McKinney Falls State Park

This is our last practice camping excursion before starting our big trip in August. Welton and Darby joined us at McKinney State Falls State Park right outside of Austin, Tx. A relatively short drive from Waller taking about 3 hours, we arrived to find we picked a weekend with record setting heat with temps reaching triple digits everyday.
Fortunately Welton and Darby arrived early and picked some great campsites to stay with plenty of shade. Our site was a whole island in the middle of a circle that made us look like land barons. This was a good weekend to understand when you need 50 amp service. Our 30 amp site would only run one air conditioner which struggled to keep up during the day when temps hit 105.
The first nite Welton and Darby treated us to some tasty fish tacos. Early to bed and we explored the next day with a trip to the falls. The "Falls" during this heat wave/drought amounted to a single stream, but it was very scenic with Cypress trees, limestone carved from water flow and turtles swimming in the pooled water. This is a picture of the upper falls.
And of course with an upper falls, you must have a lower falls, again very scenic but this one had two streams of water "falls" ! That's Jan at the top center. This is also the site of our morning fishing excursion with well known guide Welton Albers. His expertise and guidance landed us over 30 fish that morning with a combination of blue gill, sunfish and catfish. Of course the largest was maybe 5 inches, but it was hot action !

The fishing babes. (At least you can see Darby's fish)






While fishing, we found this Rio Grande Cooper turtle making its way down the rock toward the falls. Later on on we heard a big slap and splash which was this big guy doing an olympic dive over the side of the rock down 20 feet to the water pool. Latest report is he is still being considered for the turtle diving team at the 2012 summer Olympics. His coach says he's still coming out of his shell.