Date: April 13, 2007
After a day of preparing to tow my pop-up camper, and family 2 hours into the Texas Hill Country (Read: Freaking out and blowing up at everyone/thing) my wife and I pick up the kids from school about an hour early and head out. As is typical, I over-react to her reactions (or over-reactions, if you ask me) and we somewhere along the line start to bicker.
In typical fashion the kids are blankly staring out the windows trying to ignore the barbs the adults are exchanging. They take comfort in, as my step-son put it,” Once, we get there and set up, everyone will be HAPPY!” lol - Okay, so We stop in Sabinal at an obviously podunk gas station for some bags of ice and hot dogs (D’OH! Left’em at home….lotta good the day of prep seems like now…) So, I grab a pack of wieners and two twenty pound bags of ice. As usual, fashion, only one and one fourth of the two bags actually fit in the cooler…so I set the bag on top and go about my merry Hill Country cruise.
About 20 feet out of the parking lot, we encounter a railroad crossing, with flashing lights and arms down…and no train in sight. Of course, I being my-stubborn-self, decide to not ‘take the easy way out’ and turn down the road that wasn’t blocked by crossing guard arms. I could have done that, but, nooooooo. I pull snugly up to the vehicle in front of me and patiently (read: with boiling blood) as a parade of cars simply makes the easy series of turns which would have put me in a clear path, and of course, by this time, yet another brainless lemming pulls -directly- behind me, now blocking my escape. Soon enough, the kids and wife are quizzically looking around to spot the source of the train-crossing jam. Slowly, a U-Pac (Union-Pacific, our local railroad mafia) service vehicle shimmies down the tracks. About a full 5 minutes later the arms lift, and we go about our way.
My wife, who had been to camps in the area near Garner and so she had printed up “the road less traveled” directions. (without pre-reading them at the house….) And so, at some point, the directions Microsoft had given us started refering to “local roads”….WTF!??!?!??!?!??!?!?! LOCAL ROADS? I’m not local, how would I spot one….? After I begin to calm down a bit and start to get my bearing on my location and where I need to go, and my wife and I’s guesses just happen to be good enough to lead us to the right road, I come across it….The Frio River. Not, “a bridge over the Frio”, but “The FRIO over the road”. (…Um….I don’t think this is the right way honey….) So, going against every bit of good sense beaten into my skull over the years…I begin to forge the river, with my camper and family in tow. Of course, I was being a sissy, of course everything came out alright, and minus the metaphorical change of pants and heart attack, we got on our way.
We slowly meander our way to the entrance of Garner State Park, to find a fairly full parking lot, and a fourty minute wait to check into your camp site. (This was at 4pm on a Friday, my advice = Get there at 2PM at the latest to quick check in on weekends) And so we fight our way (literally) to the camp-site and camp setup and such, and finally settle into some fun while camping. (See, nothing to this Friday the 13th crap!)
The kids play, my wife and I hang out and laugh with/at each other and start to make dinner. About 5 minutes before dinner “should have been cooked” the clouds whip up, dark and fast and the wind starts to blow in a heavy northern gust. (In Texas that means STORM! See, the warm coastal, and consequently more humid air collides in the upper atmosphere with the air from up north with is subsequently more cool and dry….and this makes some fantastic thunderstorms) And so, the kids come scurrying back to camp and we frantically strap-down or put up anything but the truck and the camper and get inside. Fat drops of rain start to fall as we finish just in time.
We collect ourselves and our food inside and settle in to ride out the storm. The rain drums loudly on the camper’s metal roof and at some point we decide, it’s too loud to be just rain….So, I bravely unzip a window, just a crack, and to my surprise in the dusky Texas twilight I could see small pebble sized hail hitting the ground. So, now I’m TOTALLY freaking out, on the inside. Being that I’m the “man of the house” and I’m with my family, they can’t see I’m about to lose it, so i get out the weather-band radio. I try in vain to get a signal and come up short….no breaking news, no AM Talk news, no “Tune to FM 103.1 for Emergency Information”, just a lone classic Country and Tejano station to pass the time.
Just then the weather seems to break, and the sound of rain is less cacophonous than before, I check out the door and discover, the storm is over and the sky is now clear and the air chilled. After another short sprinkle the weather remains nice for sitting by a fire and talking the evening away. (OMG I’m so glad today is over!)
Date: 04-14-2007
Weather: Cold and Windy High Temp: 64 Low Temp 46
HOooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooly COW!!!! It’s really, really cold now. I wake up and start to brew coffee, and a fire. I browse the trail topographical map for the park and start to mental pick the trails I like. ( Since I can actually read a topographical map, I pick out a few trails for me with the kids (9 and 13 / girl and boy respectively) as well as some that might be more challenging for the more proficient hikers. (my step-son and I) The family slowly rises shortly after the Sun and my wife makes breakfast tacos.
Soon after breakfast the kids and I head out to hike some trails in the hills around Garner (more details to come in the “Tails from the Trials” section), after an interesting 2 hour hike, we come back to camp and eat some lunch, and my step son and I prepare yet another hike. (Okay, I’m a nut, 4 miles in the Hill Country in a day isn’t too much for me, and actually it’s just not enough.)
About an hour and a half later we get back to camp and hang out, after dinner, we head down “The Pavillion”, a part of Garner State Park which is now an institution. On Spring Saturday nights, and every night from Memorial Day to Labor Day there is a DJ dance party outside at night. We go to find music playing and not a soul in sight other than the DJ. So, we decide to drive around scout out new, better or more preferred campsites. ( a favorite past-time of the whole family…..lol how sick is that) After a tour of the parks campsites we swing back by the pavillion to find it vacant again.
Not to be outdone, my wife in a stroke of genius offers the children an alternative. “We could go back to the campsite and make S’mores with PEEPS!” We actually bought the kit to do so. They’re good, but let them cool first, that outer sugar coating can get extremely hot. So, the kids bought it, and we kill yet another night sitting around the fire, eventually retiring to the camper to play Phase 10, due to the chill in the air. (Wow, today was fun!)
Date: 04-15-2007
Weather: Sunny, Chilly, Breezy (but not GUSTY, like the day before) High Temp: 78 Low Temp: 50-something
Wake up early again, and like the morning before, just miss capturing the sunrise on video, I’ll have to do that next time. The family slowly wakes up just as my step-son and I had been readying ourselves for a morning hike without the girls. So, we settle in for breakfast and decide instead to take more family friendly hike and include my wife and step-daughter. A brisk 2 hours or so later, we’re back at camp making hot-dogs and getting ready to leave, after a short swim the kids join us and we prepare to head home. (Oh my, GARNER, this place is beautiful!)
I would HIGHLY recommend a stay at this park, while I stayed in what is known as “new Garner” I still had alot of fun and didn’t have to deal with the day use crowds around my campsite ( a common problem with the “old Garner” sites, though all the concessions, gift shop, and TWPD store are in old Garner, and a bike or a car is almost required to travel between the two, I still really enjoyed this park fully intend to come back to hike and swim more.