Government Canyon State Natural Area walk

 Hello, everyone.

We took a little "training road trip" this weekend, to San Antonio. (A drive of a couple of hundred miles for a weekend visit is completely normal in Texas. We're all so spread out across our large state.) "What is there in San Antonio" I hear some of my readers wondering. Well, besides the famous Alamo historical memorial, and the usual shopping, restaurants, etc. to be found in a large city, there are Government Canyon and REI. Well, one of the REI coop retail locations, anyway. They sell various hiking supplies and equipment. Sometime mail order over the internet just won't do and we need to see the things up close and personal, to assess size and so on.

Government Canyon is a state park, conveniently located at the edge of the city in Helotes, a town which is being enveloped by the San Antonio metro area. It has two parts, a dog friendly area called the Front Range and a no pets allowed area called the Back Country which is most of the park.

A map of the park. This is much more complete than the paper maps at the headquarters, those really only covered the Front Range area.

This is a tree alongside the trail we walked. I have no idea what kind of tree it is. Those brown things are seed pods (empty now) from last year.

I was not expecting to see Spanish Moss in San Antonio. Yet there are some trees covered in it here!

View from the Overlook, which looks down onto the site of the dinosaur footprints, and also onto a really pretty view.

We walked 7 miles (11 km), per our Strava, in almost 3 hours. It was a wonderful walk in great weather, and we also met very nice people there. (Out of respect for their privacy, I won't say anything more about them on the public internet.) 

If you are in San Antonio over a weekend, you really should visit this park.