The first time is the best. Finding out what is beautiful in your eyes: the way the water moves through the Falls and down the river, the way the rocks and caves have formed. Discovering nature is always like it's the first time.
It’s funny how some things always hit you the hardest because they are the first. Like the first time you rode a bike or the first time you played catch with your dad in the yard. It’s never quite the same after that. I had been to multiple other state parks in Texas before Pedernales Falls on March 8, 2020, but it was the first time I had gone into nature with Kaylee. Knowing full and well that she was a city girl born and raised in the suburbs of Dallas/Fort Worth, I still wanted to experience this kind of outdoorsy stuff with her.
We were staying at my family’s house in Smithville, TX. It was the very beginning of spring break for Texas A&M (our last spring break as students since Kaylee will be graduating in December), and we had had plans to go to Pedernales Falls State Park for about a week prior. We woke up early that morning and headed out, it was a little under two hours to get there on the complete opposite side of Austin. We arrived and didn’t really know what to expect. The volunteer at the park headquarters gave us a trails map and wished us a good day at the park with a farewell, “take lots of cool pictures and share them with us on social media!” Obviously directed at Kaylee with her camera draped around her neck.
Not knowing what to do first, we decided to hit up what the Texas Parks and Wildlife like to call ‘Points of Interest’ on their trails maps. There was the one that is the namesake of the park, Pedernales Falls. The Pedernales River winds through the Hill Country in central Texas and has pretty blue waters since it flows out of a natural spring and through many limestone basins. We headed down the trail to where the falls were. We came out on a sandy flat that led down to the river and the falls did not disappoint. Beautiful flowing water that cascades down a series of rock levels with big limestone bluffs in the background. We stared in admiration for a quick second then decided we wanted to see more of the river before actually going to the falls.
We walked downstream and found cool looking rocks that spiked out of the water to try and take cool nature pictures on. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t. Kaylee is an excellent photographer, but you gotta have a good model which I am not. This was realistically Kaylee’s first time photographing nature, so I told her that nature’s beauty is in the eye of the beholder and she will find the things that interest her the more time we spend outdoors.
We spent more time than anticipated down on the river. It included a brave attempt by yours truly to jump off a rock and onto solid ground, a painfully slow climb off a rock by Kaylee, and a lot of sand finding its way into our shoes. But then it was time for the falls.
More people had arrived since we went exploring downriver. The falls area was hopping with others trying to take in the views or watch the way the water slipped down the eroded passageways it had carved out of the rock over millions of years. Taking each level one at a time, we found spots for cool pictures of the river and rock formations and also had time for a couples photo or two. (By the way, due to our shyness, we never ask other people to take our picture for us. We just set the camera up and use a self timer.) After we reached the top tier of the falls we continued upriver and found a pool with a dugout cave in a limestone cliff and sat for a while taking it in and chatting (yes we do talk to each other… sometimes). We walked further and discovered another waterfall feature with a rocky riverbed. We wanted to take pictures of our Aggie Rings because that’s the Aggie thing to do. We began to set up a little platform to get the waterfall in the background of our rings, and then a group of people showed and didn’t leave for 20 minutes. All we wanted was a quick shot of our rings and we would be on our way. We finally got what we wanted then decided to go check out the rest of the park.
Let me tell you, it was dull. We walked a trail to another ‘Point of Interest’ on the trails map called Duck Pond which turned out to be a glorified puddle. We still got to be out in nature, so it’s hard to complain. However, after experiencing the river and the falls area, it was a bit of a disappointment to see the rest of the park. We got a couple more pictures of the two of us at a little overlook area on a side creek and headed out of Pedernales Falls State Park and back through Austin to my family’s home in Smithville.
The first time is the best, learning what makes sense to you and what makes beauty in your eyes. With every state park we have visited, Kaylee and I have kept a makeshift poll on our favorites. Pedernales Falls started at number one and has since not left the top spot. Now we know that it most likely won’t remain there after visiting all 78 Texas State Parks, but it’ll always be the first we went to together and that is something special.
DISCLAIMER: Deciding to start this up in the midst of the plague, it has been a while since we have been to some of the state parks. Up to this point, the blogs will be written strictly from memory, so bear with us as we get it up to date! The next post will be about Lake Mineral Wells State Park.
Comments