Buescher State Park
What some people call prayer, I call a dance with the universe. You have to learn how to dance with the universe without stepping on her toes."
– Park Ranger at Buescher State Park
A couple of weeks ago we visited Buescher State Park, which sits just off Highway 71, next to the town of Smithville, about a 40 minute drive from Austin. It's Bastrop State Park's smaller next door neighbor, and swaths of the Lost Pines Forest stretch through both parks.
Between 1933 and 1936, Mr. Emil and Mrs. Elizabeth Buescher deeded 318 acres land to the State of Texas that would become the park, with another 318 being donated after Emil Buescher's death. The rest of the parkland was acquired from the city of Smithville.
In the same time period, between 1933 and 1939, Companies 1805 and 1811 of the Civilian Conservation Corps built many of the park facilities using materials native to the area. The park opened in 1940.
While it has about half the acreage of its neighbor, Buescher is every bit the lovely day- or weekend-trip destination in the heart of Texas. Park Road 1C joins the two parks, offering 11.1 miles of beautiful, tree-lined hills. It's a popular ride for cyclists and a gorgeous drive through the woods.
The park also boasts a small lake with seasonal fishing offerings and canoe and kayak opportunities. Amenities include camping areas (some with RV hook ups), mini cabins, and restroom and shower facilities.
Oak Haven
We were booked for Oak Haven, the camping area closest to the park entrance and headquarters. Because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, this was the only camping area open for reservations.
Oak Haven was comprised of a little more than a dozen campsites and a couple of lakeside mini cabins, all arranged in a loop. In the center of the loop were the bathroom and shower facilities.
We arrived on a Sunday afternoon and stayed for two nights, just missing the weekend rush. Only ours and a few other campsites had occupants. The gentleman camping two spots over told us he was happy that we were what he called "tent people" and that in the days before we arrived the whole area was overrun with "RV people."
It was a clear day as we set up camp. The campsite had a picnic table, fire ring with a grill grate, and a square where we could set up our tent. The ground was a bit hard, but our tent stakes mostly made it in. There were also a good amount of trees around, giving us both a sense of privacy and places to hang our hammocks.
After getting camp set up, we walked around the Oak Haven loop, checking out some of the other empty campsites, the bathrooms, and the view of the lake from the deck of an unoccupied mini cabin. The lake was super dry.
After walking and goofing around a bit, we headed back to camp and laid around in our hammocks. We started a campfire around sunset, and for dinner heated up salmon and wild rice on the Coleman stove. We also got to test out some new gear that Tessa got me for Christmas: a rechargeable lantern and a solar-charging set of LED string lights.
It was a chilly night, but not unbearable. We had fleece liners in our sleeping bags, and it was nice and toasty. I heard some rustling outside the tent in the darkness, but couldn't tell what it was.
Winding Woodland Trail Hike
On our second and only full day in the park, we woke up a little after sunrise, ate a couple of hard boiled eggs for breakfast, and then set out to hike the Winding Woodland Trail.
The Winding Woodland Trailhead is at the northern end of the camping areas of the park, just across the street from the Lakeview Camping Area. The trail is about 1.5 miles in each direction, and ends at its northernmost point when it runs into the Pine Gulch Trail. Pine Gulch is one of a system of trails at the far northern end of the park at the midsection of Park Road 1C, which connects Buescher and Bastrop State Parks.
We hiked the length of the Winding Woodland Trail and back, clocking in just under 4 miles in a little over an hour and a half. The weather was just about perfect for a day hike -- in the 50s and 60s, bright blue skies with a few clouds and a nice, wide trail weaving through the shade of the loblolly pines.
Damage from the 2011 Bastrop County Complex Fire was still evident in the woods, but smaller trees have started cropping up to meet their older neighbors. It might be because we were hiking on a Monday, but we only ran into a small handful of other people on the trail, and we had plenty of room to give one another a wide berth and time to put on masks to avoid COVID-19 transmission.
After our hike, we made a quick run over to the Bucee's just a few miles down the road to grab some more firewood and ice. I stopped into the park store at the headquarters to purchase a Buescher State Park patch and had a long talk with the attendant park ranger. He was a sweet man who was working this job in his retirement, and he offered me the bit of philosophy in the pull quote that opens this blog post about life being a dance with the universe.
Back at camp, we had lunch - sandwiches, celery, and hummus. We each took some quick showers and then enjoyed the perfect weather for a while in our hammocks. A family of cardinals kept fluttering around our campsite. Once more we started a campfire around sunset with our newly procured firewood, and heated up some chili on the stove for dinner.
We woke up a little before sunrise to some chilly fog the next morning. We had work in a couple of hours so we sleepily packed up our tent, sleeping bags, and hammocks, and headed back to Austin, stopping at Bucee's again for coffee and kolaches.
In all it was a beautiful little trip, a perfect weekend getaway to enjoy some nature, do an easy hike, and spend some quality time hanging out and reading in our hammocks in ideal weather. If life is a dance with the universe, then our time at Buescher State Park was a lovely little two-step that I can't wait to dance again.