Episode #31: That Day I Got Lost In Dinosaur Valley

I readily acknowledge the many blessings I have received in my life and one of those was the resources and making time to spend with my sons and make memories with them. Besides the family vacations we took together over the years, I have taken them on a vacation with just us guys on two different occasions, then took a trip with each one of the boys on two occasions in the next several years as they got older. I will document those trips in some of my future posts here. The time spent with them probably meant more to me than it did to them, but we built some fun memories together that they will look back on as they age. This is something that my Dad was never able to do with me and my brother (though I never though about it until I became a dad) and maybe this is why it is so important to me. 

The first of these 'dad and sons' vacations took place around Thanksgiving of 1999 when we drove about three hours southwest to hike through a portion of Dinosaur Valley State Park in Somervell County. This state park is located near the Comanche Creek Nuclear power plant which is one of two nuclear power plants in Texas. This plant is located on the Comanche Creek Reservoir which is a 3,275 acre impoundment and sits between the towns of Glen Rose and Granbury. The water in the reservoir is used primarily as the cooling agent for the nuclear reactor core which generates steam as it is cooled to run generators which in turn produce electricity. We could see these two domed towers pictured below of the pressurized water reactor facility as we get close the State Park.

The Paluxy River, which is a tributary of the Brazos River runs through this Sate Park. We left home early that morning and arrived a few hours later. It was an overcast day with the fall colors barely hanging on. This portion of the Paluxy is wide but quite shallow and as you can see the water was clear as glass as it cascades over the rock river bed.

We parked at one of the park trail heads and started our hike just before noon. I was making mental notes of the trail markers as we get deeper into the park. This dirt hiking trail is marked with colored stakes every so often along the natural path walkway and I noted that we are now on the blue trail that has intersected a couple of other trails with different colored stakes. After a couple of hours, we cross what I think is the same white trail marker I had seen earlier but suddenly, the area does not seem familiar to me. We go on chatting about the various scenic rock formations and the impressions of what are marked and described as various types of dinosaur tracks and their historical significance.

It is getting late in the afternoon and since it is overcast and in late November, it will be getting dark soon and I decide it is time to head back to the tail head. I obviously took a wrong turn at a trail intersection and we continue on in the wrong direction. Since it is overcast I cannot see the sunset and have no orientation as to which direction is west or any other direction for that matter. You have to remember this is before the development of the smart phone and I have no app to show where I parked the truck or even a digital compass on my Motorola flip phone and I am getting concerned since I have seen no other hikers along the trail, Park Rangers, maps or anything to help me find my way out. 

It is now 5pm and getting shadowy, the boys are getting tired and are ready to head to our next destination. I still haven't told them I am lost on this park trail when suddenly I come across a small laminated paper map mounted on a short wooden trail marker. It is old, faded and hard to read but I can see where we are and where we need to be. As it turns out this trail marking system is not as simple as I thought it would be when we started. These colored trail markers intersect and cross each other many times over and I now realize I should have counted how many times we cross the various other colored trail markers. I learned a valuable lesson this day, I will never again go hiking again without a mechanical compass, even with the smart phones we all now have.

Our next stop was about a three hour drive south and west to Enchanted Rock which is just west of Austin and north of Fredericksburg Texas. By the time we got out of Dinosaur Valley it was well past sunset and pitch dark as we drive to Fredericksburg to stay the night, I was not aware of the popularity of that area during the holidays but it was packed wall to wall. No place to eat without waiting an hour or more and after checking a few places there were no rooms available either. The last place I checked assured me there would be no availability without a reservation and the next closest opportunity would be in Kerrville which is about 30 miles away. The third place I stopped had one room available so I got it. We grabbed a quick bite to eat and ready for a shower and bed. The shower was cold as the sold out  hotel had run out of hot water and the bed was far from comfortable, but better than sleeping in the truck which was becoming a real possibility.

 The next morning is quite cool especially for this part of the state but it had cleared up some and after breakfast we made our way to the Enchanted Rock State Natural Area. I knew this rock was big but I did not realize it was this big. It is a pink granite dome that rises 425 feet above the base and it is 3/4 of a mile steep hike from the trail head to the top of this solid rock formation.

We were all amazed as to how big this formation is and how many people were there. Almost at the same time we all said that watching the people hike up was like watching ants going up an ant hill. By the time we hiked up this steep, rock mound we were no longer cold and the temperature was still in the mid 40s that morning. It was a very unusual site rising up from the trail head but some very  pretty views from the summit. The first picture below shows the road we drove in on leading off in the distance of the famous Texas Hill Country portion of the Edwards Plateau. 

The next picture was just one of the many scenic locations that surround the area that I thought were very pretty especially with the fall colors just hanging on.

While it certainly is not a mountain or really even much of a big hill, it was an impressive site, even to the boys and though there was some disgruntled comments, they did enjoy the novelty of the trip and they always loved it when we stay in a hotel, even if it doesn't have hot water and bed was less than desirable. More importantly, the trip home consisted of us making plans for our next dad and sons vacation trip.

One of my goals as a father was to never look back and have regrets that I failed to spend time with the boys. No doubt I could have done more, but to this point I think I did a good job with that goal.

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