We left the RGV on Monday, 2/1, and headed to Canyon Lake (about an hour North of San Antonio) for a week. Our plan after that was to go to a campground near Kerrville after that for 3 weeks and then come home. More about that later...We camped at the same campground that we stayed in last October (Summit Resort & RV Park). For a week's stay, it was under $30 a day which is good.

Friends from church (Bruce and Ruth ) from back home were down here also but staying at a condo a few miles away.  We met up with them at their condo on Tuesday and got caught up on all the gossip and then made some plans for the week.

On Wednesday we met them for lunch at this down home place.  The food was excellent.

After lunch they came back to the campground and we sat outside and got caught up on all the gossip.

 On Thursday we went on the Canyon Lake Gorge Tour with Bruce and Ruth and friends of theirs from Austin.

If we had had a chance to read the details of the tour, I don't think Judy and I would have done it.  It was a lot of walking on rough stone/gravel and many steps at various places further down into the gorge.  The steps were usually flat rocks placed together as steps.  Several times we had to hold onto someone's hand even though there may be only 3 or 4 steps at a time.  But we made it!!

Here is some basic information about the Gorge.

During one week in the summer of 2002, more than 34 inches of rain fell in the upper watershed of the Guadalupe River, setting off a torrent of floodwater that carved a perfectly fascinating geological wonder - the Canyon Lake Gorge - out of the earth.

The flood roared through the Hill Country northwest of New Braunfels, tearing away soil, ripping up huge trees, crumpling houses and sending a rush of water from swollen Canyon Lake over its spillway for the first time since the reservoir was completed in 1964.

The historic flood sliced open the ground below the spillway, creating a gigantic 64-acre Gorge and exposing ancient, cretaceous limestone, fossils and even dinosaur footprints 110 million years old.

It is a textbook example highlighting Hill Country geology and the exposed Trinity Aquifer, clearly showing faults, fractures and seeps in the limestone. Limestone layers created from an ancient sea are visible, and visitors admire waterfalls and springs where the aquifer is exposed.

We thoroughly enjoyed the guide along with a docent and a supervisor.  The guide had an exceptional amount of information as we walked along.  Here are some pictures we took.

This a picture of the lake where we started our tour.

And a picture of the spillway.  From this picture you can see what looks like a line across (left side of the picture).  That is a concrete walkway about 3 feet wide and several feet deep reinforced with rebar wire so that the spillway will not erode past that if there is another flood.  There is also a wall on the other side of the spillway to direct the water down the gorge.

This picture shows the gorge just below the spillway.

From there we walked down a long gravel road to get to the spillway.  We walked to a point where we went down stairs into the gorge.  You can see the trail in the left part of the picture.

Once we got down into the gorge, we walked and the guide talked.

Our first stop was to look at what appears to be dinasour tracks.  There are several here but this picture only shows 2 tracks as they are quite far apart.  

And this is the dinosaur they feel came through here.

Here we are after coming down some of the steps.  These were the 'easy' ones.

There is no water going over the spillway but at various points along the way, there is water that is probably coming from underground beneath the spillway.  And ponds are created.

Many shells have been exposed as a result of the flood.

More pictures of the gorge.

Looking back up the gorge.

This is near the end of the tour.  We did not go down here but you see boards across the various cuts in the gorge.  They take school kids down there and they can search for shells, etc.

This picture is from one of our final stops looking back up the gorge.  We did have a few stops along the way to rest up and use the bathroom at one point if needed.

The tour was a good 3 hours long and very interesting.  If you get a chance, you should make a stop here and do the tour.

And, if you didn't believe that we actually took the tour...

Alot of steps recorded that day!!

After the tour, we went to Grandma D's for a late lunch of course!!

After this week we have moved to Johnson Creek RV Park just north of Kerrville in a town called Ingram.  It's a nice park and we have been here a few times for Hitchhiker rallies.

On Sunday (before we left Canyon Lake) we checked the weather for up here since we heard about the cold front coming.  Here is the weather for here:

 

Too cold for us so we changed our plans and are staying here only one week (we had put a deposit down so had to come up here).  After this week we are going back down to the RGV for 2 weeks before coming back to Plano on 3/2.