Dwight D. Eisenhower Park - Monday, July 20, 2015

In her new position as Regional Director for the Southwest Region (New Mexico and Texas), my friend Susan is putting a lot of time into checking out new trails for Volksmarching. On Monday morning she wanted to check out how many miles of trails we could do in Dwight D. Eisenhower Park in northwest San Antonio.

She had never been to the park before, but I had hiked it a couple of different times with San Antonio Hill Country Hikers. I told her she needed to wear hiking boots and bring her walking stick.

We started hiking about 7 a.m. First we hiked the perimeter of the park which had some pretty good elevation changes. The hiking poles came in very handy going up and down some of those rocky "cliffs."

Right at the start of the trail we saw a bunny. Other wildlife included a very small frog, a snake and a lizard. We couldn't capture any of them in photos; they were too darned fast.

Steep terrain, Susan peeking out at top

Very rough hiking in parts

Very easy hiking in other parts

Shady trail

Bat boxes mounted in the meadow

You can see the level of difficulty on the
trail signs - Level 4 is the hardest

From the Observation Tower at the highest point in the park, I was able to zoom in on Six Flags Fiesta Texas about two miles away. If you enlarge the second photo below you can see some rollercoasters.

Observation Tower

Six Flags Fiesta Texas

Texas Hill Country view

Scenic Red Oak Trail

Fence and meadow

We were almost finished with our hike and had only an easy portion left to do. Thankfully it was nice and shady.

This was a challenging and beautiful walk with lots of different terrain. When Susan checked the mileage on her Jawbone device, we had walked 11K (6.8 miles) in three hours. It looks like this will become a new Volksmarch in 2016.

Travel Bug out.