Maps are friends, not for fools.
A few days spent in Flower Mound gave us plenty of time to explore parks. There are an abundance of them within a 2 hour drive of Kaylee’s house, and, luckily for us, the state parks in north Texas are not very popular (we have to make reservations for parks at least 2 weeks in advance in central Texas when we are at my family’s house). This gave us an opportunity to go to Cedar Hill State Park last minute. We woke up and decided to get going. We made our reservation that day, bam easy as pie.
Cedar Hill is the closest state park in proximity to Kaylee’s house, about a 45 minute drive south in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex barring traffic. The drive down was smooth sailing; the hiking, however, was not.
A part of Cedar Hill State Park that makes it a little unique is that they have a full farm setup in the park with historic labels and placards describing what life was on the farm for the Penn family. The Penn family moved down from Illinois when the US government was offering land grants for westward expansion in the mid 1800s. They worked the land and even had tenant farmers, which are people who were able to work the Penn family’s land in exchange for housing, use of equipment, and 50% of their harvest went to the Penn’s as payment. It was amazing to see how the entire operation ran with the old farming equipment and multitude of barns, sheds, and homesteads. In the Penn Farm area of Cedar Hill you are able to explore everything that the Penn’s used and built, and that is a very great experience. Beware of tarantula’s though (Kaylee wouldn’t even enter the barn that it was in).
The rest of the park was entirely different. Heck, we even forgot multiple times that the Penn Farm was part of this park. We walked out of the Penn Farm and were going to take a trail that connected up down the road. I usually pride myself in my ability to decipher maps, but let me tell you, I got lost. It took us close 20 minutes to find this trail and a double back as well to retrace our path. We finally found it and it was overrun.
This trail in particular is labeled on the trails map for Cedar Hill State Park, but when you get to the ground at Cedar Hill State Park the trail is not terribly labeled. By that I mean the majority of the trail is under development. It was a walkable trail just a little too high on the grass and brush around the trail. It did lead to 2 pretty stunning areas that overlooked the east shore of Joe Pool Lake. Both were easy to get to up to a certain point, the trail that connected them gave us trouble. It took nearly an hour to make it less than a mile to a different trailhead. It was fun.
Once we got to the second scenic view area we had a decision to make. There were still trails to explore, but there was a time quota to hit. As you know, Kaylee and I like to take our lunch to the parks and get back before dinner. This time (since it was a spur of the moment decision) we had eaten lunch beforehand and had not packed ourselves any dinner. We needed to make it back before dinner. It was around 3:30. Sadly, we had to nix some of the trails and only go on a couple more to make it home by dinner. We had left the car at the Penn Farm thinking we would be coming back soon but ended up walking through the rest of our time at Cedar Hill.
The last part of our state park day was making it out to yet another scenic overlook point. Yeah, I know! There were 3 of them in this park! This one was different. It had a view of the surrounding hillsides instead of the lake. More of greenery than a waterscape. We took some last minute pictures, took a quick rest, then walked the rest of the distance back to the Penn Farm and where the car was parked.
Even on the way out the maps failed us. We routed how to get out of the park and it led us to a back exit that was for authorized personnel only. Seeing as the only place Kaylee and I were authorized personnel was Texas A&M sporting events, we had to get out by way of the headquarters. Somehow the map took us to a Krispy Kreme in Cedar Hill. Crazy, right?? It was National Donut Day sometime that week, so from June 1-5 they were giving out free donuts. We got ours then it was back to Flower Mound. I guess the lesson here is, don’t trust maps. I’ll still trust them though.
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