"Easy" Hike

We set out this morning to hike one of the park trails. The Rocky Ledges trail is near the Juniper Ridges Nature Trail that we hiked yesterday.

On the trails map for the park, this hike of 1.63 miles is "easy." Right--easy for mountain goats maybe! The trail involved a fair amount of rock scrambling. It also included some excitement we hadn't bargained for: Ken's hiking stick roused a very angry rattlesnake. I thought it must be nearly three feet, but it was hard to tell. I made my way through the bushes to avoid the snake and we continued the hike a bit more warily.





Oddly enough, the nature trail we took yesterday was marked "challenging." When I said something to the woman in the office, she said the two designations had been switched by the folks in Austin who made up and printed the trails information handout. Now you tell us!

We also drove over to the Big Pond area which is where the rangers hold the star walks. We were planning to come back tonight to do some star gazing, in the hope that it would be darker than the campground.



As it turned out, there were other people at the Big Pond group camp area this evening, so my eyes were assaulted by some flashes of very bright light when I was trying hard to stay dark adapted. We were pleased to have a mostly clear sky and no moon while we were out, so we did get to see lots of stars, which is always a treat.