Davis Mountains State Park
Drive from Austin: 428 miles / 6 hours 30 minutes
Where am I? Fort Davis, TX / West of Austin
Site we stayed at: #73, water only (there was also a burn ban in place)
What to do: Hiking, mountain biking, stargazing
For Thanksgiving this year, we packed up and headed West to explore Davis Mountains State Park.
We’ve heard such great things about Davis Mountains State Park, but never had the time to make the drive! Once you get to Fort Davis, there is a small grocery store that is great for restocking if you need anything. There’s also a gas station in case you need it! The drive into the state park is super easy — only about three miles from Fort Davis. But you’ll lose service the minute you drive in.
It was relatively easy for us to get a reservation, which has become a struggle with Texas state parks. We grabbed a water only site (you share a water spicket with a few sites around you). We got to Davis Mountains just in time for sunset and went right up Skyline Drive inside the park to watch the sunset. It can get a little crowded up there (since you can hike or drive it, and there’s cell service…) but the 360 views are awesome.
Thanksgiving day we committed to hiking the whole park. We did the Indian Lodge Trail first, which is advertised as the most difficult hike. It’s definitely not too hard. A little uphill, but overall a solid hike. We did the Indian Lodge Trail down to the Headquarters Trail and finished the whole thing in about 45 minutes.
After lunch, we did the Old CCC Trail over to the access trail to go up the Skyline Drive Trail and back down. The map says this should take about 3 hours. It only took us an hour and a half to do the whole loop.
Overall, camping at Davis Mountains State Park was great. I would definitely recommend it to people heading out to West Texas.
