College Camping

This past weekend I went on a camping trip with the universities outdoor adventure program. I was thoroughly surprised how good of a time that I had on the trip. When I was in college as an undergraduate I always thought that these trips were for people who were new to camping and just wanted to experience the outdoors a little while they were in college. Since I had gone camping a ton before I didn’t think these trips would be any fun for me. Boy was I completely wrong on that opinion.

The trip was supposed to be yoga and hiking retreat to Palo Duro Canyon State Park. What really made me want to go on the trip wasn’t the yoga at all, but just getting to go back to Palo Duro Canyon. I got my undergraduate degree literally 15 minutes from the state park, so I spent a lot of time there. I even was a Texas State Park Ambassador for the park as well. You can hear more about that program in one of my upcoming blogs. Needless to say Palo Duro Canyon State Park is a very special place to me. But 2 days before the trip we were having our pre-trip meeting and there was a change of plans. The weather was supposed to be wet and freezing cold up in the Texas panhandle so the trip was getting moved to Enchanted Rock State Natural Area.

This is was a little bit of a bummer for me because I had really been looking forward to go back Palo Duro Canyon. Luckily a few weeks before the trip I had made a spur of the moment trip to Canyon, Texas for the weekend to see an old friend and we did a little of hiking in the canyon. So I had already got my PDC fix for the time being. But Enchanted Rock SNA is one of the most beautiful places in the Texas Hill Country. I had been there once back in 2017 and always promised that I was going to come back when it wasn’t cold.

The trip started with me and 11 other strangers that I semi knew crammed into a 15 passenger van. After about 3 and half hours in the van we stopped in Belton, Texas. We got an early dinner at Miller’s Smokehouse. If you happen to be Belton and you have a hankering for some good BBQ this is a must stop then. Cool thing about this place is that they also have a little coffee shop inside as well. So if you happen to like meat and coffee this place is the jackpot.

A little before 7PM we pulled into our campsite at Oxford Ranch Campgrounds. We unloaded our gear and started setting up out tents. Everyone helped each other out of they saw someone struggling. At that moment I knew this was really going to be really enjoyable trip. Just knowing that no one was going to try to act like they were too good to help someone really set the tone for the weekend. As we were all setting up the Outdoor Adventure staff was start a little campfire for us. They even had supplies for s’mores if anyone wanted them. One of the students on the tripped stepped forward while we were all hanging out by the campfire and suggested that we play a name game so we could all get to know each other. That was the big ice breaker for the group because it helped everyone interact with people that they didn’t know.

After going around and introducing ourselves we all played other games like “would you rather”, “what animal would you be”, and tons of other ones. Typically when you are camping when it gets dark everyone gets tired but on our first night everyone stayed up a little later and we all hung out and chatted which was really nice.

When the morning came I was one of the first people to get up and enjoy the overcast morning. We were supposed to get rain that night but Mother Nature decided that it wasn’t going to rain which was really nice. It was a little chilly but not anything where I needed a heavy coat or anything. As people started waking up and becoming hungry the O.A. staff started getting breakfast ready. For breakfast we were having omelets in a bag. That might seem super gross if you are just reading “omelets in a bag”. But it actually pretty good. So what you do is put between 2 to 4 eggs in a bag, any fixings that you want in your eggs, seal up the bag and drop it in a pot of boiling water. Once the eggs are done cooking you can either eat them straight from the bag or put them in a tortilla and have yourself a breakfast taco.

Once we got our bellies full it was time to head off to Enchanted Rock SNA. The campgrounds that we were staying at were only about 10 or so minutes from the park. But about half way to the park in just starting pouring down rain. Once again we were going to have to change our plans because we could go out hiking in the middle of a rain storm. So the O.A. staff decided we could go to Fredericksburg, get some coffee, explore to downtown area, and wait the weather out. As soon as we sat down at the local coffee shop in town the skies opened up and the sun came out. We ended up doing our first yoga session in the downtown parks of Fredericksburg. This was a really cool experience to be in the middle of a semi busy small town and do

yoga in a public park. The only down side to this was that the winds really started to pick up right as we ended our yoga session.

Once we pulled up to Enchanted Rock SNA the excitement of everyone was really started to rise. You could see that everyone was ready to do some hiking and potentially do some more yoga. As we started the hike we came across a group of other so called hikers which had both of their hands full. One had their cellphones and the other there was a White Claw Hard Seltzer. By the way it is totally against the rules to have alcohol in the park. Who wants to go hike up a mountain while you are drunk? We started hiking the loop trail around Enchanted Rock. I had done this trail once before when I came to the park back in 2017. The views everywhere you looked were just so amazing. The Texas hill country is truly one of the most beautiful places. As we made it almost all the way around the loop trail we decided to just go ahead and climb to the top of Enchanted Rock. We were planning on doing yoga at the top but the high winds that I was talking about earlier made it impossible to stand up straight at times so that was out of the options.

As we starting making the hike to the summit the hike became very steep. You gain about 400 feet of elevation in maybe 300 or so yards. We didn’t take the tradition summit trail we kind of went the harder way up. Everyone kept pushing and encouraging everyone to make it to the top. It was a really clutch moment for the weekend. The further we hiked up to the summit the windier that it got. But once everyone reached the top it felt like everyone was just speechless because of the full 360 degree view of awesomeness. I had to stop and just stand there to truly take in the pure beauty of the moment that I was having.

We spent a good amount of time of the top of Enchanted Rock. Me and a few other people we into a little cave that was on the side of the rock. I was trying to capture as much of the trip on my camera as possible. At one of the moments when were in the cave and I just got done taking pictures one of the girls asked if I wanted my picture taken and I replied “No I don’t get my picture taken; I just take everyone else’s picture. As soon as I said that I felt kind of down because I didn’t have anyone in the group that I was buddy buddy with that I could take a picture with. I wish I had more people in my life that enjoyed camping/hiking as much as I do to take pictures with. I know it will happen over time. I can’t just expect for a much of friend to pop up out of the blue.

A lot of us grouped together at the top and sat down and ate some of snacks that we had brought with us. I am guessing that we had maybe done a little over 2 miles of hiking so far so we had burned off a little bit of what we had for lunch. But shortly after that it was sadly time for us to head back down the rock. We ended up going down the actual trail and not the steep side that we hiked up. It was a very slow hike down because we were going straight into the wind also because no one really wanted to leave. As we go back into the van you could tell people were starting to become very tired. I passed around my camera so people get see some of the pictures that I took of them. Not long after that it was very quiet in the van. Almost everyone except for a few people was passed out.

The naps continued as we got back to camp as well. Mainly everyone went back to their tents and took a midday nap. As for me I went to a lawn chair that I had seen in the field next to our campsite that was fully surrounded by wildflowers. I went and sat in the chair for 30ish minutes. Took some pictures and just relaxing while watching the clouds roll by. As I made my way back to the campsite the winds really started to pick up again and making it a little bit cold. The O.A. staff started to cook dinner for us, which happen to be spaghetti. It was starting to be dark but still not one had gotten out of their tents yet from their midday to almost dark time nap now.

As soon as we told everyone that dinner was ready we slowly saw everyone rise and make their way to the pot of spaghetti. The winds were so strong that we decided that we would all eat our dinner in the van so that we could stay warm and not have to worry about spilling our spaghetti all over ourselves because of the wind. We literally hung out in the van just talking and telling stories for about 2 hours. It was just a real chill time. As the night started to come to an end people went to take showers and get into their tents and go to bed.

At about 3 o’clock in the morning there was a car alarm going off right next to my tent. I knew that the van wasn’t parked that close to my tent, but when I looked out my tent it wasn’t the vans alarm going off but some random car parked next to our campsite alarm going off. It went off several times throughout the rest of the morning. I had put my tent in the exact spot that it was so I could get a picture of the sunrise in the morning, but I didn’t get to take that picture because that car was parked there. Turns out that the car battery died and for some reason every time the driver tried to start the car the alarm went off. So a little before 7AM I got up and started packing up my stuff. I did get to watch the sunrise and get a picture of it from my tent like I kind of wanted. It took everyone a lot longer to wake up and start packing their stuff up.

After we got the trailer packed up with everyone’s stuff we had one more yoga sessions. The weather was just amazing because the sun had come out and the winds had finally died down. It was really nice to be able to do yoga and hear all the bird, cows, and other animals. It was really just relaxing to hear the sounds of nature. As soon as we got done stretching and doing yoga we got in the van and started heading back north. We did have to make one more stop on our way back to campus. We stopped at Buc-ee’s for lunch. We all got to sit out in the parking lot and enjoy the beautiful weather before we got back to the real world of college/work life again.

Overall I really enjoyed myself on the trip. I would highly recommend to any college student to take advantage of your universities outdoor advantage program. A lot of the times these types of trips cost you little to nothing to go on and almost everything is provided for you. If you don’t have a tent, sleeping bag, or backpack they typically will provide it for you. So I highly recommend checking the resources your school offers.

"Cheers"