Enchanted Rock: wet and cold
I’ve been wanting to revisit Enchanted Rock for years now, but there’s never been quite enough time around the holidays to make the two and a half hour trek—until this year. And as luck would have it, after several beautiful days in Austin, on the appointed Enchanted Rock day, it rained. A lot. I was about to throw in the towel, but Dad and Stephanie said “Why not?” so we hopped in the car and started heading west.
We arrived around 11. Stephanie figured we were just going to look at the rock. Dad was like “Naw, I’ve got ponchos!” And sure enough, he unearthed two ponchos from the trunk. Stephanie was skeptical. I was worried it would be slippery. We started up the granite dome and discovered we had enough traction. Stephanie’s reaction: “Typical boys…”
It’s not a hard hike, but it’s not easy with a sheet of water running down the surface. Amazingly we weren’t the only ones on the rock that day, but when we got to the top, we had it all to ourselves. After a quick photo of the three of us huddled together, we carefully waddled back down with visions of the warm lunch in Fredericksburg that awaited us.
I used to love camping there when I lived in Houston. If you get back with good weather, the jumble of rocks between the big dome and the little dome makes for some really interesting exploration. Lots of little caves, awkward climbs, etc. Interesting technical climbing too.
Yeah, I’ve actually been there at least once before, while I lived in Austin during high school. I don’t know what my parents were thinking at the time, but they let us go into the crevices without headlamps or anything. Wish we could have done that again, but alas.
I am always suprised witch extraordinary natural distinctions there in the states !! – wow ..looks like a big, big century egg ;-))