My friends and I headed down to Enchanted Rock, just outside of Fredericksburg, TX last week. We had planned to climb a bit at the park and just hike around and enjoy camping and possibly hit up a mountain bike trail on the way back. Well the climbing ended up sucking, it was impossible to find and just wasn't all that great.
Day 1:
My friend and I both worked until 3, then we packed up and headed out at about 7. We didn't know exactly we were going the first night because it was just the two of us and we just needed somewhere to sleep really (we would be picking up our other friend in San Antonio the next morning). Well, we stopped in Austin on the way down and got some food and pulled out the old map and just looked for anywhere we thought we'd be able to stay. With nowhere to be found, we decided to drive to San Marcos and stop at a gas station to ask about a camping spot. The lady gave us a few spots, but it was now midnight and all of the places were closed for the night. After driving around for awhile we decided to just sleep at a rest stop just outside of San Antonio. That was an experience in itself haha. Trying to sleep in the truck was ridiculous, it was so hot. I got about an hour of sleep, then just started walking around the stop taking random pictures and ended up falling asleep underneath the truck just on my back. Interesting to say the least.
Day 2:
Woke up at around 5 and decided to head into the city and get some breakfast food at a grocery store. We finally found an HEB after figuring out where our other friend was staying and just grabbed some fruit and tortillas for breakfast. By now it was almost 7, and we still had 2 hours until our friend wanted us to pick him up. So we watched the um interesting people in the parking lot for awhile and then next thing I knew we had both fallen asleep for over an hour. I felt homeless haha. We went and got our friend and headed out to Enchanted Rock, stopping at WalMart in Fredericksburg to get the food we'd be needing. We made it to the park and settled on one of the two primitive camping areas they have. It was a pretty cool thing because we got to pick where we wanted to camp in a fairly large area and it was very secluded. It was about a 2 mile hike into the spot and we decided to stop and climb along the way. After searching for the climbs for an hour, we decided to do the only one we could find and it was just super awkward and disappointing. We planned on climbing again after we all took a little break, but then we ended up falling asleep for about half an hour (again, unplanned). Let me tell you, sleeping on a rock with a climbing harness on isn't comfortable at all. Then we hiked out to the area we could sleep in and found a good spot we would stay in. We partially hid our packs and decided to take the "summit trail" to the top of Enchanted Rock itself. We made it to the top where the wind was blowing like crazy and then we explored around for awhile and went through the "cave" on the north face of the dome (not the most amazing cave haha). We then headed back to the truck to grab some extra water and hiked back in. Found our packs and discovered a raccoon had found my friends bag of oatmeal and pita bread. We set up camp and made some dinner (jumbalaya). While making dinner we realized there were eyes all around us, tons of raccoons were watching our food closely. After cleaning out the pots we headed to sleep, fighting the huge gusts of wind the whole time.
Day 3:
Woke up to the disappointing sound of rain and the realization that even if we wanted to go search for climbs again, there was no point with everything so wet. We packed up camp and headed back to the truck and made some breakfast burritos back in the parking lot. We then started the four hour drive back home. We pulled out the trusty map again and looked for State Parks along the way. There were a bunch and we called a few, but found that the only place that had real mountain biking was Cedar Hill State Park, just south of Dallas. We stopped there and biked to the best of our ability (I was running on about 9 hours of sleep divided between two nights) and then drove home.
It was a fun trip, definitely had some moments that I'm going to remember, like sleeping under the truck at that rest stop haha. For anyone that's wondering, I'd head out to Enchanted Rock, it was a lot cooler than I thought it'd be. Onto the pictures...
the only way to keep the rack from swaying so much
one of the pictures i took at the rest stop when i couldn't sleep
mmm breakfast
the start of the trail
at the top, you can see how windy it was
our breakfast in the parking lot
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