Well the 2013 camping season is about to begin and for our shake down trip this year we have chosen a destination that is relatively close to home. April 5th will see us loading the camper and heading to Guadalupe River State Park located 41 miles North of San Antonio off of State Highway 46.
Activities:
4 miles of river frontage (9 miles of river run through the park if you include the Honey Creek SNA that borders the park to the East) that can accommodate canoeing, fishing, swimming, tubing. There are also dry activities such as picnicking, hiking and of course camping. The park also has about 5 ½ miles of equestrian (horse) and bike trails however there is no equestrian camping available at this time.
The park offers 94 camping facilities that are broken down as follows: 1-37 water, 38-85 water/electric and 86-94 walk in primitive. Looking at the maps and google earth you can see that the water and water/electric loops each only have 1 restroom facility (at South Llano this was not bad) so lets see how that goes. |
| Guadalupe River SP water/electric camping loop. |
And of course the official park map can be found here. Now lets break down what we see from both maps.
- One restroom facility per loop centrally located, this means that if you want to be close the showers and toilets you need to pick a specific spot.
- Nearest swimming area is a half mile away, this means that you A) walk half a mile, B) hop in the car, or C) Bike ride to the swimming hole.
- No park store but located very close to the City of Bulverde where you will find an HEB Plus and just about any restaurant/fast food you could want (if you want).
- The camping areas look heavily wooded so there should be more than enough shade and trees for the hammock.
- Should be plenty of tubing and if you have someone who is not interested in tubing they can drive you 13 miles down 46 to Bergheim (turn right and got to edge falls road, turn right again and you will soon see the river) where you can put in for a very long float back to the park.
- Lots of trails from experience. When I lived in Bulverde I would take my mountain bike here to ride the many trails.
- Never had a great fishing experience here but this time I plan to explore a little more than usually and go upstream of the busy crowds.
Well that's about it, almost a month and a half till we officially kick it off. Seems like such a long time to wait but that gives us time to get the cover off the camper, pop it up, clean it, test the systems and rinse out the water lines
