Hiking and Happiness - Cleburne State Park
It has been too long since I've gone into the forest. I've been sticking to the paved-trail river banks out back of my apartment lately, for convenience more than anything.
Today I remedied that.
I was also joined by none other than Honey (my mom) and her new hiking hydration backpack setup! Of which, at the end of the hike, she remarked how much easier it was to hike with that now. Finally, she is starting to listen to reason! ;)
We headed out fairly early to Cleburne State Park. It's only a 35 minute drive away, so we were there in no time. This park is clean, has all the amenities a state park can, and the trails are pretty well marked where even a novice hiker can enter with confidence. They have all manner of trails here, no matter your experience or fitness level.
Since I completely missed the first trailhead I intended for us to park at, we wound up hiking it the opposite direction of what I had prepared for, so we had to slightly wing it. We chose to hike a little over half of the Fossil Ridge Trail which in its full length is a 2.5 mile, 1.5 hours one-way, challenging trail along the parks boundary. Then we connected onto the Spillway Trail, a short 0.7 mile, 0.5 hour moderate trail that has the best views of the spillway that the CCC carved by hand. Our intention was to quickly hop onto the White-Tail Hollow Trail to head back to our car along the lake, but what had happened was... we fucked up. We completely missed the trail change and wound up on the back end of the lake. The exact opposite side from where we needed to be. LOL. Thank goodness for lots of water and snacks!
It was a really pretty trail though, and we didn't even touch all of the trail they have there. Being so close to home, I'll definitely be spending a little more time here than I have. Next time I'll make time to hit the water and maybe do a little kayaking.
After the hike we decided we wanted burgers. We were a teensy bit hungry by this point. We landed at Grumps Burgers in Cleburne and split a Cheeseburger, Fried Pickles, In-Shell Roasted Peanuts... and a frosty-ass chalice of beer! The burger was very good and had that fabulous American Cheese on it. The pickles were nice and thin with a really tasty homemade Ranch Dressing.
Drive home was quick and easy. Definitely a must-do regular day hike place. I'll be back soon.