Our latest road trip is named 14 National Parks In Five States. Do you name your road trips?
Read this post, What We Learned On Our First RV Road Trip, if you are thinking about going on your first road trip in your new RV.
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Our road trip didn't start as it usually does with hectic last minute packing the night before, getting up early the next morning and then heading to our first stop where we set up and level the trailer, unpack the groceries and get the food from the cooler into the fridge in the RV. After that's done, we finally get to pull out the camping chairs and some cold drinks and relax.
This road trip started with a hectic packing of the car and RV two nights before the start of our trip and then Soko driving me to the airport the day before our road trip.
After dropping me off at the airport where I boarded a plane to NY, Soko went back to the RV to do the last minute grocery packing by himself.
The following day Soko headed out to the first stop of our road trip, a quick one night stopover at Blackwater River State Park in the panhandle of Florida while I spent time with these cuties.
On Sunday, Soko made his way to the second stop of our trip, Horseshoe Lake Charles, a hotel in Louisiana while I joined our older son, Joe, and his friends at Citifield to watch the Mets and to celebrate his 40th birthday.
On Monday, I flew to Louisiana and finally caught up with Soko at the hotel. I know people that just jump into their RV's with a plan in mind but without reservations and wing it as they go. They can stay somewhere as long as they like or cut the visit short if they want. We are not a spur of the moment people at all and that kind of a plan would stress us out. But we can now see how not having reservations might be the way to go. Maybe one day...probably not lol!
After spending the night at the hotel, it was finally time to start our road trip. The first stop we were heading to together, South Llano River State Park in Junction, TX, was actually the third stop of our 19 stop road trip. But first we needed to make our first of many Walmart stops.
After unpacking our groceries and settling into our campsite we had a chance to look around the park a bit. We found a steep set of stairs that led to the South Llano River, a popular place to swim, float, fish and paddle.
The following day, we googled things to do in Junction, TX and the #1 attraction was the park we were camping in. #2 was the Deer Horn Tree so we started our one and only full day in Junction with a ride to see the tree.
It only took a few minutes to see the tree and then the whole town. After our short visit we headed back to to the park. The Buck Lake Trail trailhead was across from our campsite and, when we read the description of it, it sounded like the kind of hike we wanted to do that day.
A few feet into the trail we found this bird blind.
We saw a number of birds here including this gorgeous female Northern Cardinal.
We logged our sighting on a chart in the bird blind.
We spent a good amount of time in the bird blind and then continued on our hike. The trail was an easy, flat hike that we leisurely strolled along. It was appropriately called the Buck Lake Trail as we found out on our walk.
We passed this fishing dock along the way.
And lots of cactus.
At the end of the 3/4 mile in and out trail, we were back across the way from our campsite and it was time for lunch. Lunch was leftover pizza that Soko had for dinner his first night on the road without me.
After lunch we headed to the South Llano River to find tubes to rent. Someone told us it would be at this bridge.
We never found the tubes and didn't see anyone tubing so we decided to give up on the tubing idea and just explore the park instead. We found this path to the amphitheater.
Nothing was going on here but it was a very nice space with very cool looking but not so comfortable seating.
We passed by the Buck Family ranch. Walter Buck Jr. donated his family's land to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department for the purpose of wildlife conservation and public park use.
Unfortunately, Walter Buck Jr. passed away 9 years before his land became a park and never got to see how really nice this park is. He would have been very happy to see that there was plenty of wildlife roaming around throughout the park.
Our last stop was to check out the camp store. It was a big store in comparison to most state park stores with plenty of supplies and souvenirs. I couldn't believe I walked out of there without buying anything. It was probably due to the fact that neither of us had any money on us :).
We enjoyed our quick stop in Junction, TX but it was time to move on. We were on a schedule. We were heading to Stop 4, El Paso, TX, in the morning.
Read about our Stop 4 here.
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Read about another great city in Texas here.
Have you been on a National Park road trip? How many did you get to see?
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