Big Bend (Part Two): Planning and Park Life

This was our longest continuous camping trip in the Tourtoise and Hare since we’ve had them both. We did a much longer (two week) trip at Inks Lake for the 2024 total solar eclipse, but we had work and school during it, so we weren’t at the campground the whole time. And one of our very first trips in the Tourtoise was to RGV for 10 days. But that was without the Hare and surrounded by tons of amenities.

Overall, the trip and camping were easy. In his last post, Aneel mentioned the stress and concern about EV range between charging stations on one of our driving stretches, but really everything else about the trip was nice and relaxing.

Really the only difference in terms of prep/planning that seemed different was our tiny fridge space and length of stay. That fridge really only has easy capacity for 3-4 days. I can always default to meals that don’t rely on fridge food, but it does cut out options we usually have.

My first plan was just to do a grocery run to restock in the middle of the trip. After a little research, that seemed less than optimal because whoa are there very few stores within 1-2 hours of Terlingua and Big Bend. They have a grocery store… which was pretty good for your typical American basic staples. But as a vegetarian who wants protein, I guessed they wouldn’t have any veggie patties, tofu, etc.

If we planned on mostly eating out on drive days (2 there, 2 back), then that meant 5 days on the trip. I prioritized the harder to find items and made a short little list of things that I thought we could get anywhere (like their grocery store). So, I left those to buy later or brought only a small quantity of. It worked great. No problems at all. I wasn’t very worried and we didn’t need to fall back on my second plan, but it was a good reminder that I’ve gotten into a very useful routine of meal prepping and cooking during camping.

Amusingly, the slight challenge we actually faced was finding food on the road. This slice of Texas is just more barren than I am used to. Not many towns off the highway. The towns that are there are mostly tiny. We had a good lunch in Alpine on the way there. Grabbed donuts one morning. And just ate snacks we had on hand for another meal.

The Park Itself

Big Bend was just stunning. It was a pretty perfect time of year to go. The weather was great—chilly late at night and in the morning but warm and sunny on hikes without getting too hot. It was apparently a very crowded time of year (Thanksgiving), but it really only seemed busy a couple of times. For a fair number of the hikes we saw people occasionally but not regularly.

The only downside to the time of year is it wasn’t peak animal time. Spring birds had migrated away but hadn’t really picked up the winter birds. Even the residents seemed few and far  between. We saw some good highlights of mammals—black-tailed jackrabbit, bighorn sheep, mule deer, coyote. But there were a few common ones we didn’t—mainly peccary and gray foxes and then some less common to see ones that we also didn’t see—black bear, mountain lions, bobcats, ringtails, badgers.

Although the birds weren’t numerous… I did get some new ones to add to my life list!

• Scaled Quail
• Black Phoebe
• Brewer’s Blackbird (okay to be fair, I know I’ve seen them before but apparently hadn’t recorded them)
• White-throated Swift
• Mexican Jay
• Phainopepla

And the other birds I’d hoped to see (that would have been new or special to me) were off season or very rare in the park.

Our Hikes

We did about 50 miles of hiking in the 5 days we were there. I feel like maybe I’m missing one of them, but this is my list…

• Window Trail
• Balanced Rock
• South Rim
• Sam Nail Ranch
• Boquillas Canyon Trail
• Upper Burro Mesa Pouroff
• Lower Burro Mesa Pouroff
• Santa Elena Canyon
• Rio Grande Village Nature Trail

South Rim was the big challenge. It was just long. Around 13 miles of hiking. None of it particularly challenging, but I was really ready to be done walking by about mile 11. Such gorgeous views though. Really breathtaking at the lookout and for quite a while even after that. We also had a very friendly Mexican Jay encounter at a snack spot. They really wanted our pistachios.

Surprisingly, upper and lower burro mesa pouroff were some of the ones I enjoyed the most. Both pretty short, but fun scenery and great scrambling as part of them.

We only did Sam Nail Ranch for the birds, and we did it twice. And good thing we did because we had an awesome Phainopepla spotting there!

Boquillas Canyon Trail was also super fun… Window was beautiful forest. Balanced Rock was impressive. Truly… there wasn’t a bad hike out of the bunch. The only one I wouldn’t necessarily recommend is the Rio Grande Village Nature Trail.

Random Tidbits

• It’s SO nice to set up your camping space for multiple days. Just a relief to set it up and settle in knowing you don’t have to pack it all up again 1-2 days later. Luxury.
• Switching off driving between the two of us more made the drive go by much faster.
• I’d recommend staying at Big Bend Station for full hookup. It was so close to one of the main park entrances. Although it didn’t particularly have amazing vistas or scenery – it was handy. A great distance from stores, restaurants, and the park itself.
• The detours (on the way there and back) to Marfa were highlights on the trip as well.
• There is a SUPER cute quilt store in Terlingua that you MUST go to if you are there.

The most eventful part of this trip happened on the way to Choke Canyon. We didn’t have the most auspicious of starts. We hadn’t remembered to charge the Hare to full the night before, so we were charging during the day. Then Aneel had to run an errand right before we were set to leave. It was an odd start, we were running a little later than expected, and I was a bit frazzled.

This is why I was not particularly surprised when maybe 30 minutes away from San Antonio, our charging midway point, I asked Aneel “Did you pack the charging cable?” He wasn’t sure and I knew I hadn’t, but we were far enough away from home that we decided to check when we got to the chargers. Sure enough, no cable. It didn’t matter at the chargers, but we very much needed to charge at Choke Canyon to be able to leave and get to the closest set of chargers on our way home.

Aneel had the brilliant idea to buy one in San Antonio, if we could find one. So, as we were charging, we both started searching online. Home Depot? Lowes? AutoZone? After a decent amount of online hunting, we did find one in stock nearby at Best Buy. Instead of a silly mistake on our parts (readers: it was a silly mistake on our parts), we decided that this was just smart thinking. This means we can always have one cable at home and one in the Rivian. At all times. For emergencies.

Because we left late and had a charging adventure, we arrived at Choke Canyon later than expected and had to park after dark. Backing up the Hare and Tourtoise in the dark at a camp site that I’ve never been to? Not my favorite thing. But we managed. It was an easy parking arrangement anyway, I just literally couldn’t see where the dang spot was!

The park is a little rugged, quiet, and peaceful. The campsites are pretty big, but there isn’t a ton of tree coverage… so you can definitely see your neighbors. At one point, our camp site would have been lakeside, but that side of the lake has definitely dried up. We still had easy access to lake side, with a little outdoor alley right behind the camp loop. We had a nice hang lake side, bird watching and relaxing. And we did what little hiking there was. I will say… I wish there was more hiking.

They have a super cute, very small park store that sells live bait, camping must haves, and a small option of Choke Canyon State Park memorabilia. I had to pick up oil (because I forgot mine—oops). Apparently they do a weekend BBQ (not for me and my veghead ways), and they were just super nice.

Wildlife was abundant. Lakeside, we saw Northern Shovelers, Black-bellied Whistling Ducks, Canvasbacks (a first for me), Long-Billed Dowitcher, Common Gallinule, American Coots, Black-necked Stilts, White-faced Ibises, Roseate Spoonbills and more. Some of the more uncommon non-water/shore birds we saw included Curve-billed Thrasher, Bullock’s Oriole, Brown-crested Flycatcher, Ladder-backed Woodpecker, Golden-fronted Woodpecker, and Great Kiskadees.

But the best bird spotting for me was the Vermillion Flycatcher!!!! It’s been on my must-see list for a long time. I’m honestly surprised I haven’t seen one before now. It’s not common, but I’ve been to plenty of places where they live. At the park, we got a really good view of one hunting. They’re such pretty birds.

Probably the most amusing wildlife spotting was the javelina who just wandered through camp. It was after dinner, and we were just lounging… and here comes a javelina with no worries in the world just snorfling through. It came within just a few yards of us. We just stayed still and pretended to ignore it (while staring and taking pictures). It was clearly at home and just looking for any tasty plants and flowers nearby (or maybe potato chips and smores).

The wildlife and quiet at Choke Canyon was fabulous… but overall I’m not sure if I’d go out of my way to go back. Not enough hikes. But if we were nearby, it’d be a great stop over especially during another season (maybe autumn?) to see what wildlife was around then.

https://tourtoise.quest/2024/08/26/choke-canyon-state-park-review/

#Charging #TexasStatePark

Welcome back! In part one of this April 2024 series, I talked about the amazing superbloom that was happening throughout the park and showed the flowers, animals, and hikes that Aneel and I saw during our two weeks in Inks Lake. Now I’m back (better late than never) to talk about the total eclipse itself.

Aneel and I had been talking about and looking forward to this total eclipse so close to home for a few years. Although we’d already experienced one total eclipse before (August 2017 in St. Louis), we were very excited to be able to see another from our own back yard… back State Park? Then starting a couple of weeks before the eclipse, everyone started to get nervous. So many people had plans and had been looking forward to it, and literally… it was THE topic of conversation for at least a week because the weather looked like it was not going to cooperate at all. Not just cloudy weather was predicted, but rains and potential big storms. I wasn’t too nervous until just a couple of days beforehand because weather is too unpredictable to really forecast early, right?

The forecast did look slightly better getting closer to the big day, but nearly full cloud coverage was still predicted. Aneel and I woke up that morning and talked about our options. Like the partial eclipse in 2023, should we drive to a close-ish location with less cloud coverage? No, we decided to hope for the best and comforted ourselves that if we missed it, we’d already had a great total eclipse experience in 2017.

That morning and afternoon—the park was very full. Everyone had their chairs pulled out, their glasses ready. I worked that morning, but we started our watch at noon.

The hour and change leading up to the eclipse is an interesting experience. I would look up with glasses on to see the sun fairly frequently but read and meander around quite a bit too. Apparently, I don’t have the attention span one needs to stare at the sun as the moon slowly, slowly creeps over the sun. Also, it’s a little more dramatic to take pauses and check back in and see how the moon coverage has significantly changed.

The weather leading up to the peak eclipse was PERFECT. As we’d experienced during the partial eclipse, cloud coverage moving through actually adds to the experience. You can take great pictures, and it makes the sun through the glasses look really beautiful.

It gets slowly darker, but ever so slowly… even when only a little sun is peeking through, it still seems like a typical overcast day. And then fairly suddenly, the moon covers the sun completely, you can look at the sun without your glasses, and everything seems almost like it’s night time. Not quite… maybe like the gloaming. It’s such a weird, magical feeling.

The park was a great place to be during the total eclipse. We were very, very lucky and had cloud clearance through much of the eclipse and during the total eclipse. Park visitors cheered and celebrated.

Then, after only four and a half, the sun starts appearing again. We watched as the moon coverage slowly moved away. To try to avoid traffic jams on the way home, we went on one more hike and had an early dinner. Traffic was still a little congested on the way home but not bad.

And we were very happy to see our cats upon arrival.

https://tourtoise.quest/2024/08/20/the-main-event-inks-lake-2024-total-eclipse-part-2/

#Eclipse #InksLake #TexasStatePark

Superbluem: Inks Lake 2024 Total Eclipse Part 1

As mentioned in my last post on our Thanksgiving trip, we had reservations at Inks Lake State Park for the April 2024 total eclipse.

Aneel worked VERY hard to get these reservations because Texas state parks have limited reservations, and they don’t do anything special/raise prices for big nature events like this. So he calculated EXACTLY when they would go on sale, decided we could make reservations for two weeks (so we could book a little earlier), and then was at his computer ready to purchase the second they were made available.

I felt very, very lucky that we ended up with such great reservations for the eclipse (and even more so felt that way after the eclipse: the reason why coming in part 2).

Superbloom

But the surprise was… it was also amazing because of the spectacular superbloom. The spring flowers were in bloom and just… freaking gorgeous.

My apologies for the semi-crappy pictures. Aneel has some on his actual camera that probably turned out way better. These are iPhone camera photos with Seek identification. Please let me know if I got any of the IDs wrong.

Superbluem

We jokingly started referring to this as the “superbluem” because of the spectacular showing of bluebonnets. I love bluebonnets… they’re so lovely, and it makes me feel close to Austin in positive ways (unsurprisingly, I have very complicated feelings about Austin and Texas in general). The bluebonnets were EVERYWHERE.

It was also super super fun to search for variants. The only ones we found were the white variants. Overall, I think we found maaaaaybe two dozen total of individual white variants. We searched high and low on every hike and walk for the pink and maroon variant but no go. I guess that means we have a goal for the future.

Activities

I’ve been fairly stressed because of work and the house renovation drama we’ve been dealing with… so getting out in nature and enjoying some wonderful hiking and relaxing was really good for my mental health.

We went on some truly lovely hikes, and got some really great birding in (including two new on my birding list) and a very good stop at the great bird blind at Inks Lake.

Animals

And the animal spotting was also on point. We saw some really great insects and arachnids.

Some great lizards.

And, of course, some great birds. As mentioned, I added two new to my bird list, although I’m sure I’ve seen them before. They were the greater scaup (pretty sure greater not lesser) and also the gadwall. I didn’t get pictures – too far away (although again – Aneel probably has better pictures). The good pictures I do have are of the Canada Geese that we named because they walked through our campsite a lot-Humphrey and Lauren, so named because our cat Bogart meows/yells at us and sounds 100% like a goose. Hearing their geese noise made us think of him (i.e., Humphrey Bogart and his wife Lauren Bacall). We also saw little geeslings. And a truly whoa tufted common mallard.

Check Back in for Part 2

It was a spectacular trip already, and this doesn’t even touch on the total eclipse. Check back in next week for my recap on the eclipse. It was a tense week because it looked like weather and clouds might spoil everything!

#Eclipse #InksLake #TexasStatePark

For the first… 16 or so years of my life, I celebrated Thanksgiving with my immediate and extended family. It was always at either my grandparent’s house or my aunt and uncle’s house (maternal uncle – older brother of my mother). It was what I still consider the “typical” middle-class, waspy Thanksgiving day. The holiday revolved mostly around food… women in the kitchen with multiple hours worth of planning, prep, and cooking. Men mostly hanging out in the living room, watching sports and waiting for food. Couple dozen people ranging in ages from toddlers to great-grandparents.

My family always had the same food (which we then also had at Christmas): turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, sweet potatoes, green beans, cranberry sauce, and more pies than people. I mean seriously… nobody agreed on the same “best pie,” so we all got our favorites and then some. Pecan, chocolate silk, apple, coconut cream, cherry, peach, banana cream, lemon, key lime… and always pumpkin. Nobody ever claimed pumpkin as their favorite pie, but it just wasn’t Thanksgiving without it. If you’re wondering, my favorite pie has pretty much always been apple. I like a good apple crumb (or french apple/dutch apple), but a straight-forward solid apple pie is A+ in my book.

And then, slowly, one by one, the cousins peeled off… celebrating with their new immediate family (getting married, having babies, celebrating with new in-laws, etc). And eventually, we all admitted defeat. No more big family Thanksgivings. My immediate family prioritized Christmas, and let Thanksgiving go.

By the time I was in my mid-to-late 20s, Thanksgiving meant Friendsgiving… potlucks with whoever was in town and blood-family free at that time of year. I still love a good Friendsgiving, but Aneel and I have a new tradition now. Starting a handful of years ago, we camp over Thanksgiving. I prep some food just for the two of us, and we head off towards quiet and have our own little family [non]-celebration.

2023 was no exception to this tradition. We lucked out on Inks Lake State Park reservations, and spent a a long weekend there from Wednesday, Nov 22nd to Saturday November 25th (spoiler: we actually had to the 26th, but we bailed early because of weather).

I prepped pumpkin risotto (recipe made veggie) and a fall salad for our Thanksgiving meal. And I picked up a smorgasbord of goodies from Sugar Mama‘s including little mini pumpkin pies (again.. not my favorite, but a Thanksgiving classic).

We had a fine time camping… good hikes, wildlife.

I attempted an apple cobbler over the campfire. It was tasty… but ugly (and a far cry from a cobbler). I didn’t take a picture of the final product – but it was a fun attempt nonetheless. We had more success with drinking mead (which we also shared with the local bumblers).

Our two biggest victories of the extended weekend were:

Sadly, the weather didn’t hold and right at the end of our hatchery visit, it started to rain. We headed back to our campground, but then after sitting inside our trailer for an hour, we realized it was going to rain for the rest of the day and we could hang out inside the trailer or pack it up and go home. We folded like cheap poker tables and packed up early. Heading home didn’t really feel like failure because of our sweet cats waiting for us and the cuddles we enjoyed.

https://tourtoise.quest/2024/04/13/thanksgiving-trip-2023/

#InksLake #TexasStatePark

I’ll give it away at the beginning of the post. Yes, we did make it to Ren Fest. But it was the closest we got to stranded in the Rivian, and we were way later than expected. (Disclaimer: This trip happened near the end of October, 2023. I’m getting caught up on my posting.)

The Route and Charging Plan

Without charging and on the most direct route, it takes about 2 hours and 20 minutes to get from Austin to the campgrounds. But of course, hauling the Tourtoise and needing a good charge for camping and starting the route home, we needed pretty much full charging on the route there.

When Aneel and I planned the route before setting out—the charging didn’t look spectacular, but it looked okay (maybe on the low-end of okay). The first charge would be only 20-30 minutes or so after we set out in Manor, Texas at a medical center (edit: Aneel has correctly pointed out that it was a school campus not a medical center). Then we would charge again near-ish the end at a ChargePoint in Navasota , which was supposed to be mid-speed. Based on ABRP, we had about a 3 ½ – 4 hour trip estimated. We left at 8am. Getting us into Ren Fest, optimistically at 12pmish. 

The Charging Reality

Problem number 1 hit at the first charger. It… was charging so slow, it basically wasn’t charging. We waited around for 20 minutes and didn’t even get a mile of charge. We gave up because it looked like we would have a reasonable cushion without it. Maybe 30-40 miles left by the time we hit the second charger. 

Either because of fast speeds or high winds or hills, we did not have that much cushion when we got to the second charger. I think we were down to maybe 12. Both Aneel and I were nervous. That little cushion does not feel great.

Problem number 2 hit at the second charger. It charged, thankfully… but much, much, much slower than estimated. We were there for about 3 hours. We walked to Mallett Brothers Barbeque, which had good sides and a very sweet bread pudding dessert. Then we pulled out our hiking chairs and just sat at the charger for the rest of the time. 

Aneel, very kindly offered to drive me to Ren Fest, drive back to charge again, then meet up with me later. But a) that seemed like a lot of work and b) I like hanging with him at Ren Faire… his snark is top tier. So we just hung. It was a pretty day. 

That did put us at Ren Fest at near 4, but that still gave us a few hours in daylight and an hour or so at the Fest at night time and the evening to hang out at camp. 

The Camping Site

We paid more to camp at an actual RV pad/camping site. No power or water, but definitely more stable ground. I was pretty mixed on it… The pros? Firm ground and good location: it’s really close to the entrance. 

The cons? RVs were very close to each other and the pads were minimal, but the biggest issue was the noisy generators. People had loud gennies and lacked good (or in lots of instances any) baffle. Actually one of our neighbors had a baffle… great? Well, it only covered the side that faced THEIR RV, so we got the full blast of their noisy generator. How rude. You realize you need a baffle because your genny is loud, but you don’t give a shit enough to be polite to your neighbors too? The gennies ran all night, and with no power at our site, we slept with our windows open. I had ear plugs, but… just not my favorite environment. 

I’d consider not paying for an actual RV camping site next time because you can bring in an RV to the normal camping area. No pad, but much more open space and quieter, for sure. If we do get a pad again, we’ll bring our own generator… which feels… weird since it’s really nice enough to sleep in late October, early November without one.

The Fest

After we actually got into the Fest, we had a good time. It was a Halloween themed weekend, and it’s just nice seeing the diversity of costumes with a less restrictive costume theme. Aneel’s commentary on the costumes is literally my favorite part of going. A++ observations and jokes and enjoyment. 

My shopping was mixed. I got a few great things for me including some creature statues for my garden, a fun bat wall art piece, and new chimes (Seriously, my favorite chime company ever—check them out: https://www.musicofspheres.com/). But I always like to do Christmas shopping there from the local artisan vendors, and I failed quite a bit at the Christmas shopping side of things. I tried, but nothing really jumped out at me. 

We drank beer and mead. We ate delicious, terrible fest food including perogies and baked goods. We watched the birds of prey show, always my favorite. We picked up some of the things I bought and stumbled back to our camp and hung out for a little while before crashing. I was drunk enough on Texas Ren Festivities that the noise wasn’t awful. 

The Route and Charging Plan to Get Home

The next morning, we just packed up quickly and skedaddled. After numerous lessons learned (how bad the chargers were) on the ride up, we took a different route home. Instead of going the slightly north, mostly east/west direction, we went on a much more south direction  hitting I-10 and then heading up to Austin before hitting San Antonio. It’s definitely longer in distance but more and better charging options. It took 4 ½ to 5 hours… but with much calmer charging stops and better moods.  

Sadly, I forgot to take many pictures, so that was a lesson learned for this year. I look forward to camping again, and charging WILL be much better because 1) we know of at least one fast charger that has been added on that route and 2) there are some Tesla options that it looks like we’ll be able to use. 

Huzzah.

https://tourtoise.quest/2024/04/06/event-camping-did-we-make-it-to-texas-ren-fest/

#Charging #Event #TRF

In 2017, Aneel and I happened to be on a road trip and going through St. Louis, MO. This was extra awesome because St. Louis was on a great viewing pathway of the total eclipse that happened that year. Watching that eclipse was a truly spectacular experience (my first eclipse), and we have been really excited to see the annual eclipse this year (2023) and the total eclipse next year (Texas has total pathway for both).

Finding camping spots has been a little difficult. Eclipses are popular events for camping and places either book up early (and are costly) OR don’t even go on sale until just a few months before (e.g., State Parks) and are a crapshoot whether you can book them. The pathway of totality for the October 2023 annual eclipse didn’t run through a huge amount of camping/park options, but we did find an RV park in Hondo, Texas with open reservations that wasn’t too expensive—Quiet RV Park.

I would definitely recommend the park. There was a very weird hiccup about a month before the trip where I signed on to double check something and saw that our reservations had been cancelled (we definitely had not requested for them to be cancelled, and I still don’t know why it happened). But after an email and a quick conversation with the park, they got us back on the books. The spot is really accessible and the park was super nice. Big spaces, not too crowded, pretty views. I like RV parks that still feel like camping, aren’t too crowd, and aren’t geared around inside RV park events. This was right up our alley. Two thumbs up.

Great Chargers in San Antonio

Before I jump into the camping experience and the eclipse, I will note that we drove through San Antonio to get to Hondo and stopped at the new Rivian chargers in the north of the city at the Shops at La Cantera. It’s a perfect stop. The chargers charge incredibly fast (less than an hour for almost a full charge- we were down to maybe 20% or so and charged to 100%). It’s an outdoor mall with over a dozen places to eat, so we stopped for lunch on the way to camping and then stopped for dinner on the way back from camping. An excellent stop. Also got to give fellow Rivian owners the secret handwave.

Camping and the Eclipse

The camping experience was pretty much centered around the eclipse. No camp tests really, and everything was straight-forward at our setup. But we did fit in a few great hikes the afternoon after and the day after the eclipse.

Weather the few days before kept flip flopping between cloudy and not cloudy. So, we were a little nervous about eclipse visibility. The morning of the eclipse was fully cloud cover at camp, so Aneel researched and found a town about 30 minutes away that looked much better for the forecast. So, we drove the Hare up to Bandera with camping chairs, and settled into a cute little city park to view the eclipse.

It was great. Slightly cloudy, which was actually fun because when little clouds covered the sun, our phone cameras could actually record the eclipse (full sun and you just get a giant sun blob). We played with our shadows, looked at the little crescent shaped shadows that trees cast, and watched as the moon covered more and more of the sun. Then the peak hit, and we saw the ring of fire! The moon sat in front of the sun not quite covering it on all sides. I love how it gets darker and chillier during eclipses too. The little park wasn’t full of people but there were plenty, and a cheer went up when the ring of fire appeared.

The Hikes

After the eclipse, we grabbed lunch at a little pizza place in Bandera—okay but not great. Then we drove into the Hill Country State National Area (SNA) for a hike. We weren’t sure if we would be able to get in because they didn’t have any tickets available for entrance during the eclipse, but we figured it was worth a shot… surely many people would have left after the eclipse. Sure enough—we got in just fine. The hike was really pretty: rugged and good diverse landscape. Almost no birds though.

The whole weekend had few birds on our hikes. Although at our campground, the field next to us was covered in hundreds of White-winged Doves AND we saw Crested Caracara a number of times.

We came back to our campground after the Hill Country SNA and relaxed for the rest of the evening. We also discussed our plan for the next day. We could have spent another full day and night there, but decided it would be nicer to get home Sunday evening and have a less hectic Monday morning. So Sunday morning we got up and drove to the other hiking area nearby—Castroville Regional Park. It was a pretty good hike… good landscape variation, interesting plants, not many birds, but a nice time overall.

I insisted we also stop by and do the Hondo Nature Trail on the way back to camp because it was the only “hike” in the actual town we were staying in. It’s about 0.2 miles but ended up surprisingly confusing. There are tons of different diverging and converging paths and that trail has more sign-posting then any other trail I’ve been on… people apparently donate to get a small piece of the trail named after them but then you just little named sections every 25-50 feet? It was a fabulously absurd little stroll with a well maintained garden at the entrance.

Then we came back, packed up, and set off for home. We stopped for one last hike while in San Antonio at the Government Canyon SNA. Less landscape variation as the other hikes we did, but definitely a place I’d come back to and try some other hikes on. By the end of it, I was pretty ready to be done hiking. We’d hit about 9 miles that day. So, with a last stop at the Shops for charging and food, our trip was over.

TL/DR:

• Eclipses are the best.
• Quiet RV Park is a nice stop.
• Rivian Chargers at the Shops of La Cantera are the best chargers we’ve used so far.

https://tourtoise.quest/2023/11/11/october-2023-eclipse/

#Eclipse #RVPark

Over the past year and a half, we’ve been exploring new state parks—trying to find fun places with nice camping and hikes within about 4 hours or so of home. We’ve been to quite a few, but to ease back into camping after a super hot summer, we opted to return to a couple of our favorites nearby. So in September, we spent a long weekend at Buescher State Park.

Buescher was actually the very first place we took Tourtoise when we got her, I believe, so that was a nice little commemoration. We really like this park because it’s pretty quiet with really woodsy camping spots. There aren’t many hikes within Buescher itself (although there are a couple of really great ones with beautiful overlooks!), but it’s adjacent to Bastrop State Park with a park road connecting the two. Bastrop has many more hikes, and we get access to both with an entrance to either.

We picked one of our favorite spots from last time: it is at one end of the curve that backs up to the lake. You have to walk a little way not on a trail, but it’s worth it to sit and enjoy the view and the birds.

While on this trip we tried out a few things worth mentioning.

1. The built-in tire pump on the Hare!

It was still quite hot (hitting over 100 each day), but our tire pressure warning went off as we set off to drive to the trailhead of a hike one day. It was a little surprising because usually that happens when it cools down for the season. But it was super easy to take care of because of this awesome Rivian feature.

The great news is… this is just SO EASY. Hook up the cord, set the pressure goal, and pump. We weren’t particularly low on any tire and the whole process took maybe 5-10 minutes total? We had a guy stop to chat about Rivians while we were airing up. I’m really still not used to being so popular for our vehicle. I’ve driven boring cars for so many years. It’s amusing-especially because I’m still not really a car person but it is a very cool car.

The only slight—very very slight complaint—is that the air compressor control doesn’t seem to work great. Sometimes it would stop before we got near the goal pressure. One time it went well over the goal, so we had to let air out. I ended up just stopping to check it occasionally on the screen instead of letting it run automatically. Even with that little hiccup, it’s still such a great feature and easy to use.

2. Our shower tent!!

 After one of our 2022 trips, we realized outdoor showering could be handy—if really dirty from a hike and don’t want to track it inside or after swimming or just because we want to spray down really quick because it’s hot. The Tourtoise does have an external hose, so we bought a shower tent a number months ago and just hadn’t used it yet. This time we intentionally set it up and used it. And it’s so pleasant.

Like I mentioned earlier, it was still very hot on this trip. We would get up early-ish, to get a hike in before it hit the peak heat. But even then, it was in the mid to high 90s and sunny while we hiked. We kept the hikes short (around 45 minutes to an hour), but still were soaked in sweat by the end. At our campsite, we had lunch, then hung out outside in some kind of shade, bird-watching and reading.

Then when it got close to cooling down, we took a shower outside, washing away all that sweat and heat. It’s just a nice camping experience. Watching birds and looking at trees while taking a shower.

I felt a little bad because we didn’t use a gray water bin (although we did specifically use an appropriate outdoor camping-approved shower wash). So as soon as we got home and knew we would be using this again, we bought a foldable gray catch. It fits perfectly, is a few inches high on the edges, lets us catch the water, and is easy to transport.

Great animal watching

We had some really great animal and bird watching on this trip too. We got great views (and sounds) of Pileated Woodpeckers, Blue-Gray Gnatcatchers, Green Heron, and the more common species. No cuckoo this time though.

In addition, we saw several species of lizards and this velvet ant (maybe the Klug?) that apparently has a wildly painful sting!

Overall, an excellent trip with a few new test successes.

https://tourtoise.quest/2023/11/05/new-adventures-in-buescher-state-park/

#Buescher #TexasStatePark

The other big spring weekend trip that we took in Tourtoise was to Lost Maples State Natural Area. Yeah, yeah, it’s not specifically a state park, but close enough. And holy moly wow… this place is fabulous and worth talking about. This place is GORGEOUS.

The weekend started off with a fabulous drive through Fredericksburg, Kerrville, and Hunt, Texas. They really play up the hunt part, which I’m not huge on, but still… it is just breathtakingly beautiful to drive through there.

We stopped in Kerrville for a charge, and had an easy charge at the Kerrville visitor’s bureau. Walked to Lowe’s for something, wandered over to Sonic because why not, before heading back to the charging center.

We got to Lost Maples and almost immediately realized we wouldn’t have cell service and internet for the trip. That was a bit of a bummer because we’d hoped to test out some new equipment… but it makes sense for the landscape, which is essentially a canyon in between hills. The area is famous for the Uvalde bigtooth maples but has good birds, lotsa armadillos, the endangered golden-cheeked warbler and black-capped vireos (both endemic to the park), and also the super pretty Texas madrone tree.

The campground is so-so. It’s right at the front just after the entrance, and the sites are right next to each other, without much privacy from each other. But, it’s small and you have a great view of the hills on both sides. It’s worth it to stay in this spectacular area.

Camping Tip: The best areas are right at the end of the curve: # 15, 16, 17, 18. They offer more privacy and back up the best wooded area.

We had ravens every day in our campground, and great birding just from our campground (painted buntings, blue grosbeaks, chipping sparrows, summer tanagers, Inca doves, ash-throated flycatchers, eastern phoebes, and literally dozens of black-chinned hummingbirds thanks to some campground hummingbird feeders.

The park has about 12 miles of hiking, and two of the hikes are decently long and challenging—about 5 miles and some steeper areas. It was a great amount of hiking for a three-day weekend. And honestly, those hikes were so beautiful, I could have done them a couple of times each. We did have a few really great sightings of the golden-cheeked warblers, but sadly never saw the black-capped vireos. We did catch a few red-eyed vireos, woodhouse’s scrub jay, tropical parula, yellow-throated warbler, yellow-breasted chat, black-throated green warbler, ladder-backed woodpecker and a louisiana waterthrush. Ugh – so many great birds.

We did get caught in fairly constant rain in one of our hikes… and it turns out that after 3+ hours of constant light rain… it gets very uncomfortable. I was soaked from head to toe (waterproof rainboots aren’t very helpful if the rain just runs down your legs INTO your boots). We got so wet, our electronics actually still are showing some damage. That’ll teach us to be a little more attentive when it’s raining.

Running low on beer, we did take a quick trip right outside of the park to the Lost Maples general store. It was about 4 miles away and pretty limited in supplies, but good enough for us!

Camping Test: The other big note of the trip is that we spent one night sleeping in the Hare to test how that went. Unfortunately, I had a sore muscle from a few days before and it just got worse every day of the trip.. so that was a big bummer. But other than that, it was easy sleeping in the Rivian. We pulled the mattress cushions from the Tourtoise and they fit pretty well into the back of the Hare (with the two back rows of seats lowered). We technically set it to camping power on, but I had to turn the AC on a couple of times because it wasn’t staying on and Aneel’s phone didn’t charge. So something kinda went wrong there. But the TL/DR was it’s super easy and roomy enough to sleep in the Hare.

We will DEFINITELY be going back to Lost Maples, and hopefully multiple times. That place is just… a highlight of Texas landscape.

#lost-maples #texas-state-park

https://tourtoise.quest/2023/06/11/spring-state-park-reviews-part-2-lost-maples-state-natural-area/

Aneel and I are trying to do one weekend trip per month on average. Sometimes that means non-Tourtoise trips, but they do make up the bulk of our weekend getaways (which is great). We’re always looking to explore new places, but are also trying to keep a list of the best places to return to. Two of our favorites areas have historically been Inks Lake State Park and Buescher State Park—we actually have reservations to go back to both in the fall. In April and May, we added two more areas to our “have traveled to” list.

Park Selection Criteria

Honestly, my criteria this time around for picking areas to visit were 1) what has availability that matches our availability and 2) what is within three(ish) hours, so it still makes for a pleasant three-day weekend. Generally, I do also try to look at reviews and descriptions because we’re looking for hiking trails, great nature, and lean away from busy, group activity-oriented areas, and areas that seem more specifically designed for boating or water sports. I like being on a boat, but that’s not really what these trips are for.

While trying to pick some areas for Spring, I got to reservations a little late, and bluntly… was just looking for places period. One ended up okay, the other ended up spectacular, and I’m glad we went to both for very different reasons.

April trip: Mother Neff State Park

Neither Aneel nor I realized it until our drive to the park, but Mother Neff State Park was the very first Texas state park. I’m guessing timing or paperwork or something makes that claim not 100% defensible because most sources always use the wording “one of the first parks in the Texas’ state park system,” but truly… it’s THE park that starting the whole ball rolling.

Part of what is now Mother Neff State Park belonged to a woman named Isabella Neff from the mid 19th century all the way through her death in 1921. She was a big player in her community (gaining the nickname “Mother Neff”) and had a huge soft spot for community activities and outdoor leisure. So, when she died, she donated six acres of her favorite land to the state for a park. She also, apparently, instilled in her son a love for parks and outdoor leisure because her son, Pat M. Neff, worked hard during his time as a Texas governor to start the Texas State Parks Board and start a government run state park system in Texas.

There is a whole lot more to the whole State Park history in Texas, but the focus for this blog is that Mother Neff State Park is an important part of Texas State Park history, and it was nice to visit for that reason.

The park itself is pretty small—bigger than the original donated 6 acres—at 330 acres. I got curious writing the blog, and apparently the smallest state park in Texas is only 16 acres and the biggest state park in Texas is Big Bend Ranch State Park, which is 311,000 acres. So yeah, definitely on the small side of things. It only has about 4 miles of hiking, so definitely not enough hiking for us during a three-day trip. We pretty much did all the hiking in one day.

It is a pretty area though. The RV camping loop has some good shady areas and tree sections. We were on the inner side, which isn’t our favorite because I want a camp site that backs up just to nature. But we did have okay privacy and some nice trees around. Also, it was pretty much the perfect time of year in Texas to camp and the butterfly, bird, and wildflower life was spectacular.

The hiking didn’t really feel like hiking… it was more short strolls through the area. Some of them are labeled moderate, and that might be fair because they could be a little rocky, but… it was not at all a challenge and they are all very, very, very short.

The birds were abundant—we saw so many painted buntings, and also frequently spotted black-chinned hummingbirds, chickadees, Franklin’s gulls, Bewick’s wrens, Mississippi kites, and had one hilarious turkey encounter that nearly gave me a heart attack. The only bird that wasn’t a decently common enough spotting for me was the dickcissel. We did hear a chuck will’s widow at night… every night… but couldn’t ever find it.

The other big positive is that there are plenty of areas nearby to hike when you’ve exhausted the 4 miles at Mother Neff. We ended up going to Miller Springs Nature Center, which was about 20 miles away, and I had a FABULOUS time hiking there. There isn’t a ton, ton of hiking there, but plenty and it all crisscrosses and is super wild and just very pretty.

The big bonus of Mother Neff is that it’s a recently built campsite, so it’s full hookups and a 30 AND 50 amp plug at every site (Aneel already posted about that), so super easy to camp there. Don’t have to worry at all about having to hook up and dump tanks.

Camping Tip: Best Camp Sites: 5, 7, 8. 6… more privacy, good space, backs up against wild area. We took note just in case we end up coming back. I kinda doubt we will, it’s just not necessarily big enough. But it’d be a perfectly good place to stay if there was something else in the area we really wanted to do.

To Be Continued…

I thought I would post about Lost Maples State Natural Area in this post too, but this post is too long already. Stay tuned for part 2, and I’ll highlight all of the awesome that is Lost Maples.

#mother-neff #texas-state-park

https://tourtoise.quest/2023/06/04/spring-state-park-reviews-part-1-mother-neff-sp/