Camping

We've been looking for a weekend to take a little camping trip with the dogs. Between August and Thanksgiving, we found a single weekend where one of us wasn't working and we were both in town. It was the weekend before Halloween. (Sure, the post is late, but better late than never...) I got home from a work trip at midnight on Friday night, and we headed out Saturday mid morning. We went to a state park about an hour and a half north of Austin called Colorado Bend State Park. It was really a lovely park, and the weather was so beautiful that weekend that it was packed. We hadn't reserved a campsite, which was almost a problem. But not a terrible loss because we wanted one of the sites that requires a pretty significant hike-in (about a mile) to try to get the dogs away from the crowds.

Saturday afternoon, we first hiked into our campsite. (Note to selves: we need a new tent; the one we have is a six-person two room tent, which is simply not made for carrying any distance at all. Plus we discovered a pretty substantial hole...luckily it didn't rain, and Tim's an expert tent surgeon.) Once we were at the site, we got everything set up. The dogs behaved surprisingly well, especially with a river just across the way and us not allowing them to jump in it. Our campsite:

Sure, we had a slight amount of concern about the very large tree we put our tent under, but we figured it hadn't fallen all the way over yet, so what were the chances it would do so that night?

After all that was set up, we took a pretty short hike with the dogs (about 3 miles, maybe). It was in the 80s and Hannah got pretty hot. We bought the dogs a little backpack (think saddlebags for dogs) so they could carry their own water and such. I think Hannah got a bit tired (she was tasked with carrying it most of the time):


After we got back from the walk (and the park had some really nice trails), we made some dinner (dehydrated something to which we just had to add boiling water). As an aside here, Tim purchased himself a little backpacking stove before we went out, and this little thing can boil something like a liter of water in three minutes. And it weighs practically nothing. Anyway, dinner was adequate (I really didn't feel very good, so nothing would have tasted good), the dogs gobbled up their dinner, and we got ourselves ready to turn in. Everyone was quite tired, including the pups, but apparently they weren't up for sleeping with nothing between them and the ground but a tarp and the tent floor. Their pillow beds here at home have spoiled them. And in a goldilocks style event, Tims's sleeping bag wasn't quite good enough for them either. So this is what I had to deal with all night:

I finally got them to move enough so I could get inside my sleeping bag, but all night anytime I tried to move, I had to shove one of them with my foot to get some slack in the sleeping bag. Two asides about the night: 1) the dogs had to get up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, and we were forced to get out with them, only to be greeted by the most beautiful night sky we've ever seen, and 2) I've determined that peeing outside is not for me (a mile+ is a little too far to walk to facilities at 2 in the morning, it turns out...). The dogs were pretty good, even with all the sounds of wildlife outside the tent and a few other dogs within earshot. They quieted down pretty quickly and pretty well.

We got up in the morning and cleaned up our campsite. We'd put some thought into going to look at the gorgeous waterfall they apparently have in the park, but you can only get there on a guided tour, and they don't allow dogs on the tour. Neither one of us was willing to single handedly chaperone the dogs for two hours, so we opted for some different hikes instead. We trolled around the park for another 4 hours or so and got to see some little waterfalls at least. By the time we were finished with this, we were pooped (or at least I was pooped) so we headed home. Here are a few more views of the park: