Kidlet Day Trip to Guadalupe River SP - Wild Texas Forums: Parks, Travel & Recreation

Shannon · 04-08-2009, 04:11 PM

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

camperone · 04-08-2009, 04:35 PM

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!

Troop198 · 04-08-2009, 07:54 PM

great shots, we are heading out this week to Ft. Parker SP, near Mexia so this was a nice fix

srds · 04-08-2009, 10:56 PM

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

JohnK · 04-09-2009, 07:50 PM

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

Glad you had a nice outing!

JohnK

kidsluvscience · 06-14-2009, 12:08 PM

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.

Electric Water Boy · 06-20-2009, 11:08 AM

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.

kidsluvscience · 06-23-2009, 01:18 PM

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...

camperone · 06-23-2009, 01:46 PM

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.

Electric Water Boy · 06-24-2009, 08:11 PM

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.

happybooker1 · 07-11-2009, 10:43 PM

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.

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