McKinney Falls State Park

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We finally made it out to McKinney Falls State Park this week – arriving last Sunday and staying until this morning. It’s consistently booked well in advance, probably due to the proximity to Austin, and we’ve never been able to arrange a trip there at a time that worked for us. We decided to spend a week there, arriving the day most people leave and leaving the day most people arrive, in order to work around the booking issues. Still, the park was surprisingly busy for a Sunday-Friday stay.

I didn’t get a great photo of our site, but snapped this one of the rig in place. When we arrived they wanted to put is in a pull through site due to the size of the rig (most check-in people seem to ask the length, and upon hearing 40′, assume I won’t be able to back it), but they gave us a couple alternate sites to choose from if it wasn’t free yet (we arrived slightly before checkout times were over). We ended up skipping over the pull through site because someone was parked in it (we found someone wasn’t even in it, just using it for parking their DRW truck (rude!)) and it worked out great, because the first alternate was a back in site that was easy enough to get into and was much more private. We didn’t have any neighbors on the door side of the trailer, and for the majority of the stay, the site on the street side was empty. There were no neighbors behind us, instead, there was a trail through the brush that led to the Onion Creek trail. When we go again, we’re going to ask for this site, which was #17. We were able to book another stay for Kelly and her friend, Mandy, in September for a girl’s trip.

Parked at the site.
Map of the park
The creek running through the park. There are several hiking trails which you can use to get to it.
Kelly at the Rock Shelter – a natural structure of overhanging rock that comes out about 15′, and is probably 75′ long.
Another view of the rock shelter.
Interesting enough, the roof of that is seemingly covered with clusters of spiders. I wonder how many people notice.
Kelly at the upper falls.
Maggie really wanted to play fetch with this drift wood she found…
The terrain and a smooth portion of the lower falls.

The trip turned out great and, being only a half hour away, McKinney Falls State Park is definitely a place we’ll frequently return to.

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