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User: jtkatie - 7/31/2010

Location: McKinney Falls State Park

Rating: 3stars
Difficulty: 1point5stars  Solitude: 3point5stars
Miles Hiked: 4.00 Miles  Elapsed Time: 2 hours, 2 minutes

Comments:

Definitely go clockwise like the main review tells you to - and take a map! The trail is so poorly marked that you can easily get off-track like we did...

We thought that the recommendation was to go counter-clockwise. So, after finding the Homestead, we traveled east along the jeep trail (instead of the westward direction to go clockwise). Bad idea. The jeep trail seems lightly used and weeds had grown up.

We eventually hit a locked gate, where we almost turned around. Luckily, we went around it and found the aforementioned fitness center. Some kind TPWD employees asked if they could help us when they found us staring at the map inside the door. They pointed us the right direction to go clock-wise back to the falls.

Once we reached the falls, we were determined to make the loop - so we went all the way around counter-clockwise and enjoyed the hike very much. We ran across a couple of groups of hikers along the way, but mostly had the trail to ourselves. Well, besides the animals... We saw no snakes (as mentioned in the review), but saw 3+ deer and had a stare-fight with a rabbit for about 5 minutes before he hopped along his way. :-)

The ~3 mile hike took us 1:05 once we restarted.



Area around McKinney Falls State Park
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