Our final trip of the summer was to west Texas...Fort Davis to be exact. We went with my parents and spent 3 nights at the Indian Lodge located inside the Davis Mountains State Park. It was an amazing place and we hope to go back one day.
The drive wasn't bad at all--5.5 hours from San Antonio. That's nothing for us now. Ha! The last hour of the drive was beautiful. The mountains and the hoodoos looked so awesome. It reminded us of our Arizona trip, just more green. My parents said that they would never have believed that west Texas could be so pretty. (Next on the list is to take them to Big Bend for sure!)
While we were there, we were pretty off the grid. There was no service in most of the area. If you wanted service you had to drive 10 minutes into town or sit on one particular rock by the office to "maybe" get a signal. It felt weird at first, but it was kind of nice to not be able to send or receive any texts. Kind of freeing. The
on-site restaurant was also closed for most of the nights we were there.
We were too lazy to drive "into town" so every night we boiled
water in our hot pots and ate ramen outside. The kids thought it was SO
yummy! Ha!
The whole time we were there, we pretty much hiked, swam, and looked at the beautiful nighttime sky.
There was a fun trail right behind our lodge (Indian Lodge Trail) that the kids loved...lots of huge boulders to climb and lots of great views. The hiked that trail a few times during our stay. The kids went on an early evening hike with B and actually saw a herd of aoudad (Barbary sheep) walking up the mountain. I couldn't believe how close they were and how many there were. A little freaky for me....but the kids were just amazed.
We also went on a hike up high on a ridge...we took
Skyline Drive Trail to the Old CCC Trail to see Fort Davis.
The views
were spectacular and the hiking was great. My parents were troopers and
totally kept up...so did Eulee! That girl is a good little hiker.
She needed to be carried for some uphill parts, but for the most part she
just kept hiking with those short little legs. We were all amazed.
Even though the mountains and scenery were
awesome, the true highlight was our visit to McDonald Observatory. We
planned a whole day of events there. We started the day with a solar
viewing. Unfortunately, there were some clouds, so we had to look at the
footage from the previous day's solar viewing. It was SO COOL though.
I love seeing the prominences on the surface of the sun! Then we
attended the Twilight Party in the early evening. We learned all about
the moon since it had just been a few days after the full moon. We ended
the day with the Star Party at 9:30pm. The astronomers talked about the
constellations and we looked through all different telescopes in Telescope
Park. We saw a dying star (that looked like a fuzzy donut) and a new
star. Jupiter was amazing because the kids clearly saw the stripes, the
storm, as well as 4 of its moons lined up in a row next to it. Saturn was
awesome, but looked fake. How can a planet look like that?? I told
B that it could've been a Saturn sticker on the lens because it looks unreal.
The telescopes focused on the moon were so neat because the moon was just full.
We saw all the craters in such detail. We were amazed!
This was such a fun, adventurous trip! We
know that we will be back to West Texas...hopefully, when it's a new moon.
The skies are so dark and it's just a beautiful part of our state!
Of course, everyone has to return to reality.
So the day we drove back to San Antonio, we got into town right in time
for Eli and Evie's Meet the Teacher night. Talk about cutting it close!
So worth it though!
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