Guadalupe River Camping

Garrett and I set out for our annual 2-Guys Summer Camping Trip hitting Guadalupe River State Park. This year the trip seemed to focus on learning new things.

Before we even cleared the city limits, Garrett learned he liked Zingers.

With clear skies and hot temperatures it didn't take us long to find the river. Garrett practiced his bait catching techniques with his cast net. We toobed a section of the river and spent a lot of time just hanging out in the middle of the rapids.

We left the coolness of the river a few times to go hike and bike the trails. On one trek we were startled by a large hog that was laid up under a tree right next to the trail. I told Garrett to stay still as I began reaching into my backpack for the camera. After a few seconds I noticed the hog wasn't fleeing and was actually a big ole' sow with a couple of small babies. A feigned charge towards us was all it took for us to forget about the photographic opportunity and move on down the trail (quickly).

Another lesson learned regarding animals; if you remain motionless for too long of a time in your hammock, buzzards (or at least one buzzard) will gather.

Our last night there continued with more education in the way of animals. As we sat in the dark around our dying camp fire, a raccoon bravely walked up to see if there were any scraps around the fire. It was only about 8 feet away. It then wandered over and tried to get in our cooler. I snapped a few pictures and as a thank you, we tossed it a Chips Ahoy chocolate chip cookie. It ate the cookie and wandered off.

Little did we know that the 'coon was actually on a scouting mission, probing our perimeter and seeing what we had to offer. About 1 am I woke up to the sound of our cooler lid opening. I grabbed my flashlight and, shining it out the tent window, saw several raccoons. One had our cooler open and was balancing on the edge with his head down inside of it. I hollered at Garrett that raccoons were raiding our camp, tried to get the tent open and put shoes on all at the same time. I managed to get out there and scare them off but they had already taken ALL the meat out of our cooler! While the coons had a night of sausage, hot dogs, lunch meat, etc., we had pop tarts for breakfast!

That's the bad guy, right there by our cooler!

It was a great trip. I really enjoy getting to experience it all with Garrett, he's a great camping partner.