Canyon Lake and scenic drives abound…

With the slide issues behind us we were now able to enjoy our stay at Canyon Lake in the hill country of Texas. We have visited this park many other times including our extended stay when the Corps of Engineers closed down the park during the early Covid scare allowing us to hide out here for many weeks.

What makes this a special place to stay (besides the super low nightly rates for those of us over 65) is the turquoise blue lake and all the walks available inside the park seeing deer, birds and other wildlife. This park gets really crowded on the weekends but since they don’t allow any day use, the park is normally very quiet even on these crowded weekends.

There are lots of scenic hill country drives to take from this park and this time of year the wildflowers ae usually abundant. Not so, this year as the wildflowers have been sparse and the grass mostly brown because of the drought this year.

Our absolute favorite drive from our camp is down the Old River Road which creeps slowly alongside the Guadeloupe River on the way to the town of New Braunfels. When driving along the old river road there are several bridges crossing back and forth over this beautiful river making for some scenic views downstream. This river is very popular for fly fishermen and for toobers. What's a toober, you ask? It’s someone who uses and innertube or some other floating device to float down the river.

If we were to drive this road on a summer weekend it would be packed with mostly college aged kids and young families flocking to float their way down the river. One of the main reasons is that the temperature of the Guadeloupe River is constantly cool since all the water comes from the deeper waters of Canyon Lake as they let water out all year long.

Besides the river road we like to drive the countryside looking at wildflowers and checking out such destinations as Luckenbach, Austin, New Braunfels, San Marcos and Fredericksburg. There are also quite a few breweries located in this part of Texas with the Real Ale in Blanco and Rough Diamond Brewery in Spring Branch.

We won’t be able to drive to a lot of the places we normally visit here since we plan to spend a week at our son’s house visiting him and his family…

NOTE: We are now at Canyon Lake State Park until April 11th…