60 hikes within 60 miles

A couple of weeks ago Derrick bought a book that he saw on a friend's coffee table, 60 Hikes within 60 miles. It is based in the Austin area and gives you well... 60 hikes in the surrounding 60 mile radius (go figure). It's a fabulous book and it breaks down the hikes into tons of subgroups such as, 1-3 miles, 3-6 miles, 6+ miles, scenic, wildlife, and tons more categories. Last Sunday I decided to venture out and start on the first of many hikes. I read through the first couple of hikes and decided they all looked awesome and eventually I would like to do all 60 of them, but baby steps of course. I chose to start with Hike #1. It's description was that it goes along the Colorado River, it was 4.8 miles long, free, and would take about 2.5 hours to complete. Perfect! I packed a bag for Mia and I of water, a water bowl for Mia, my camera, an apple for me, and some treats for Mia. And we were off!

Ugh... well let's just say the address was wrong for starters, along with so many other things. It took me about 45 minutes to find it (should have taken 20) and I definitely ventured into a bad area of town where people drive on the wrong side of the road, have shaved heads with scary mohawks (not cool mohawks) and definitely witnessed some drug dealing. There were cops everywhere so at least no one could kill me. Finally I found it! We got out and saw... no one. A little eery being at a huge park with no one around. There were 2 baseball fields, a batting cage, a random trailer, and tons of construction equipment like bulldozers and other giant trucks. Great... this is going to be a fabulous hike. And take note of what I said was around me... there was no trail!?!? Okay well we came all of this way I guess we might as well try to walk around somewhere! We walked towards an area where you could see they bulldozed a ton of trees and were doing construction there but not at the time. We did end up finding a trail and walked for about 30 minutes (definitely not 2 and a half hours), came to a CAUTION sign and were told to turn back due to construction, and not once saw any type of water let alone the Colorado River!! I did get some decent pictures though to show how beautiful a day it was and although it wasn't what I was expecting we did get our dose of Vitamin D for the day!


As we were getting into the car I saw a group for 5-6 people come up from the direction I was in wet, presumably from this Colorado River I was supposed to see, and that gave me hope. I was going to write off this hike all together but now I think I might try it again with someone else and maybe go a different way. The water must be somewhere!! Below are some pics from our day last Sunday:)

Beautiful day - look how blue the skies are!
Cactus plant:) They were all over the place and Mia was smart enough to steer clear!
This was our view when we made it to the CAUTION sign -- maybe the Colorado River was here and it dried up?? Nope, I saw it on my drive back and it was on the other side of where I was hiking!


Although it was really short we were in the sun the entire time and Mia was beat! She found some shade at the end and refused to move for a couple of minutes:)