This Pano is made up of 12 vertical pictures

My friend B.J. called to see if I wanted to take a hike. I had been thinking about it and her call quickly made up my mind for me.  I had a Doctors appointment in the morning so we arranged to meet around 12:30 pm or so. She suggested McKinney Falls which has a nice blacktop pathway that circles the park. Easy walking seemed like a good idea. I arrived at McKinney Falls only to find a long line of cars that extended down the main highway. Quick to react, I texted B.J. to tell her to head for McKinney Roughs and that I would be about 25 minutes behind her. Neither of us like crowded trailways and lots of people around. Kinda defeats the purpose.

B.J. was already there when I arrived at McKinney Roughs sitting and enjoying the sun. As usual, it took me a while  to get all of my gear together and this time, I opted for just one camera with the Tamron 16-300 lens which is my goto lens for general photography work. I like it because not only can I get a good distance shot, I can also take close ups, almost macro’s.

We opted to take the trails that are within the center of the park and started off by walking down Ridge until we came to Bluff Trail Loop. As the name suggests, it is a fairly big loop with easy walking trails although a bit steep in a some places. Sometimes, it seemed like a lot of uphills. The completed Loop brought us back onto Ridge from which, we walked Woodland back to the Parking Lot. The entire loop was around 4.4 miles of very pleasant walking and lots of interesting conversation. At the very start of the walk, we passed a Live Oak that had a vine attached to it that had quite literally, grown into the bark that covers the tree as the picture shows.

Along the way, we met several people who, like us, were enjoying the great outdoors. One lady stopped to talk to us and she had a couple of friendly Texas Cattle Dogs to keep her company. Both were on leashes and they were big enough to help going up the hilly parts of the trail.

When we arrived back in the Office and Garden area, we spent some time looking at the ponds and the new flower plantings that they have just done. One of the Park employees came over and chatted to us about the flowers. He was very interesting and knowledgeable and could even quote the Latin names of the plants. He directed us to one Mountain Laurel bush that had a lot of flowers and mentioned that they had spotted something like 20 different species of butterfly in the past few days but there were not any that I could take a picture as we stood there.

We walked back to our vehicles and chatted a while longer before we parted company, B.J. to go grocery shopping in Bastrop which is where she lives and me for the long drive home. Altogether, a very delightful hike.

Below is a video of the different trails that we covered.

McKinney Roughs 3-16-2018 from Francis Allcorn on Vimeo.

Written 03/18/2018