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Pedernales trip report
Well, my girlfriend, dog and I did our pre-summer season one night tent camping trip to Pedernales last week. First tent camping in about 30 years for her (the dog and I have been two or three times). I wanted solitude and we got it! No one near our tent site; beautiful quiet, dark night; encountered three other people on my two hikes down to the river crossing. Even before these Memorial Day weekend rains, the river was high from the previous rain. I thought the dog was going to bust out laughing running back and forth though the rushing water...(I love camping with good dogs; nothing like a happy dog to make you see everything in a new light) we had fun sitting in the cold water, hanging on to the rocks for a cold water jacuzzi effect...
Learn something every time I go camping. This time it was that it is a lot easier to just put up the rainfly when you set up the tent, and sacrifice the view of the night sky through the mesh roof vents, then it is to set it up at 2:30 AM when sprinkles come through and wet your face and wake you up... Except in drought conditions, I'm using it from now on.
I have also learned that neither of us can make a fire to save our lives. How do forest fires, house fires and all those accidental fires just happen? If I was there I bet even an old wood frame house about to go up in blazes would just go out the minute it saw me... I believe our problem is that we don't use kindling -- just firestarter sticks, fatwood etc. under split logs. You'd think that 20-30 minutes of flame licking around the logs would light them, but nope. Just made them smolder and smoke.
Which did help with the flies... that was the only downside. My girlfriend was very into the whole picnic, grilling food, etc. thing... but every time we opened a cooler even for three seconds to grab something, we were SWARMED by flies. I mean, really swarmed. The campsite host said she was gong to ask the rangers to spray; someone must have dumped their sewage or thrown out something dead or something. No bad smell, clean campsite, but the problem wasn't limited to our site apparently. It was really bad. About the only good thing I can think of is that they weren't black flies! The flies went down to normal levels within 30 minutes of putting all food away.
Didn't do much hiking. Drove over to the swimming area and drove to the falls overlook and climbed around on those rocks. And our campsite was a short hike to the river crossing which was geat for a late nght and early morning dip. Also near a nature trail loop with a pretty overlook.
For those of you with dogs, they are quite serious about on leash ALL the time even in the water. (Which is very hard) But when it is mid-week, off season, it is very quiet, no one around, and I bet a well-behaved dog could go off leash on some of the smaller trails and less-used river entry places (not that I would know anything about that from personal experience though, oh no.)
The $20 is steep for camping, but the site was so huge and secluded it was almost worth it (with a penny discount per fly, I think we would only have paid about $10...)
All in all a good trip. Though we may choose cabin camping for the next "family" trip, and I'll continue to do tent camping or move on to primitive camping for my own solo trips.
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