Enchanted Rock State Park
Drive from Austin: 97 miles / 1 hour 38 minutes
Where am I? Llano, TX / West of Austin
Site we stayed at: #26, but we wanted to be at #22...
What to do: Hiking, rock climbing
- Note: No dogs allowed on any elevated hiking trails. Only allowed on the Loop Trail. They are very strict about this and will fine you.
We finally made it out to Enchanted Rock to camp! We had to book this site about 5 months in advance... that's how hard it's been for us to get reservations there.
Huge shout out to Kammok for hooking us up with their brand new Sunda tent to try out for the weekend. The Sunda can be used as a tent either on the ground or elevated in the trees. It was definitely longer than our normal Mountain Hardware tent, so it was great to have a bit more room for us and Rye.
If you make a reservation online, Enchanted Rock requires a 2 night minimum. So we went up after work on Friday and stayed through Sunday. When we got there Friday night, it was pretty dark, so we had to sort of blindly pick a site. All of the sites are walk in, so our car was about 50 yards from the site. There are two main areas of campsites. One is a large grass area with a bunch of sites next to each other, and the other area is on the opposite side of the parking lot, where you have to walk a bit further but the sites are much more worth it. More isolated, have awnings for weather, and better views overall. We tried to stay at site #22 which looked like one of the best, but someone rudely kicked us out and said they had reserved it. So we moved down to #26, which was still pretty great.
* Okay so just know you are not allowed to reserve a specific site number at Texas State Parks. This guy was a meanie trying to bully us out of our spot so we just moved. But after we talked and confirmed with the rangers, he was totally not allowed to do that.
We brought all of our climbing gear in hopes of getting on some routes, only to learn that dogs are not allowed on elevated hiking trails, which is where all of the climbing routes are. We tried to sneak him on and got scolded. So unfortunately, we were only able to do some small hikes because we had Rye with us. We'll have to plan ahead next time to put him in day care so we can take advantage of the climbing. Luckily the hiking at Enchanted Rock is better than most Texas State Parks, so we found a great spot for sunset beers and photos.
Will definitely get back out to Enchanted Rock (without the pup) so we can climb and hike a bit more.
