Just under a year ago, we decided to buy a small travel trailer. It’s nothing special, but it does the job. I was more than a little nervous about pulling a large trailer over long distances, since, up to that point in my life, I had never pulled a trailer of any size for any distance. As it turns out, it really isn’t a big deal, and in a weird way, it’s almost fun.
We’ve been camping seven times since last February, and all but one of our trips have been to Texas State Parks. The other trip was to a national recreation area. Since we have a state parks pass, these camping trips are very cheap. By comparison, I was recently looking around at RV resorts and was shocked to see that many of the nicer ones cost as much or more than some hotels we’ve stayed in. We don’t typically stay at the Four Seasons or anything, but still.
The RV resorts also tend to pack the RVs in like sardines, which is not ideal. In that sense, the state parks are nice because most of them have a substantial amount of space between the campsites. Most of the time, we can spread out and enjoy the scenery without being right on top of some other family.
I’d intended to recap our camping trips, but so much happened on each of our trips, and I really don’t want to bore folks anymore than normal. I decided instead to do a one sentence summary of each of our camping trips. I’m not sure how well this will work out, but here it goes.
Martin Dies, Jr. State Park, February 2022: The overnight low temperature the first night dipped just below freezing, but it warmed up enough that the rest of the trip was a great way to start our camping adventures.
Fairfield Lake State Park, April 2022: Fairfield quickly became one of our favorite parks because of how scenic and clean the entire park is, and we found out that our dog will walk right into the lake if we let him even though he doesn’t like to swim.
Garner State Park, June 2022: The Frio river was so low that there was barely any water in some spots, but the swimming area near the dam still made Garner worth the six hours it took to get there.
Cagle Recreation Area, June 2022: This trip was with my wife’s family, three days after we got back from Garner, and it was so hot, I got dizzy from heat exhaustion (and probably lack of sleep), but it was good family time.
McKinney Falls State Park, October 2022: Camping in a park inside Austin city limits on my (unseasonably warm) birthday weekend made this more of a “glamping” trip in some ways.
Fairfield Lake State Park, November 2022: Our second time to Fairfield was even more eventful as we took our recently acquired second dog on a camping trip with us and found out that he really likes eating acorns.
Fort Parker State Park, January 2023: Even though it is small (only 25 RV sites) and the RV pads are a little uneven without much space between them in some cases, Fort Parker is easily our new favorite park because of the natural beauty…and the fact that it is so small.
We have a few more trips planned over the next few months. Some are in the same places. Some will be completely new. Rest assured, all of them will be an adventure in some way.
Reflections Of A Middle Aged Nobody 