Bauerle Ranch Park 3/19/16

Saturday, March 19, 2016

Hike: Bauerle Ranch Park, Austin, TX

Weather: mid 60s, sunny, clear

Hikers: Ian and Biff

Length: 5.77 miles

I found a new hike I wanted to try down in South Austin.  I’ve taken to just cruising around google maps and finding spots of green in Austin that I haven’t hiked yet and this one caught my eye.  The park completely surrounds a neighborhood, or rather, the neighborhood was built in the middle of the park, which I’m assuming used to be a private ranch back in the day.

Court went up to visit her old classmates in Dallas for the weekend, so Biff and I came out to the trail around 10am and went exploring.  We started off on the Slaughter Creek Trail which was actually the worst part of the hike.  It was basically rocks the whole way.  But when I got to the other end of the park the trail turned into more dirt and cut through large swaths of Bluebonnets and cacti.  Nothing says spring in Texas like Bluebonnets and the lime green new leaves sprouting from the trees.

I also came across the burned out remnants of an old structure in the middle of the park.  Wondering if it was part of the old ranch.

I cut up toward the neighborhood intending to head back to the trail head, but found an unmarked trail, that was very nice actually, which went under a bridge and followed Bauerle Creek and ended up taking me back to where I had started.  I re-traced my steps to the neighborhood again and took the trail in the right direction this time, though I didn’t mind the detour.

The last part of the trail was the best.  It went by a nice pond and then wound around through the woods back to the trail head.  We got back to the car and Biff decided it was time for a derpy roll in the grass.

This was a good trail that I will definitely repeat when Court is home.