Mr. & Mrs. Vandebilt + kids

As we get further southwest we plan on visiting as many of the national parks as we can. In preparation for this we thought we would do a practice run on a popular off-leash trail in Austin. We loaded up the dog’s new backpack full of our water, drove to the other side of the city and set off.

To be clear, this was more of a walk in the woods than a hike, or so we thought. We were not wearing hiking gear. We did not have snacks. We did bring water, and had an idea of how long the trail was but that’s about the extent of the preparation. After about 15 minutes of walking we came to a rather significant stream. We could see rocks that, in theory, could be used to help cross but they were mostly underwater. Since we didn’t really want to turn around after just arriving we all took off our socks and shoes, much to Charlie’s discomfort, and crossed. Turns out this was the first of four such crossings. We finally made it past all of the “rivers” to find the rest of the trail was just one big mud pit.

The few people we met along our travels mentioned they were surprised by the amount of water, and all seemed quite excited that there was water. Roland agreed. The rest of us were getting a bit tired of taking our shoes off every 10 minutes.

In the end, we made it back to the car. We only had one person fall into the water. Luckily dad was willing to carry her the rest of the way.