Vacation Day #1: Snow!

Howdy all! Jason and I are back from our vacation in the Davis Mountains in west Texas. We had a ton of fun — we went hiking every day except for one “rest day” when we went on another adventure — more on that later.

We left Austin on Friday, December 22 and drove to the cabin at the Nature Conservancy’s Davis Mountains Preserve where we’d be staying for the next few days — we won the stay in a charity auction. It’s about an 8 hour drive, but there’s hardly any traffic at all and the scenery can’t be beat. We arrived at the cabin just as it was getting dark, so we unloaded the car, relaxed a little and then went to bed.

We woke up the next day to find it snowing! I was so excited I ran out of the cabin in my pj’s to take some pictures. I grew up in Ohio and love snow — I’m always telling the family to send me some here, ha ha. We ate a quick breakfast and went hiking — oh wow, it was so beautiful.

First we hiked the Madera Canyon Overlook Trail. What a view. Since pictures are worth a thousand words, here are two:

We finished the Madera Overlook trail and we were having so much fun that we didn’t want to go back to the cabin, so we did the Jones Tank trail too. It snowed off and on while we did Jones Tank and just kept getting more and more beautiful. So quiet, so peaceful. The air was crisp and smelled like pinyon pines and alligator junipers. Ahhhhhhh.

After Jones Tank it was starting to get dark, so we figured we’d better head back to the cabin.

We got a fire going in the wood stove and had hot chocolate (for me) and tea (for Jason). What a great first day of vacation.