Catherine Cantu
- May 12, 2021
- 2 min read

Pedernales Falls State Park

Updated: Sep 6, 2022

One of the coolest things about moving to Texas has been reconnecting with one of my high school friends, Lauren. She moved to Austin years before I moved to San Antonio, but we'd sent each other the occasional Instagram DM replying to each other's stories over common interests throughout the years. When she found out I'd be just an hour away from her and was a fellow lover of hiking, we knew we had to get together. Pedernales Falls State Park is one of her favorite parks, and she wanted to show Alex and me around as soon as the Texas heat was a little less relentless. The park is located at 2585 Park Road 6026, Johnson City, TX 78636 and is another one that usually sells out on the weekends. We visited the park on November 7, 2020 and got to see some beautiful fall foliage. They do allow swimming in some areas of the park, but as we were there in November, we didn't go swimming. We did dip our toes in the water to cool off after hiking a decent amount of the Falls area. The water was pretty low and calm, so we got to trek a good bit of the slabs of limestone. One of the funniest memories I have from this day is finding an abandoned pair of heels in the middle of the Falls area. Our guess was someone visited to take some kind of pictures marking a special occasion and realized heels were not the shoes to be wearing out there. I don't blame them! However, the universal "law" of hiking is "Leave No Trace," so they probably should have taken their heels off and brought them along with them. I will also cherish the thoughtful conversations surrounding our everyday lives, what we'd been doing over the years, politics, etc. and the laughter we shared. Early Saturday mornings that stretch into late afternoons surrounded by loved ones are something I will never take for granted. I loved this park because of the unique formations and crevices the water carved out in the rocks. I'll definitely be going back one of these days.