Inks Lake Hike on a Beautiful January Day

One of the great things about Dale’s employer is that they observe most federal holidays, so he had yesterday off for MLK day! We decided to take advantage of the time and nice weather to go west about an hour to Inks Lake State Park.

We’ve been to this park quite a few times, but not lately. They have really improved the facilities. We were very impressed with the new headquarters, bathrooms and other amenities that have been completely replaced. This is one of the most used parks in Texas, and it’s hard to get camping reservations, but from what we saw yesterday, January may be a good time to find one!

We have hiked several trails at this park, including two midnight New Year’s Eve hikes. Those were lead by park rangers and were really fun. Yesterday we hiked the Pecan Flats Trail with a few detours. I would not recommend this trail for warmer weather because of the lack of shade. One section is shady, but most of it is not. we went about 3.5 miles in two hours.

The trail took us to the primitive camping sites, which we checked out. We’ve been interested in a “hike in” camping trip and this may be the place to give it a go. There was also a composting toilet nearby which is definitely a luxury for a primitive site.

After our hike we had lunch at campsite 311 near the water. It’s a beautiful site and I checked to see if it was available in the warmer weather, and it’s not. I really didn’t expect it to be. We got back to Georgetown around 3pm. It was a great day.