…of my three day weekend. I’ve had one hell of a time so far. Yesterday morning I ate breakfast at lunch at Juan in a Million on Ceasar Chavez a few blocks east of I-35. I’d never been there before, but I had three damned good bacon, potato, egg, and cheese breakfast tacos for $2.70, and you can bet I’ll be going there again.
After I ate I had Mark drop me off at the MoPac access, where I intended to hike as far upstream as I could. Twin falls has turned into a mud puddle, just completely gone. Sculpture is drier than I’ve seen it before, but still there and still flowing, as is the spring-fed pool just downstream.
I managed to splash my camera with water or something while at Sculpture, putting it out of commission for the rest of the day, so I didn’t get any pictures of the kamikaze sunfish that attacked my legs to protect its younguns, or the pair of baby armadillos I found way further west, or the big grass snake I almost stepped on at the end of the day. Doesn’t matter–I saw them.
About half an hour upstream of Sculpture I ran into a small natural falls with a long, deep pool on the upstream side, and a lot of rocks bathed in shallow running water on the downstream side. It was a really nice place, although it doesn’t support nearly as much of a “people load” as the two big falls downstream.
About 5 minutes upstream of that I found a semi-synthetic fall, big rocks with concrete poured into the gaps to make a big, straight, two-tiered fall with a fairly deep pool at the bottom. Both of these are pretty much straight across from Scottish Woods Trail.
I kept going upstream until a fair bit after the trail on the north side ran out, and I was basically just fighting my way cross-country. At some point this became untenable and I just started walking in the creek, which was by this point knee-deep and flat-bottomed anyway. A bit later on it started to get deep again, so I made my way to the south bank and discovered that there was trail on that side, too. I followed that trail all the way up to Lost Creek Blvd, and then followed it, uphill all the way, to 360. I later got a look at a map and found out that this was, to put it charitably, the long way ’round.
That was about it, but it was hella fun.
