With our kids off to different colleges and their Spring Breaks not lining up, our son chose to just hang around at home while our daughter was interested in a trip with Mom & Dad instead of her new schoolmates. Becky and I jumped at the chance for another trip with her!
We decided to be somewhat last minute in choice of destinations, planning multiple options and then checking weather forecasts about ten days before departure. The winner of the weather sweepstakes was Lake Travis in the Austin, Texas area.
With hiking and Texas sunsets in mind, we opted for a condo rental on The Island at Lake Travis and also decided to drive instead of flying. The drive allowed a stop in Omaha to visit our son at his college and spend an afternoon at Spielbound Board Game Cafe, where you can settle in with one of thousands of board games on site. We opted for Orléans. Also, pictured: St. John’s Church on the campus of Creighton University provides a nice meeting place.
Following our visit, we headed south for a few hours to shorten our drive, which would still be most of a day. We got an early start, made ok time through construction, and arrived at the Island just in time for our first sunset.
Muleshoe Bend Recreation Area
On our first hiking day, we ventured to Muleshoe Bend Recreation Area, known for outstanding spring bluebell blooms. Unfortunately, and not unexpectedly, we were too early for the blooms. We needed a little luck to begin with and a long dry winter pushed Spring back from the usual timing. The Area still had an excellent trail system and a nice picnic lunch at an empty campsite. I had read that the Colorado River used to cover the “road” we walked and was much closer to the camping area; you can barely see it in our photos.
As is our typical pattern, the day ended with a chilly sunset view.
Pedernales Falls State Park
For day two of hiking, we ventured a little farther afield, arriving at highly-rated Pedernales Falls State Park in late-morning. We explored two areas of the park, making a short hike to the Falls area for lunch and wading the river at Trammell’s Crossing on our way to the 5.5 Mile Overlook.
With our desire to find the sunset somewhere, timing worked out such at that we broke with our usual tradition of trying local places and called ahead to a Domino’s Pizza minutes from the condo.
Balcones Canyonlands National Wildlife Refuge
For our third and final hiking day, we chose something a little closer to our place as we wanted to end the trip with some reading time by the pool. We combined five trails in the Warbler Vista area for a loop that we think was a little over three miles.
Some poolside reading and a final sunset before heading back north the next morning.
