wildtexas.com Home

Home
Parks Directory
Wildlife Guides
Travel Reports
Discussion Forums
Your Photos
Web Guide
Shopping
Wild Texas Search

OutsideHub.com Partner
-->
Go Back   Wild Texas Forums: Parks, Travel & Recreation > Planning, Trip Reports & Questions > Parks & Natural Areas

Reply

 

LinkBack Thread Tools Search this Thread Display Modes
Old 04-08-2009, 04:11 PM   #1
Founder, WildTexas.com
 
Shannon's Avatar
 
Join Date: Nov 2001
Location: San Antonio, TX
Posts: 1,526
Kidlet Day Trip to Guadalupe River SP

Just got back from an impromptu day trip to our closest State Park, and one of our favorites, Guadalupe River State Park (in part, probably, because of its proximity! )

Awesome weather! Only one tent camper (at our favorite spot of course--site #34) and about 6 RVs in the park today, so far. Obviously, I suspect they are actually at capacity and just won't get busy til folks show up after work because I can't imagine even the fire ban keeping folks from this beautiful weather and the river, while low, is still gorgeous, cool and flowing well. Makes me want to camp soooooo badly, and as you ALL know, Justin and I are very long overdue for a camping trip... Sara too, for that matter (though in her short 2 years she's been camping 3 times thus far--not too shabby!)

The visit wore the kidlet out and me too, since part of our hike had me carrying her 26 lbs. of dead weight back to the car to retrieve the offroad/jogging stroller. We did a bit of stroller walking to check out the walk-in sites and other campsites.

It was so nice to be in a Texas State Park again. Truly, I've missed it so darn much (though I don't regret what's been taking much of my weekend time--long road bicycle rides, documented elsewhere, with Justin to get in shape & prepare for Tour de Gruene in September!)

Anyway, I love all the (new to me) trailhead parking for that long/multiuse trail. Finally, folks will USE the trail because they won't obliviously drive by its only parking-accessible trailhead which was, for a long time, directly to the right of the park HQ/entrance gate. You actually had to leave the park and come back through the gate if you visited the river, your campsite or simply forgot that the trailhead parking for the multi-use trail was behind the entrance station.

I haven't been so giddy about having our Texas State Parks Pass renewed in ages. I'm going to be making that trip a lot more often again! GRSP was the appropriate park at which to "christen" our renewed Pass since it's the first park Justin and I ever camped together at (ages ago) and we used to mountain bike and hike there a lot as well. I even did a lot of my post-ACL recon (knee surgery) rehab in 2005 out there in the multi-use trail, which was fairly new at the time.

Enjoy the pics at least as half as much as we enjoyed the visit ->
Guadalupe River '09 - a set on Flickr


__________________
- Shannon Moore
Your Host @ WildTexas.com

Purchases in the Wild Texas Gear Shop support our continued operation. Thank you!



Shannon is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 04-08-2009, 04:35 PM   #2
Registered Member
 
Join Date: Aug 2008
Location: San Antonio, 78253
Posts: 61
Re: Kidlet Day Trip to Guadalupe River SP

Great pictures Shannon! Thanks for sharing. GRSP is also the closest SP to us. We love to winter camp there. Have spent many a Thanksgiving weekend there. Maybe we'll see you there sometime!
camperone is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 04-08-2009, 07:54 PM   #3
Registered Member
 
Troop198's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: North Texas
Posts: 534
Re: Kidlet Day Trip to Guadalupe River SP

great shots, we are heading out this week to Ft. Parker SP, near Mexia so this was a nice fix
Troop198 is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 04-08-2009, 10:56 PM   #4
Registered Member
 
srds's Avatar
 
Join Date: Oct 2005
Location: Freeport,Texas
Posts: 582
Re: Kidlet Day Trip to Guadalupe River SP

We just got from Garner ,weather was great.good pics looks like you had a good time.Inks next then Alaska,can't wait.Glad to see you getting back into the parks.

srds
Have Fun
__________________
To Camp or Not to Camp -Lets go Camping- Have Fun
srds is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 04-09-2009, 07:50 PM   #5
Registered Member
 
JohnK's Avatar
 
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Austin
Posts: 95
Re: Kidlet Day Trip to Guadalupe River SP

Very nice photos, Shannon! That's one monster cypress tree your kidlet is sitting on.

Glad you had a nice outing!

JohnK
JohnK is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 06-14-2009, 12:08 PM   #6
Registered Member
 
Join Date: May 2008
Posts: 11
Re: Kidlet Day Trip to Guadalupe River SP

Thanks for posting this. We spent last weekend at Guad SP, as part of the Texas Outdoor Family program. That was a great experience - they had kayaks for us to use and GPS units so we could do geocaching. That was our first experience geocaching, and it was so much fun we went home and found our first geocache in our home town. I highly recommend the program to anyone wanting to learn camping skills - there is more info on the TPWD web site. Guad SP was very crowded with folks from San Antonio enjoying one of the first weekends after school let out. Even with the crowd there were plenty of places to go away from the main group of people clustered down by the parking lot at the river. You can wade or paddle just a little way upstream and get away from 99% of the crowd. It was a little noisy at night with another visitor blasting their boom-box, but we were so tired we fell asleep anyway.
kidsluvscience is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 06-20-2009, 11:08 AM   #7
Registered Member
 
Join Date: Mar 2007
Location: San Antonio
Posts: 47
Re: Kidlet Day Trip to Guadalupe River SP

20+ years ago I worked at that park. Funnest and worst paying job I ever had.

I'm big into geocaching, so I'm itching to take the bike up there and find them all. Might wait until it cools a bit...

I work one of the Family Outdoor Workshops at Braunig Lake a few years back. That's a really good program.
Electric Water Boy is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 06-23-2009, 01:18 PM   #8
Registered Member
 
Join Date: May 2008
Posts: 11
Re: Kidlet Day Trip to Guadalupe River SP

You might want to check to make sure they have geocaches first - the ones we found were put out just for training purposes for our group...
kidsluvscience is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 06-23-2009, 01:46 PM   #9
Registered Member
 
Join Date: Aug 2008
Location: San Antonio, 78253
Posts: 61
Re: Kidlet Day Trip to Guadalupe River SP

We were there at Thanksgiving and found about 6. Not sure if there are still there or not. Some were easy, some not so much. it was a blast.
camperone is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 06-24-2009, 08:11 PM   #10
Registered Member
 
Join Date: Mar 2007
Location: San Antonio
Posts: 47
Re: Kidlet Day Trip to Guadalupe River SP

As I write this there are 20 inside the park on the south side of the river, and there are a bunch around the park.

Last edited by Electric Water Boy; 06-24-2009 at 08:13 PM. Reason: Deleting HTML
Electric Water Boy is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-11-2009, 10:43 PM   #11
Registered Member
 
Join Date: Mar 2006
Posts: 248
Re: Kidlet Day Trip to Guadalupe River SP

Just got back from GRSP -- boy the river is WAYYYY low! But still clear and flowing, albeit slowly.

When I called Tuesday for ressies for Wednesday and Thursday, they said there was ONE spot left, which I quickly took. When I got to the park about 1PM Wednesday, there were PLENTY of spots to pick from. The next morning I saw 5 on my way to the bathroom that were still vacant.

My son & his friend had lots of fun riding down the big hill to the river on their bikes. Not so much coming back up.
happybooker1 is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply

Thread Tools Search this Thread
Search this Thread:

Advanced Search
Display Modes

Rules for this Forum
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Trackbacks are On
Pingbacks are On
Refbacks are Off


Similar Threads

Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
Inks Lake State Park, Park/Trip Review 4/05 Turn Key Parks & Natural Areas 16 12-19-2006 09:14 AM
Lightner Creek Campground & Durango, CO July, 2006 Turn Key Parks & Natural Areas 1 10-19-2006 11:08 AM
Rocky Mountain N. P, Colorado Odyssey Part 2 Turn Key Parks & Natural Areas 11 09-24-2006 11:32 PM
Guadalupe River SP, Spring, 2004 (Part 2 of 2) Turn Key Parks & Natural Areas 2 05-19-2004 10:00 AM
Guadalupe River SP, Spring, 2004 (Part 1 of 2) Turn Key Parks & Natural Areas 1 05-15-2004 08:38 PM


All times are GMT -5. The time now is 06:59 AM.


Powered by vBulletin 3.8.3, Copyright © 2009 Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
Content Relevant URLs by vBSEO 3.3.0