Gene Hikes the Appalachian Trail

Tag: camping

  • 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.

  • Humanitarian Daily Ration Review

    There comes a time during the planning portion of any operation where you get overwhelmed by the finances. You just get anxious due to how much everything costs. It seems like you spend all of your time taking money out of ATMs just to hand it to cashiers, or entering your credit card number and CVV into e-commerce websites. I have officially hit that phase of thru-hike planning and it is freaking me out.

    Recently a lot of my anxiety has come from food. I have been crunching the numbers recently on just how many calories it takes to walk over 2000 miles. And just how much it costs to purchase one calorie of non-perishable foodstuffs. I am desperately looking for that magic website that sells beef jerky for $5 a pound or fistfuls of sunflower seeds for a quarter. During those searches I came across a website selling daily humanitarian rations for $15 a case. Since a case contains ten rations, that breaks down to $1.50 per ration.

    Daily humanitarian rations are a “food gift from the people of the United States of America”. They are most usually airdropped someplace like Haiti after a hurricane or some African nation during a famine or eastern Europe after some dictator launches a regional war. The box they come in looks just like an MRE (meal ready to eat) box and the meal itself contains lots of the same things you’ll find in an MRE.

    Each individual meal bag is like a salmon colored MRE bag. Quick aside, the bags used to be bright yellow so they stood out. However, cluster bombs are also bright yellow so people would actively avoid daily ration bags because they didn’t want to get blown up. So they changed them to be salmon colored. Fortunately, the guys that make cluster bombs haven’t switched to salmon yet. Although that seems like a really bad-ass tactic if one wanted to maximize the amount of little kids they blow up. Take notes, Department of War.

    On to the rations themselves. The box I purchased was packaged in August 2022. Each bag contains enough food for one person for one day. This means two entrees plus several side dish options to snack on in between. Nutritional breakdown of each ration is roughly 2000-2200 calories with a macronutrient breakdown of about 60% carbs, 30% fat, and 10% protein.

    Because the rations are meant to go all over the world to all sorts of people with allergic and dietary and religious restrictions, the entrees are all vegan or vegetarian. In other words: beans, beans, and more beans. A box of ten rations contains five different “menus”, each with slightly different combinations of entrees.

    Because I didn’t want to waste the entire box doing testing, I only ate two different rations. The first one I chose was menu #1. For breakfast I had the strawberry toaster pastries, also known as Pop-Tarts. This wasn’t some kind of knock-off Pop-Tarts or anything, they were actual Pop-Tarts still in their Pop-Tarts foil wrapper. They tasted like strawberry unfrosted Pop-Tarts if someone sat on them for an hour.

    For lunch I had beans and rice in tomato sauce. The beans in question were navy beans. This was a fabulous entree for a glorified MRE. Tasted great and quite filling. Remember that I said “filling”, because we’ll come back to it later.

    Delicious beans and rice

    In between meals the ration contained two packs of MRE crackers with peanut butter and strawberry jam. This daily ration was brought to you by the strawberry council. The most amazing thing about this ration and the other one I ate is that all four sets of crackers were completely unbroken. If you’ve never eaten an MRE, the odds of finding just one unbroken pack of crackers are up there with discovering a new star using only a magnifying glass.

    The second entree was lentil stew. Also rather filling. As someone whose mother loved to make lentils, I understand that they are basically a superfood. My big problem with this stew was that it was almost devoid of taste. Fortunately, the ration came with salt, pepper, and crushed red pepper to give it a little kick and make the stew palatable.

    Lentil stew

    Beyond that, there was a fig bar and a shortbread cookie for your sweet tooth. The fig bar tasted like some store bought version, far from bad but not exceptionally good. The shortbread cookie was the correct amount of sweetness but just a little dry. This ration needed to contain a powdered milk packet to dunk it in.

    In addition to everything mentioned above, the humanitarian ration contained a spoon, napkin, pack of matches, sugar packet, and moist towelette. No drink packets or heaters. It also contained a weird pictogram of, I guess, describing how to eat the food inside in case you’ve never seen packaged food before. Maybe you were too busy running from a dictator’s death squads or a tsunami warning to ever try one before now.

    Let’s circle back to my comment on how “filling” the entrees were. Both entrees contained maltodextrin among the first four ingredients. Maltodextrin is a food additive that comes from corn or rice or wheat. It is typically added to food to add bulk, among other reasons. It can trick you into thinking your food portion is more filling than it actually is, One reason some people do not like maltodextrin as an additive is because it has a higher glycemic index than table sugar. It may also cause gastrointestinal inflammation at high doses. Another good reason not to like it is because it causes flatulence.

    Between the beans and the maltodextrin squeezed into everything, it was a pretty loud night in my apartment. It was just like that campfire scene in Blazing Saddles. The farting never ceased.

    For the second day, I decided on menu #4. Interestingly, menu #4 was exactly the same as menu #1 except the beans and rice with tomato sauce was subbed out for a pasta with tomatoes and sauce entree. That entree contained lentils and maltodextrin, despite there being no mention of them in the title. It also wound up tasting very good by MRE standards and is something I could definitely eat in the future. Everything else was exactly the same: Pop-Tarts, crackers, fig bar, everything.

    That night in the apartment it sounded like I had the brass section of the Austin Symphony Orchestra for a sleep over. If you ever bring any of these daily rations with you to a campsite, make sure you are going solo. Or set up your tent all by itself on the far end of the pad.

    Ultimately, this review is supposed be my opinion on the humanitarian daily ration as a meal option. I would eat these. Which is a good thing because I still have eight left. I would even buy another case. A buck fifty for a full day of rations is a tough deal to beat. I ate an item from the bag every few hours or so and never got noticeably hungry, and I walked about 10000 to 11000 steps each day.

    On the negative side, each bag weighs about two pounds so it may not be worthwhile to bring too many in your backpack at once. I would describe the overall taste as slightly better than an MRE, so if you can’t stomach an MRE you should avoid. Also, the lack of variety makes it somewhat disheartening to eat them more than two days in a row. And the incessant farting.

  • Solidarity

    I had been excited for the merry, merry month of May. I planned to use this month to start making some purchases that I’ll need for my thru-hike next year. I already have a lot of the things I’ll need, but I definitely have a wish list as well.

    1. One large backpack (somewhere around 55-65 L)
    2. One sleeping bag
    3. One or two pairs of those cool hiking pants with the legs you can unzip and then they become shorts (seems like they are called “convertible hiking pants”)
    4. One entrenching tool or similar multi-purpose shovel / axe thing
    5. One tablet computer, to make blogging on the trail easy

    I actually pretended to be an adult and budgeted $400 this month to purchase a few of those items. Why did I choose this month specifically? Well, because this month is the big, exciting REI Anniversary Sale! The one time all year when the greatest outdoor store in the world has their best prices for their loving customers and members. Imagine my shock and disappointment when I found out that there was a planned boycott during the sale.

    Lots of crazy people yell at the rain and call for boycotts for all sorts of dumb reasons. Those boycotts usually go unnoticed by right-minded individuals. This boycott, however, comes from the members and workers of REI itself. Therefore it seems worthwhile to hear about why they are doing it.

    REI (Recreational Equipment, Inc) began in 1938 in Seattle as a co-operative founded to allow outdoorsmen and women a way to get quality camping and hiking gear at affordable prices. From that humble beginning REI became one of the leading outdoor retailers in the country. It was able to parlay the public’s love for the outdoor industry into millions of dollars in profits every year while still maintaining its core principles as a co-op. Great benefits for workers and members, money to spend promoting the outdoors and protecting the environment, and some left over to line the executives’ pockets.

    COVID-19 brought changes for REI the company and the public image of REI. The first cracks in the corporate image facade appeared as lax enforcement of CDC guidelines and COVID-19 safety protocols. Things like not being transparent with workers about who had the illness and having workers work too closely with one another.

    Still though, the bottom line continued to perform to expectations. After a down year in 2020 (like nearly everyone else), REI made $3.7 billion in revenue with a net income of $97.7 million in 2021. By 2022 revenue increased to a record $3.9 billion. However, income was a net negative of $164.7 million. Equally important in 2022, the REI store in SoHo, Manhattan (New York City, not Kansas) voted to become the first union store. The execs in the suits were less than pleased with the associates in the green vests.

    As more stores unionized the company became colder and colder to their workers. Among other things, REI quietly settled a charge of attempted union busting in at least one location.

    By 2025 the company went full mask off and left their co-op ideals behind. REI initially supported Doug Burgum for U.S. Secretary of the Interior. Having this billionaire, business-first, ex-management consultant in charge of the nation’s public lands and wildlife is literally letting the fox into the hen house. REI also tried to pass a slate of corporate yes-men to their board of directors. However, that was voted down by REI’s members. No problem though. REI changed its own rules and packed the board with a bunch of yes-men anyways.

    Now in 2026 the eleven total unionized stores are finding it harder and harder to work with REI. Ever since May 2025 they have been attempting to collectively bargain a contract. The most recent offer from REI was overwhelmingly rejected by the union in February 2026. REI then declared an impasse and wants to unilaterally institute wage and benefit cuts across all stores on the 1st of July. Feeling that they were left with no choice, the union along with REI members called for a boycott of this year’s Anniversary Sale. This is a boycott, not a strike, since a strike would only affect the 11 unionized stores but a boycott can be felt across all stores during the biggest time of the year.

    I linked to information about the boycott above, but I’m linking it again here as well. Please also read the many articles I’ve linked above, because I’m not a journalist and I feel like you should read some of them yourself instead of just skimming my overly brief summations.

    So bringing this back around to me, it really sucks that this is happening. It sucks for the workers at REI. It sucks for me because I’ll support their union and their cause but I’ll need to find somewhere else to shop for my wish list. But I’m happy to do it if it helps support their union cause.