Local, Near and Far: Our journey of exploring the world.

Tag: Hiking

Hiking at Palmetto State Park

Central Texas is filled with countless little-known gems. Palmetto State Park is one of these places.

On a recent trip to Rebekah’s parent’s house, the excellent weather called us outside, as it often does. Instead of spending time at our go-to outdoor venue, the family pecan farm, we ventured out. Her parents had recently visited Palmetto State Park, the setting for a church picnic. Even living only a few miles away, this had been their first visit to this little-known park.

When they recommended we hike at Palmetto for the afternoon, I was excited to visit a new state park, grabbing my camera on the way out the door.

Palmetto State Park - View of the San Marcos River

View of the San Marcos River

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Hiking at Ray Roberts Lake State Park

Kicking off our day trip to Denton, Rebekah and I enjoyed a wonderful afternoon picnicking and hiking one of the top trails in Texas at Ray Roberts Lake State Park.

Looking for inspiration as we planned our day trip, Rebekah found an article by Texas Monthly listing the top 30 hikes in Texas. Due to the relative convenience of Ray Roberts Lake State Park located just north of Denton, we decided on this hike to celebrate Valentine’s Day.

While the state park has many areas to explore around Lake Ray Roberts, we followed Texas Monthly’s suggestion and focused on the Greenbelt Corridor Park. Following the Elm Fork of the Trinity River, the 11 mile Greenbelt Corridor Trail winds from Lake Ray Roberts south to Lake Lewisville. See the map on the park’s website for detailed information on the Greenbelt Corridor.

Hiking the Greenbelt

Hiking the Greenbelt

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Gear Review: Scarpa Mojito Shoes

Every Friday we take a break from our regular blogging schedule to allow the authors an opportunity to feature a certain topic they are passionate about. In the past you’ve read about art, studying abroad, experiencing culture through food, and the great burger adventure. Through this and other future posts we hope you’ll enjoy reading, we hope to share with you our personalities, passions, and interests on a more personal level.

When David and I were preparing for our Italy trip, we talked about doing some hiking between the cities in Cinque Terra. David had done some research and found out that there was a nice trail between the cities that was paved. Later on, we would learn that one of the trails was having some construction work done on it, and we would have a harder and more difficult hike through the Italian countryside, but that is a story for another day.

As we prepared for our trip and were thinking about the various terrains we would be on: asphalt, cobblestone, light hiking trails, sand, and some others, we started to think about shoes that would work best for this trip. Taking a backpack so that we could be mobile, we didn’t want to have the limited space taken up by several pairs of shoes. David had decided he was going to take his hiking boots, but I didn’t have any hiking boots at the time. That led me back to Backwoods to find a shoe that could handle the terrain and wouldn’t be too heavy.

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View of Cesky Krumlov from Hill of the Cross

Often when we make plans for travel, we are not quite sure how to break up our itinerary.  We love big cities because of the art, accessibility from airports, and public transportation (we are still not brave enough to rent a car in a foreign country).  But on the last few trips, the quaint and slow paced towns off the beaten path have been our favorite, and unfortunately the smallest part of the itinerary.  Not learning our lesson yet, we only planned 24 hours in Český Krumlov, my favorite part of our last trip.  I could have spent a week there hiking, biking, canoeing, and walking around town.  For an overview of our time, check out the Český Krumlov overview post.

View of the Czeck Countryside

View of the Czeck Countryside

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Backpack v. Suitcase – Which is the Best Option?

A few years ago when David and I traveled to Italy, we were trying to decide what the best option would be to take all our gear and what would be versatile enough for the type of trip we were going on. We were going on a 11 day multi-city tour of Italy and would be doing a lot of walking from one transportation site to the hotel/destination and vice versa.  We did not want to be to burdened with having items in our hands while we try to figure out where we needed to go or in case we needed to hold onto a rail in a subway/train. We were left with the age-long conundrum of do we use a suitcase or do we get a backpack? We decided to go to a local Backwoods store and see what our options were and if there was a backpack that would fit our trip.

Before we knew it, we stepped into a whole new world that I was never expecting. There was a backpack for every occasion! There were backpacks that talked about liters and weight, and the next thing I knew I was lost. I never had to think about all this with a suitcase. There were straps everywhere and some had secret compartments for valuables or sleeping bags. After thinking about it and looking at our options, we thought the backpack was best for this trip, but we also had to weigh any future trips since the initial investment was around $300-$350. Would we be able use these bags more than once? Can we use them for hiking trips? Are they durable enough to go on multiple international/domestic flights? Neither of us wanted to spend all this money for just one trip. After weighing our options and thinking about future trips, we decided on the backpack.

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