Greening Austin Daily

Fun Weekend Excursion: McKinney Falls State Park

11th June, 2010 - Posted by katherine - No Comments

Last weekend I went to McKinney Falls State Park and was pleasantly surprised with how much there was to do there.  It’s technically in Austin, somewhat near the airport, so it’s a conviniently short trip, and it has 2 main trails, each about 3 miles long.  We chose the homestead trail, which goes past Thomas F. McKinney’s home, which was built in the 1850′s.

The house is really pretty and cool to look at, but you can’t get very close to it and there’s no historical information about McKinney or his house at the site of the house, which I would have appreciated.  The trail itself was flat and not challenging,  and since it’s only about 3 miles it’s not a good choice if  you want an intense hike, but it was still a nice walk.  We saw some interesting insects on the trip:

After our walk we were very hot, so it was fun to be able to go swimming near the waterfall at the park. This isn’t a very good picture of the falls, but it really is very  pretty – it’s a great place to go soon to enjoy  before the water levels fall!