Guadalupe River State Park & A Texas State Parks Pass
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After enjoying our limited stay in Davis Mountains State Park a couple of weeks ago, we thought we’d give another Texas State Park a try. We’d picked up an excellent Texas State Parks brochure in Langtry and noted that an annual state parks pass was $70. The pass saved the cost of park entry and daily usage and significantly discounted camping fees.
With 89 state parks to choose from, we figured it’d be worth the dollars to invest in the pass. Being an engineer and a Scotsman, David kept track of our savings for the first few parks and once we hit $100 in savings, he figured he’d gotten his money’s worth. We would soon find that each park had its own personality, its own unique aspects to discover and each offered a few surprises.
Guadalupe River State Park is a lovely park on the (you guessed it) Guadalupe River between San Antonio and Austin in what Texans refer to as the Hill Country part of the state. We arrived late afternoon after a foraging run to WalMart and a ~200 mile drive from Del Rio. We set out our camp chairs under a huge, shady live oak tree. Using the park map, we headed to the Barred Owl Trail which connected to the Live Oak Trail for an easy 1.5 mile walk to stretch and check out our surroundings. We saw nary a barred owl (nor did we actually expect to), but we did see lots of live oaks draped in Spanish moss aka Old Man’s Beard and encountered a few blooming wildflowers that were new to us.
False garlic
Texas vervain
Back at camp, we were relaxing a bit before dinner when an armadillo trotted past us right through the campsite. I was thrilled. Other than flat armadillos along the roadside, I’d never seen an armadillo before in the wild and certainly not an armadillo nonchalantly ambling and snuffling a few feet from my chair. I followed him with my camera, but he was too busy snuffling and clawing the ground to pay any attention to me.
Seeing one made me curious about these odd looking animals. First of all, there are 21 species of armadillos, 20 of which live in South America. Only one species, the 9-banded armadillo, lives in the southern USA and it happens to be the state animal of Texas, no less. Some folks refer to them as “hillbilly speed bumps”… kind of rude.
Armadillo in Spanish translates to ‘little armored one’. Most armadillos don’t roll up into balls when they’re frightened because they have too many plates. Our 9-banded species tend to jump 2-3 feet straight up into the air when they’re frightened. They sleep ~16 hours a day; they can run up to 30 miles/hour and they can swim. They’re omnivores preferring mostly insects and I learned they can eat up to 40,000 ants in a single day. Impressive! 9-banded armadillos always have four identical pups in every litter and the collective noun for armadillos is a ‘roll’… a roll of armadillos… very apropos. A little known fact about armadillos… they can transmit Hansen’s Disease (leprosy) to humans. Your nature lesson for the day with my compliments.
Cardinals are common here… but not to us.
On another topic… Guess it’s that time of year when campgrounds are starting to get really busy. We’d only booked into Guadalupe River SP for one night and when we tried to extend our stay, we found there was ‘no room at the inn’ and other nearby campgrounds were full or nearly full. It seems these state campgrounds require that disdained word in our vocabulary… reservations! That means, of course, planning in advance, knowing where we want to go and potentially ‘rushing’ (worse than reservations) to get there.
This is definitely not our way. What if we want to stay an extra day somewhere? That would screw up the ‘schedule’, wouldn’t it? What if we want to linger along the route or don’t feel like driving any further? What if we make reservations for two days, but don’t feel like staying? Oh, my… what a dilemma for inveterate, spontaneous wanderers who hate making plans in advance. We concluded that we’d have to bite the bullet if we wanted state park campsites especially on the weekends and, reluctantly, we booked a couple of sites in advance, hoping we wouldn’t regret it.
The next morning was bright and sunny, cool enough for a pleasant morning walk, though the promise of a hot, humid afternoon was predicted..The park has a network of connecting trails and we walked on about five of them for good views of the river and a few miles on our shoes. This area is home to the endangered golden cheeked-warbler, but we weren’t lucky enough to spot one. Having seen an armadillo, however, I was already feeling pretty lucky.
We’d also been fortunate enough to snag a couple of nights at McKinney Falls State Park, an oasis within Austin city limits, and we were off to claim our site. McKinney turned out to be abloom in wildflowers and a fine place to camp… except for the worms.
A little teaser there till next time.