Gene Hikes the Appalachian Trail

Tag: backpacking

  • McKinney Falls State Park

    On the twentieth of June in 2025 Governor Greg Abbott signed Senate Bill 2232 establishing October 21 as Unplug Texas Day. In 2026 we observed the second Unplug Texas Day, when Texans are encouraged to stop doomscrolling and visit their local parks and recreation centers. Conveniently for me, this year the date fell on an off-day between the end of the League Championship Series and the start of the World Series. So I decided to celebrate by planning an overnight trip to McKinney Falls State Park.

    Situated only a few miles from the airport and under 15 miles from downtown, McKinney Falls State Park is like a 700 acre oasis surrounded by urban blight. Multiple campsites and cabins are available to reserve every day right from their website, or you could pretend it is 1997 and call them. Although it can get crowded on weekends, during the week I had no trouble reserving a site only a couple of days before my check-in.

    I hiked up to the main gate and they handed me some maps and showed me where my camp was located. A spot with some flat ground, electricity, water, and a picnic table runs $24 a night. And for that price you can have up to eight people and two cars stay there. A great deal in my opinion. A day pass to just hang out in and around the park costs $6. However I didn’t have to pay that because I acquired a free Parklands Passport due to shamelessly cashing in my veteran status.

    McKinney Falls has a huge tangle of different trails, and I figured I would try a couple of smaller ones before hitting my campsite. Armadillo Trail and Cactus Garden Trail both branch off from the main trail, Onion Creek Trail, and are about a half mile long each.

    Both trails were unpaved and had loose rocks strewn about, exactly the kind of trail I want to find more often.

    I didn’t have to traverse Cactus Garden for long before finding out why it has that name.

    That many prickly pear cactus can lead to an unlimited supply of bloatfly sliders. Sadly, there were no armadillos on Armadillo Trail, before you think to ask.

    Onion Creek Trail is the main trail that goes around most of the southern portion of McKinney Falls. It is paved and accommodates bicycles and all that sort of stuff. If McKinney Falls is an organism, Onion Creek Trail would be its aorta.

    As nightfall approached I finally made my way to the spot I would be calling home. As promised, it was essentially what I described above. The bare necessities. If you consider electricity a necessity, which might be the case in 2026.

    My main reason for coming here in the first place was to stress test my gear, so the first thing I did was get my tent set up. Since it was a clear, cloudless, windless night I decided to forego my rainfly.

    Once I got the tent set up and had some of my humanitarian daily ration, there was nothing left to do but wait for sleepy time. Sitting at my campsite at dusk I was overcome by memories of being a kid and enjoying many an early autumn evening just like this one forty odd years ago. All that was missing was a bunch of fireflies. And my family.

    Not setting up my rainfly turned out to be a bad idea. I had left my bulky winter sleeping bag at home and only had my lighter one with me. I didn’t freeze like a meat pop but I definitely felt my toes get noticeably cold during the last few hours before sunrise. It only got down to the mid 50s too, so I need to carry my bulkiest sleeping bag and use my entire tent whenever I go out from now on.

    One thing I was worried about was whether or not I needed a sleeping pad. I had not planned on buying one and never needed it. I don’t have or plan to get a pillow either, and the night at McKinney Falls justified that decision as well.

    Now seems like as good a time as any to talk about my backpack. I am using a 60 liter pack I bought from Walmart. That makes not bringing my warmest sleeping bag even more annoying, I absolutely had room for it and just left it at home because I’m lazy. This pack is great so far; it fits me well, is adjustable, has tons of pockets, and cost well under $100. I might make a post about it later, it’s that awesome.

    Once I woke up and packed up it was time to head out. I cleaned up a little at the cabin that acted as a shared bathroom for all the different camps in the area. The bathroom was incredibly clean and had more than enough toilet paper. Perfect time for a gallery.

    I spent most of the morning meandering around along Onion Creek Trail with no particular purpose. That wound up being a great thing because it led to some pictures of some northern cardinals.

    These are obviously not great pictures, but you know to expect that by now. Maybe once winter comes and all the leaves fall from the trees the birds will stop hiding behind them so much. Just trust me, those red patches in the shots above are cardinals.

    Now for some facts about northern cardinals. Their scientific name is Cardinalis cardinalis. When an animal has the same genus and species name it is called a tautonym. There are, surprisingly, a lot of animals that are tautonyms. Here is a small sample of some of my favorites:

    • Gorilla gorilla (Western gorilla)
    • Dives dives (melodious blackbird)
    • Iguana iguana (American iguana)
    • Anthrax anthrax (bee fly)
    • Lactarius lactarius (False trevally)

    False trevally is a pretty interesting story. It is a fish that looks like a trevally, but is not actually related to them. It belongs to an entirely different family (Lactariidae) of which it is the only member. And yes, I am aware that whole story has nothing to do with cardinals.

    The northern cardinal is the state bird of seven U.S. states, more than any other bird. They are also very defensive, known to attack their own reflection in a window. Maybe that is why so many teams use them as a mascot. Cardinals also love eating sunflower seeds, so you should use them in your feeder. Maybe I need a feeder, maybe then birds wouldn’t actively avoid me while my camera is in my hand.

    I also saw the remains of this old horse trainer’s cabin. Now is the portion of this post where I regale you with a tiny bit of central Texas history. McKinney Falls is named for Thomas McKinney, who built his homestead there in the mid-nineteenth century. McKinney was a businessman and entrepreneur who helped fund the Texas Revolution in 1835-36. He then became a politician and served in the Texas House of Representatives. He enjoyed raising and riding horses, which explains the horse trainer’s cabin on his property.

    McKinney sided with the Confederacy during the Civil War and ultimately got ruined when the South was defeated. He lost his fourteen slaves, which made it way harder for him to raise and train horses. That’s a shame. Anyway, he died in debt and in 1976 his old stomping grounds became a state park.

    McKinney’s homestead sat at the confluence of Onion Creek and Williamson Creek. Williamson Creek is named for Robert McAlpin Williamson, who is also the namesake of Williamson County, which sits immediately to the north of Travis County. A noted jurist and politician, Williamson was reportedly the first white man to ever learn to play the banjo. He was also known as “Three-Legged Willie” because of his enormous schlong. Okay, actually it was because he used a prosthetic wooden leg due to a childhood illness. You can see why he got the name if you check out his statue in Georgetown.

    But never let the truth get in the way of a good story. For all we know, he was packing some epically oversized man-meat. Everything is bigger in Texas after all.

    I got some nice shots of the creek as well as a shot of a golf course on the other side of the creek from the park. I probably wasn’t supposed to go onto the golf course, but I am a rebel like that.

    Lastly, as I was getting ready to hike out I caught a massive break from the universe. This one bird just decided to plop down on the top of a tree right next to me. Right at the top where no branches or leaves could block it. And it just sat there and let me take picture upon picture of it. This little birdie definitely wins star of the show for the entire trip.

    I am not 100% sure, but I’m reasonably comfortable saying this is a northern mockingbird. That is the official state bird of six states, second most in the USA. In addition to mimicking other birds, they can also imitate frogs, toads, and music. As far as diet, they prefer insects and fruit.

    I had the good sense to know when I was ahead and quickly leave the park after that. I’m pleased as punch with how all my gear held up over the weekend. Eager to try another overnight in colder conditions or maybe even rain to test my gear, and myself, even more.

  • Wilderness First Aid

    The genesis of this post was a few months ago. I was speaking with a friend who is not a hiker. She would sometimes describe herself as “allergic to the outdoors”. She asked me what I would do if I or someone near me had a medical emergency while out on the Appalachian Trail. Without really thinking, I quickly replied, “Oh, I don’t know, just die I guess. LOL.” She wasn’t really satisfied with that answer and pressed me further. I thought about it and mentioned how I knew some basic first aid and used to have a CPR certification like twenty years ago. I could probably sham my way through whatever came up. She still wasn’t satisfied, but we changed topics.

    A few weeks later I was having a chat with a different friend who is definitely of an outdoorsy persuasion. I casually asked him about medical emergencies. Without hesitation, he said I should look into a wilderness first aid course. He said it would go over exactly the kinds of things that could save my life or someone else’s in an “oh shit” type of situation. I asked if he had any recommendations on how I could take this course.

    “You can find it at lots of different places. A place like Red Cross is good. For the best though, you need to look into knulls.”

    It wasn’t until a few days later that I bothered doing my own research and realized that what he actually said was NOLS. National Outdoor Leadership School. They offer a myriad of courses about the outdoors and all sorts of outdoors-adjacent things, and have for over 60 years. That last sentence sounds like they are sponsoring this post, but my bank account assures you they are not. What they are, however, is one of the best reviewed companies I saw that offers wilderness first aid. That plus my friend’s glowing recommendation plus the fact that I discovered they were holding a class in Austin in late September made it a no-brainer that I signed up.

    Therefore on September 26th, while most of Austin was either sleeping in or beginning to pre-game before the big football game against Tennessee, I got up early and went to a classroom located on the Forty Acres. We met up at Wright-Whitaker Sports Complex to learn all about how to perform first aid where 911 doesn’t travel. The course was 16 hours and took the whole weekend.

    Day one we mostly spent learning and practicing the patient assessment system (PAS). PAS is a series of methodical steps to protect yourself, evaluate a situation fully, and formulate a plan of attack. It is the backbone of wilderness first aid. Every patient is entitled to a head to toe assessment.

    A large portion of PAS is how to read your patient and their body. Understand what they are telling you and ask the right questions to get them to tell you important things you need to know that they don’t know to initially tell you. Also how to read an unconscious patient and their environment to see what might have happened to them.

    We repeatedly rehearsed how to assess patients on the lawn behind the classroom. Fortunately, there was shade back there and it did not rain all weekend. But we had all brought rain gear in case it had.

    the lawn where we practiced

    The following day, instead of prepping for the final day of the MLB regular season, it was back to class. We went over how to mitigate different kinds of injuries using things you’d have in a personal first aid kit and/or improvised items from the field. Head and spinal injuries. Allergic reactions and shock. Hot and cold weather injuries. Musculoskeletal injuries.

    We rehearsed and worked on scenarios in teams of 2 and 3. We picked up people with six-person lifts. We learned how to reduce shoulder dislocations with a cravat and a water bottle. We practiced how to stick ourselves and others with EpiPens. The EpiPen thing came with its own separate certification that allows you to get epinephrine for Good Samaritan use in some states.

    I got two main takeaways from the class. The first thing it gives you is confidence. After the two-day course I really feel like I can be useful in a real-world incident. Which was the whole point of me taking the class to begin with. The instructors went out of their way to pepper the instruction with medical terminology that, when used correctly, can make you appear much smarter than you are. If you can appear like someone who knows what is going on, it eases and assures the patient so much and can make probing and pulling on them in order to help them so much easier. The second takeaway, which is at least as important, is the pocket guide.

    This pocket guide has the signs and symptoms, treatments, and evacuation procedures for almost every situation you will encounter in the field. An immeasurably valuable resource to stick into that first aid pouch. Every skill we went over is perishable, so briefly going over the pocket guide every month or so will keep all of the precious information front of mind.

    As far as the administrative side, there was only one snafu. I signed up to be added to the interest list for this class back in May or June. However, once registration opened I never received a text or an email or anything letting me know. I only found out registration was open because I was habitually checking the class website once every week or so.

    Other than that, the paperwork was smooth. I received all of the class info (location, times, parking, etc) weeks in advance. We got a packet in the class with course notes in a nice folder. Since the class was hosted at UT there was a specific brief by someone from the university at the beginning of the first day about what to and not to do. After completion, we received our certificates via email in under 24 hours.

    The class cost $370, which is an important thing to note because everything costs money and $370 spent on this course means $370 you can’t spend on food or beer or one gallon of gasoline. Does that price seem excessive? Yes. Are the skills I learned and the confidence I built something I can put a price on? No, of course not. I hope I never use anything I learned this weekend, but if I do have to it would be worth $3700 or more.

    If you are thinking of this course or something similar I believe it comes down to your financial wherewithal. if you have the disposable income (or can get your job to cover it somehow), please do it. The more people that know this stuff on any trail or campground or isolated area, the better. If you don’t have the disposable income, no judgment here. But please look a little online and try to familiarize yourself with as much as you can. And at least try and bring enough bandages and such to perform self-aid on any small injuries to your own person.

  • Brushy Creek Trail

    I actually left the safe environs of Austin to travel all the way up to Cedar Park in order to check out Brushy Creek Trail. It turned into quite an adventure on an amazing trail surrounded by some amazing parks with tons of things to do and see. But I’m getting a little ahead of myself.

    The western terminus of the Brushy Creek Trail is located at a trailhead near Twin Lakes Family YMCA in Cedar Park. Cedar Park is a suburb about 15 miles northwest of downtown Austin. Probably the two things Cedar Park are most known for are H-E-B Center, home of the Austin Spurs and Texas Stars, and the never-ending drama surrounding their city flag.

    In 2016 Cedar Park pretended to be a real city and designed a flag of their very own. After a lot of to-do and hubbub they released one that was met with annoyance and derision. So they took it down and never bothered to create a new one. Almost ten years and counting at this point.

    Twin Lakes Family YMCA is a big deal destination with a million and one things to do. Especially on a hot summer’s day. This is a common trend along the Brushy Creek Trail. Almost everywhere along the trail there was always something else fun you could be doing instead. Check out all these options available at the Y.

    The happiest place on Earth. Click to enlarge.

    Fishing, water slides, pools, play areas. Sky Trail. I honestly didn’t want to leave the Y to even get started with the hike. Filled with sadness, I did make my way to the mile zero marker. All along this trail there are stone markers buried in the ground at 1/4 mile intervals, beginning with the first one.

    Immediately after leaving the Y, the trail meandered along following the creek. For about the first two miles there was not much but loads of trees and plants. They did have these “animal tracks” stamped into the concrete on the trail, which looked aesthetically pleasing.

    One tremendous thing about this trail is how clearly and carefully it was laid out. After two miles I came across Brushy Creek Sports Park. Pretty much the entire trail from there to the eastern end ran alongside or through a park of some kind. This was the secret to why it felt like there was always something to do; there was always something to do.

    Brushy Creek Sports Park was exactly what it sounded like. A park with lots of sports. Sports, sports, sports.

    They had softball / baseball fields, football / soccer fields, and play areas for kids.

    That final picture is obviously of a bike repair station. A great accessory since there were tons of bikers using the trail the day I was. This would be as good a time as any to talk about how well Brushy Creek Trail lets bikers and hikers co-exist. Most of the trail was paved but there were lots of unpaved paths as well. And a lot of unpaved trails running parallel to paved trails specifically for bikers to use. It really felt like the trail was not geared toward either bikers or hikers, but actually a shared experience for both. What an idea!

    Just past Brushy Creek Sports park came Brushy Creek Lake Park. It sort of combined the best of both worlds. A lake on one side with fishing and kayaking and such. A park on the other side with open spaces and beach volleyball and two bocce ball courts (bring your own bocce balls).

    That last picture shows a body curl and ab workout station that I assumed was part of an outdoor fitness area. I looked all over everywhere near it but could not find so much as a rusty pull-up bar nearby. It’s too bad because the only thing that could have made this better was some freestanding exercise equipment.

    As a reader of this blog, you have surely picked up on the fact that I am not particularly enamored with modern art. Most of it seems like easily disregarded trash created by people with too much free time and disposable income. However, sometimes a piece will cause a small stir in the part of my brain that yearns to appreciate beauty. I saw one of those pieces on the shore of Brushy Creek Lake. Here is “Freshwater Cowgirl” sculpted by Anthony St. James.

    I’m not sure what it is exactly that I enjoy about this piece. Maybe the way she seems to rise from the earth like Minerva from Jupiter’s skull. Or the fact that she seems to be offering you something you strongly desire with her free hand. It has been said that writing about music is like dancing about architecture, and certainly talking about art falls into that same category. I really liked it, is all I’m trying to say.

    Moving on from the lake I got to cross over the dam that explained it.

    By this point, I was just over halfway to the other end.

    Next up was Champion Park. This park was named after Jack Champion, who owned 200 acres of land along Brushy Creek in the nineteenth century. He was buried in a small cemetery adjacent to the trail and park. The thing I’ll remember most from this park is the unfathomable water pressure behind the bottle filler on the water fountain. It literally knocked the bottle out of my hand when I first held it underneath the damn thing.

    I know I’ve already heaped so much praise on this trail, but I need to continue to do so. More kudos because it really felt as though this trail was designed by and for people with two things as high priorities: staying hydrated and staying in the shade. There were loads of water fountains all over. Not all of them worked, but even still it was never more than a mile and a half or so between working ones. Same with the toilets. There were also multiple locations totally covered in shade, even in midday.

    My next noteworthy experience was catching some shots of a giant bird perched ominously along the treetops.

    I believe this to be a red-tailed hawk based on my extensive knowledge of the local fauna. If it had made a noise I would be certain. Red-tailed hawks make the noise you imagine birds of prey make. If you’ve ever heard a bird of prey in a movie or on TV, you probably heard a red-tailed hawk. Check this video about the difference in sound between a red-tailed hawk and a bald eagle. One sounds like it wants to go to war, the other sounds like it wants to go to Starbucks.

    At one of the creek crossings, I almost got a picture of a great blue heron. It darted across from one set of trees into another before I could get my camera ready. It never poked back out again even though I waited for about ten minutes. I’m still fighting with myself and my equipment to become the nature photographer I know I can be. In the meantime, these back-lit faraway shots are all I have.

    The next few parks the trail touched were Olsen Meadows Park, Creekside Park, and Shirley McDonald Park. Creekside was the largest of those parks and included tennis courts, play areas, and a pool.

    Past Shirley McDonald Park one leaves the city of Cedar Park and enters the city of Round Rock. Round Rock is another suburb of Austin most known for being the home of Michael “Dude, You’re Getting A” Dell and his company Dell Technologies. It is also the home of the Round Rock Express. The Express are a minor league baseball team that oscillates affiliations between the Astros and the Rangers every few years. They have been the Rangers’ AAA team since 2021 so they are probably due to go back to the Astros soon enough.

    The coolest thing about moving into Round Rock is that Brushy Creek Road becomes Hairy Man Road. This gives me the perfect excuse to discuss The Hairy Man.

    The Hairy Man was a small boy in the 1800s who got separated from his parents and was raised by the fauna of Brushy Creek. As he grew he had no clothes to wear. Fortunately, his hirsuteness covered his modesty. The Hairy Man vowed to protect the denizens of Brushy Creek by scaring away other people. One day he got trampled by some horses, but the caretaking cryptid is said to still haunt the area until this day.

    Click to enlarge.

    The Hairy Man is a pretty big deal in Round Rock. So much so that there is a whole day and festival devoted to him. The day includes a 5k race and a hairiest man contest. The festival is on October 17th this year, which means you still have time to stop shaving your back and enter yourself in the competition.

    There wasn’t really much left to do to wrap up this trail after that. You may notice the very first picture here mentions Fern Bluff. In case you are wondering what a “fern bluff” is, I’ve got you.

    The bluffs are an outcrop of rock that provides the perfect amount of shade to allow the ferns to bloom underneath their purview.

    Soon after that I hit the mile 6.50 marker.

    And finally, the end of the trail. I knew this because there was a helpful sign.

    Normally, I’d wrap everything up here. But in this case I actually had to walk all the way back to the Twin Lakes YMCA to complete a slightly greater than 13 mile loop. For some other stupid reason I decided to do a whole host of errands after I finished up. This resulted in me walking over 60000 steps on the day. I had never even done 50000 up to this point so, needless to say, I was plumb wore out.

    Having read this far I doubt I need to explicitly mention in my conclusion, but I loved loved loved this trail. I loved the way they integrated both bikers and hikers. I loved the way the trail touched so many parks with so many things to do in them. I loved the facilities. I loved learning about The Hairy Man. Easily the best trail I’ve hiked so far.

  • Website Announcement

    I have some news to share. I won’t say it is “exciting” news, because that feels presumptuous. The news is that I have bought a domain for this blog. The blog can now be found at this new URL:
    https://www.genehikesapptrail.blog

    The URL https://genehikesapptrail.wordpress.com will also continue to work. For those of you too lazy to update your bookmarks.

    The biggest change you will notice, aside from the location, is that there are no more ads to sift through. That was not the main reason I decided to pony up cash, but it is the one most noticeable to you the readers.

    The impetus behind this change was because of storage. A free plan got you 1GB of storage, but the cheapest paid plan is 6GB. The lack of storage for a free blog meant that I have been compressing almost every image I have uploaded. I do not wish to spend time compressing anything before uploading while I’m on the trail, so I needed to pay for more storage space. As someone who used Lynx text-only browser in the ’90s, I never dreamed I would ever say 1GB of storage was too little.

    Since the paid plan is good for one year, this purchase should last until the thru-hike is over. I’ll probably continue compressing files until the actual hike begins, but once it does I will be uploading everything in source quality. I want you to be able to experience the awe and wonders of the trail just as I will.

    To celebrate this announcement, we are doing our first and only Content Week[TM]. Starting on Wednesday, September 23rd, I will be posting a new article every day for one whole week. I am heavily biased, but I feel like I have a good crop of fresh posts to keep you entertained for the entire week.

    Speaking of September 23, the annual AT hangtag color vote is going on right now. It ends on the 23rd, so if you are planning on doing a thru-hike next year, make sure you get your votes in. You can vote once per day.

    I have another announcement that I’ll shoehorn in here as well. There is about to be a tonal shift in this blog. For the past six months I have been blogging about getting ready for the Appalachian Trail. However, it has not felt much different from a fitness blog or a weight loss blog. Lots of hiking day trips and silly things that may have crossed my mind, but not a ton of real content about things important to thru-hiking specifically. Moving forward, while I do want to continue doing hikes and fitness stuff, I want to start focusing in on the nitty gritty of what next year entails.

    Expect more gear reviews, planning tips, and overnight trips. Since it is finally under 100 degrees every day and the six month long Austin summer is winding down, I hope to bivouac at McKinney Falls and Bastrop State Park at a minimum during the fall. Those should be great occasions to stress test my gear and figure out which items are worth it and which ones need to be replaced before March. Those are the kind of things I expect to discuss way more over the next six months.

    Thanks for being with me on the journey so far.