Oh, the places you'll go!

This weekend we headed out to the Texas hill country. David and I have been wanting to go for quite a while. David had just got off nights so we headed out to a state park that wasn't too far away. We spent our first night at Stephen F. Austin State Park . It wasn't too bad but I don't think it quited down until 2 a.m.! After that we both ended up waking up early- go figure! So we went hiking. They had a neat area to hike in. Not a big area of hiking but there were lots of bridges and you could follow a stream around. We saw a whole herd of deer and some really neat woodpeckers. Then, David drove me to a town he used to go to as a kid and we ate picnic lunch by the river. The water looked like ocean water it was so clear and blue. Then we drove to Blanco state park. We arrived and tried to reserve a camping site but they were already booked so we drove to Guadalupe State Park and by the time we got to the lady they had two "water" spots left. We were pretty excited to hear that b/c they told another couple that was in front of us that they were completely booked, which they were, in the areas that had electricity. We set up our tent and then went down and swam in the river. It was pretty chilly but it was fun. The water was flowing so fast though a couple of parts that it about knocked me over. We swam up the river for a while and then sat down and let us push us down stream. We went back to our camp site, cleaned up, and drove to the closest town. We found what I think was their only sit down restaurant. The food was good! We had ribs with beans, corn, and bread! It was a MUCH quieter park! The next day we went back to Blanco and then to Pedernales Sate Park. Pedernales was by far and away our favorite park! Talk about amazing and beautiful. We went to a bird observatory and watched some birds and then went to see the falls. The falls were really neat, not that there were any big waterfalls just little tiny ones every once in a while. But, you could hike up the river bed on the big rocks. We would have loved to stay and hike longer but after a little while it got dark and we felt a sprinkle or two. We had saw a picture of what that area looked like flooded after 5 minutes of rain and figured we had better head out! We look forward to going back there some day and can't wait to take our child- the places he/she'll go!