McKinney Falls State Park in Austin, TX

I am a big fan of water. Not only does it give a body life, but it can also take it away if you have too much of it. Besides that, water is full of mystery. I enjoy sitting on the shore of an ocean and watching the lights of the ships and wondering where they're coming from, where they're going. I wouldn't actually like to know, of course, because that would diminish the mystery and the romance. Water, when it's deep, is impenetrable to us at the moment. We can only go down so far, only see so far. We don't know what lies below, in the dark, in the crushing pressure. Maybe there are cities down there. Shipwrecks. Maybe even a crashed UFO from thousands of years ago fell to the bottom of the Atlantic. We'd never know.

When I was a kid growing up in New Jersey there was a reservoir not too far away. Rumors had it that the original town of Boonton lay beneath the surface. Some even mentioned seeing a church steeple when the water level dropped far enough until, one day, it collapsed. They weren't really rumors; the reservoir does cover the site of the original Boone Town or Booneton or Boonton. What remains of Boone Town? I have no idea, but since I don't know if anyone in the town was notified of this flooding or not I often think there are watery skeletons having dinner.

Technically, nobody who wasn't official was supposed to be in the reservoir area but that didn't stop many people from cutting through the fence and going in there to fish or smoke dope or whatever it was they did. I walked around and looked at the remains of stone fences, stone walls, and dark menacing wells sitting beneath the dense tree cover.

This is why most parks I visit have water. Or, rather, promise water seeing as how Texas can have its dry periods. Today I decided to visit McKinney Falls State Park. Because of the falls, you see. We've just had about a weeks worth of rain and I figured if there was a good time to see flowing water, today would be it. And it was up into the low 70˚s with partly cloudy skies.

It's a state park so it costs money to get in. You can also camp there, I think, and fish and barbecue. Oh, and you can swim if there's water there.

The summary from Wikipedia says:

McKinney Falls State Park is a state park located at the southeastern edge of Austin, Texas, United States around the confluence of Onion and Williamson Creeks and is administered by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. The park opened on April 15, 1976 and is named after Thomas F. McKinney, a businessman, race horse breeder and rancher, who owned and lived on the land in the mid-to-late 19th century.

If you want to know more, head on over there and read the rest of it.

I walked around the park, which, according to my good buddy the iPhone, was almost a 5½ mile walk. The main trail that runs around the park is paved, which is good since there was a lot of mud about. The falls, themselves, were a bit of a disappointment. I had hoped, with all the rain, that they'd be a bit more impressive but it is a creek and not a river so I probably shouldn't be so critical. I went to the upper falls first and then walked counter-clockwise along the trail. By the time I got to the lower falls the area was full of people getting in my way. By that time I was getting tired and cranky anyway, so I didn't stay too long or take too many pictures.

I was lucky enough to get some pictures of a cardinal. Maybe two. Possibly three. Honestly, I think it was the same one. I also got some pictures of a couple of bugs. And a lizard. Wikipedia says that white-tailed deer, raccoons, armadillos and fox squirrels are common there, but I didn't see any of them. Just a couple of birds, a few bugs, a lizard, and some mushrooms.

So what did I walk away from this trip? Pain. A lot of pain. It's been a long time since I've done a three mile hike, so making a five mile one is currently making me walk like John Wayne after a rather rigorous horse ride. It was a good walk, though, so I'm not going to complain. Much.

McKinney Falls photo album is here.

So It Begins... [Belton, TX]

I like driving. I like taking pictures. I also like writing. I live in Texas. It's only taken me about ten years to combine all these things into a blog. It's only really been possible in the last five years, though, so that's an excuse for you. This weekend, though, I was writing in my 'travel' journal and thought, "Ya know, you could be blogging this, too. Somebody might find it interesting." I already have a blog but it's sort of a mish-mash of a bunch of different things. I got the hankerin' to put something together that would be strictly about travelling.

Since I don't like travelling in general, I tend to stay in one place. Luckily, that one place turns out to be Texas and Texas is, if you haven't checked a map lately, really big. If you want a peek into how my brain works, it's totally okay for me to travel in-state because I consider it 'local.' Much in the same way I would balk at spending $100 for one item from one store but have no trouble spending $10 in ten different stores, I'll go places here that I would never do when I lived in New Jersey.

For example, yesterday, on a whim, I drove 144 miles. That was just wandering around, but let's say I drove 122 miles and then turned around to go back home. Had I been living in New Jersey, still, I could gone anywhere in this circle:

Where you can go in 122 miles

I tell you this: I wouldn't go anywhere on the edge of that circle. Not only because a significant portion falls into the Atlantic Ocean, but just because I wouldn't think of driving to Albany. Or Connecticut. Or halfway through Pennsylvania. It just wouldn't happen. A trip like any of those would require planning and supplies. But here, in Texas, it's a matter of thinking, "Hey, I think I'll drive around a bit."

Yesterday I drove up I35 almost to Waco before heading west to Moody. I don't actually remember what road I took to get to Moody but I do know that when I turned around at a Family Dollar Store I ended up going back the same way that I came which ended up, somehow, not being the way I got there. I'm also surprised at how many dollar stores end up in the seemingly middle of nowhere. 

Anyway, I turned back onto SH317 which, eventually, runs right into I35 to the south. Had I turned left (or hadn't stopped at all) I would have ended up in Crawford which is something I had been planning to do for a couple of weeks now. I had I gone to Mexico Lindo for lunch and read my notes I may have gone there. But I didn't. I headed south on the highway that Wikipedia says was designated in 1939. It is a long, straight, small stretch of road with not much besides horses and cows to look at. It does have a high speed  limit of 70-75MPH. I wonder what it looked like back in 1939. I wonder if it was even paved in 1939. 

Texas State Highway 317 runs through Belton. I have been to a park on a lake in Belton, but I hadn't been in the city itself until yesterday. SH317 runs through the downtown section which is the 'original' town. It's got old buildings that look neat. It also had a park that I could see from the road so I turned off, parked, and took some pictures.

Brown Pigeon. Or Dove. Take your pick.

Chinese Goose

Muscovy Duck

Yetti Polk Park is on Nolan Creek

Another place I wish I had stopped to eat lunch at

Nolan Creek runs through Belton. I really love it when water runs through a town. Granted, it's no San Antonio, but it looks nice and if you ever want to be near water to hear it gurgling, well, you can do that. I really wish I had spent more time there and explored the downtown section. 

It's not the best entry for a travel blog, but it is a start. I have a whole list of places that I'd like to visit one day so I hope that this blog grows quite a bit.