Our campsite was your basic parking lot.
We went down to the visitor center this morning and asked about the best hike to take. We decided to take the McKitrick Canyon Trail. This canyon is said to be the prettiest place in Texas. It is a nice hike but we won't have high expectations for the rest of Texas now. The trail rises only about 400 feet in the 3.2 miles we hiked. We then returned back the same path.
After about a mile on the trail, there are more trees and it gets more green and there is water in the river occasionally. It flows under the rock river bed a lot though. When is on the surface, it is very nice. We even saw some flowers thanks to the butterflies for letting us know where they were, down in the leaf litter.
We looked at the Pratt Lodge, the home of the man who donated the property for the park. It is a nice rock house with a slate rock roof. We had a nice ham, Munster cheese, and red pepper sandwiches for lunch. I make good sandwiches even if I do have to say so. We enjoyed a rest in Adirondack chairs on the deck at the lodge. We then continued on to the Grotto, a small cave with a bunch of eroded rocks that looks a lot like stalactites, stalagmites and columns,
We also saw the Hunter's cabin which is where we turned around. From there, the trail does continue on but starts climbing the canyon wall and heads up into the wilderness.
We saw very few critters and few birds were heard. Don't know why because it is a nice area. There are some rainbow trout in one of the ponds. I understand there are no natural breeding trout in Texas except for one location. Is this it? One interesting thing is that the fox evidently travel the trail and there favorite place to poop is on top of big rocks in the middle of the trail. Strange!
We left about 3:30 and headed East stopping for the night in Monahan Sandhills SP about 30 miles East of Pecos, Texas. There are sand dunes here, a beech in the middle of Texas. Our site has electric and water for $17.
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