Purgatory Creek

It's been a nice, relaxing weekend for a change - nowhere to go, nothing on the schedule. So yesterday morning we decided to take a hike. Robert had read about the hiking trail on upper Purgatory Creek and we decided to try it out. Easier said than done.
For starters, the loop around San Marcos to connect RR 12 with the Interstate just opened, and its not on any maps. The directions to the trail on the San Marcos Greenbelt Alliance website don't take into account the new road, so it took us 1/2 an hour and Google maps on my iPhone to finally find the place. The directions say go to the end of Franklin and take the dirt road, but that's now closed. So we finally figured out where to turn off the new loop.

We really enjoyed the hike - lots of birds, wildflowers, bugs (not the bite-y kind), and trees, and only 3 other people. We even found a Geocache, which I logged. Now that I have an iPhone i can actually do some geocaching and benchmarking. There's an app for that.



The park is part of an effort to encircle fast growing San Marcos with a ring of parks and open spaces. The trail is open to off-road bicycles, and although there were some tracks, we didn't see any bikes. I am sure there are plenty of adrenalin junkies who would love it, but the trail is very rocky in places, and the going would be really rough on a bike. It was hard enough on foot - I had to keep looking down so I wouldn't trip, so whenever I wanted to see the scenery I had to stop. But it was really relaxing and peaceful, and definitely worth the hunt.