Colorado Bend State Park

We left Thursday for Colorado Bend State Park in Bend, Texas which is a little over 2 hours away from Austin. Once we finally arrived it was looking pretty cloudy, but since there was only a 40% chance of rain we didn't expect too much. However, all of us Texans should know that Texas weather does what it wants to do and there's no use in relying on predictions. It started raining HARD as soon as we got our backpacks out of the car and got the dogs' pack put on them. We ran over to the bathrooms and huddled under the awning for at least an hour to let the storm pass. Once it let up and it didn't look like a scene from a hurricane movie, we took off. Luckily our hike was less than a mile because parts of the trail were completely washed out. It took awhile to maneuver, but we finally reached the hike-in camping area. Right as we were putting stuff in the tent I looked up and there was a nice huge, dark cloud coming our way. I told Bo that it was great he was setting everything up so nice, but if he didn't start throwing stuff in the tent we were going to get soaked.


Not only did we get soaked, but we got hailed on too. The dogs don't stay in the tent with us, but they are able to squeeze up under one of the vestibules of the rain-fly so they were sheltered. Right before the hail hit, Brodie decided to play stray dog and actually sat outside of the vestibule in the rain. He apparently decided domesticated life was better when the hail came.


Friday morning came and the rain had stopped. However, I managed to somehow knock my boot out from under the other vestibule and it was soaked. It had hail in it too. Luckily we carry (those ugly) crocs with us so I at least had those to wear back. Since it was so muddy we decided to pack up and leave. We had planned on hiking most of Friday, but since everything was soggy we didn't want to damage the trails. Soggy is probably an understatement.

We packed up our stuff and packed up the dogs (who also carried our boots – haha!) and headed the .8 miles back to the parking lot. Since the dogs were muddy and the skies were clear we decided to go out and play in the Colorado River. Cannon isn’t a huge fan of water and Brodie isn’t sure what is going on when we put him in water. I think we all had fun though. The river was beautiful. The sun was out and we ended up having a great time.


Apparently we made a good decision by not staying Friday night because I think they were hit again by another pretty bad storm. Once it cools down, we’re hoping to return. It’s a beautiful area and the park has many trails. So hopefully we’ll have a little more detailed report next time. For a few more pictures click here.