enchanted rock

this weekend, some friends and i ventured out to enchanted rock. people told me it was like half dome in yosemite only smaller. as i haven't been to half dome, i wasn't sure what to expect, but i was excited for the opportunity to hike a bit. it took us almost two uneventful hours by car to get out to the park. we seemed to pass every other park in that i've heard of in the area on the way out...pedernales, pace bend, hamilton pool, lbj national park and the list goes on. now, i have lots of ideas for summer adventures!

the hike to the top of enchanted rock is fairly short, but you'll get your stairmaster workout in for the day because you are basically hiking straight up the side of the rock. as you get closer to the top, the wind gets pretty crazy, but the view is gorgeous. despite being in all that cold weather skiing, i have problems dealing with the cold in texas and was constantly putting layers on and taking them back off. instead of taking the proper trail down, we just started wandering and ended up switchbacking down a rather steep portion of rock between enchanted rock and little rock. there were repelers going down the opposing face, who were kind of coolt o watch. though we didn't hike it, there's a four mile trail that goes around enchanted rock (and associated smaller rocks) that i'd like to go back and run. once we got back to ground level, we hiked around for awhile and found a nice sunny spot to have a picnic. we finished the day by scrambling up turkey peak.

on the way home, emily and i discovered that hilda, taeson and hossein didn't know what a chinese fire drill was. so we initiated the. there was a picnic area coming up, so i pulled off the road, put the car in park and we all hopped out, ran around like crazy people and got back in the car. it wasn't at a stop light, but we figured that it was better to initiate the uninitiated without the added stress of the light turning green. they passed, so i think we can move onto the actual stop light next time.