hike, but time ultimately got away from us and we arrived after the tour group had already left. Although we didn’t make the hike down to Gorman Falls, we did the Tie Slide Trail, which took us to the river overlook and granted us a scenic view of the Colorado River below.
While I love and appreciate that I don’t have to worry about bugs as much during the winter, wintertime also means that you get less daylight hours for outdoor adventures. We had to wrap up our time at CBSP sooner than we wanted to because sunset was quickly approaching, it was cold, and we were without proper night hiking gear. Before we left the park, however, we made our way down to the park headquarters and were met with the most amazingly gorgeous view of the river. A couple of groups had pitched a tent by the river and in that moment, my partner and I looked at each other and said “We have to go camping here!!” Colorado Bend State Park: we shall return!
*For more info about the CCC, check out this page on the history of the CCC with respect to Texas state parks.
Longhorn Cavern State Park – Burnet, TX 78611
Entrance fee: $12-16 (access to cave is by tour only)
Colorado Bend State Park – Bend, TX 78624
Adult entrance fee: $5 daily // Kids under 12: free
