St. Edward's Park

The other day the boys and I had an hour to kill before their art class. We drove around a bit with lots of u-turns, looking for places to hike. Finally I utilized my handy dandy Yelp iPhone application which, to my delight, I discovered allowed me to select nearby activities, then hiking under active life. St. Edward's Park on Spicewood Springs Road

off of 360 popped up as one of the closest choices. After a brief skim of the reviews to make sure it'd be worth the few minutes we had left at that point, off we set. Imagine my shock and surprise when we got to the park, parked, and then in less than ten minutes

were at the site of a gorgeous 25 ft. wide waterfall.

I was in awe, and the boys were in boy heaven.

We only had a few minutes to explore, so the following weekend Brando, the boys, and I went back to explore some more. We looked at the map and started off knowing where we were headed, but we neglected to take a picture of the map. So we ended up going in the opposite direction. Didn't matter much, since the hike makes a circle around the creek. The way we went took us by the 25 ft wide waterfall,

back up to Spicewood Springs Road to cross the creek,

up a 300 foot incline,

above the gorgeous waterfall,

with views of the hills stretching farther than we could see, past a natural spring,

then back across the creek - this time on rocks and trees.

Then, we circled back on a path close to the creek

where we were able to see the water from the spring we had seen earlier flowing into the creek. Gorgeous.

Our overall hike ended up being about two miles, according to what I could find out about the length of the trails.

I'm so excited to have found this park so CLOSE into town and can't wait to go back!