Trip Report

The Good

• Learning some valuable camping lessons, namely: check your gear (see below).
• Realizing (in hindsight) that the staff at Academy Sports and Outdoors may really know that of which they speak.
• Seeing a double rainbow during a downpour.
• Experiencing the curious pleasure of being rained upon when the sky was blue and the sun was shining.
• Finding that peanut butter and jelly really can be eaten for days on end with gusto and no ill effects.
• Running into another solo hiker on a lovely trail and sharing several hours of conversation and hiking tips (the best: take long day hikes but carry a hammock and stove so you can have a leisurely mid-hike break).
• Meeting a friendly Great Dane on a trail who snuffled his head under my chin and let me stroke his ears.
• Loving the spent feeling of have hiked for hours in sunshine and fresh air.
• Driving new roads and going through quaint small towns.
• Getting away from It All.
• Watching two geese flying low one morning over a misty lake, their white necks stretched long.
• Sitting in my posh lawnchair (it's a rocker style and very comfy) reading a trashy novel in the shade of a tree.
• Stopping in Austin to shop and crushing out on hippie boys with copious uncombed hair and body odor. Sigh.
• Wishing I'd brought running shoes for an early morning jog.
• Spotting armadillos!
  

The Bad

• Finding that my tent was missing its rain guard, right as the skies began to cloud up.
• Driving many miles in a raging downpour and galeforce winds to an REI and an Academy in search of an impromptu rainfly; politely turning down the staff member's suggestions that I purchase some tent stakes for the rain tarp.
• Driving back to campsite to find the site shockingly empty! No tent, no lawnchair! I'd been robbed! Gasp in outrage and disbelief.
• Fuming as I drive to the ranger station to report this scandalous theft only to see in the distance, approximately a football field away from my site, an upside-down, waterlogged tent that looks suspiciously identical to mine.
• Dragging a waterlogged, upside tent across muddy fields, cursing all the way.
• Finding that trashy novel is now soaked through and unreadable.
• Realizing my tent stakes blew away with the tent.
• Driving back to REI (Closed. Curses!) and Academy to buy tent stakes and a host of other items that suddenly seem direly important (a mallet! a swiss army knife! rope! batteries!)
• Setting up tent and rain fly in pitch dark drizzle.
• Slinging my hammock at second campsite in second park, only to find that string has rotted and breaks as soon as I sit in it. Retire to picnic table bench in ignominious defeat.
• Fearing for my life during second night when, after a perfectly sunny day, a howling wind blows all night along river canyon, sounding like a banshee. The improvised rain tarp snaps loudly all night, until it is blown away by said howling wind. Take chase to recover tarp.
• Staring up through exposed tent dome at large tree limb overhead that sways menacingly with each howling shot of wind; imagine dent it will leave in my forehead.
• Scrambling to re-erect rain flap when unexpected downpour begins an hour later.
• Falling on ass on muddy slope and feeling snap of heretofore-unknown ass muscle.
• Driving in circles for 30 minutes in search of obscure county road.
• Bringing ten books to read in spectacular display of overpacking and barely cracking one.
  

The Ugly

• Never finding posh lawnchair despite an exhaustive search; conclude it has blown into the lake and met a watery death.
• Not monitoring a certain female process and bleeding through two pairs of shorts in two days.
• Tramping off-trail straight into a patch of noxious, stinging plants that stung my legs for a good hour.
  

The Upshot

Now I've got the hiking bug and have a whole list of trails I'd like to check out. May have to set aside a monthly "hiking fund" to bankroll these activities. I did have one insight during the trip worth documenting: I felt very happy physically the whole long weekend -- no stomach aches, no feelings of "fatness" or sloth or inertia. I felt very grounded in my body, very present. I realized that the times I feel out-of-sorts and out-of-tune physically are almost always at work. It's was like psychosomatic clobber over the head.

Here are some pictures:


Am fascinated by these gnarly, loopy vines. What the heck are they?



Gorman Falls



Spicewood Springs



The canyon walls along which the punishing wind howled: