Rough Creek

On the last week before leaving the US and flying back to Thailand, my parents had planned a vacation with us to Galveston Island on the south coast of Texas. Unfortunately, just days before we were supposed to leave for the trip, a hurricane struck the coastline, putting a big damper on our plans. Even if Galveston itself wasn't going to get the worst of it, it's no fun to sit on the beach in the rain.

At a loss of what to do, we all began scrambling to figure out an alternative destination. At the last minute, my dad discovered a place called Rough Creek Lodge, located outside of Glen Rose.

Rough Creek is a luxury hunting lodge, and even though nobody in my family is interested in hunting, we had an incredible time. It's kind of like a summer camp for adults! There's archery, canoeing, hiking, horseback riding, a climbing tower and zipline, and much more.

And the food! I can't go on enough about how amazing every meal was!

We especially loved the swimming pools, which felt amazing on a hot Texas summer day. We stayed during the weekdays on the first week of school, so there were no kids there, and very few adult guests. That meant that every time the family wanted to go swimming, we had both pools entirely to ourselves!

And the pools were fantastic. There was a lazy river and even a water slide!

(Although I did occasionally get stuck going down the slide...)

We didn't go hunting, but we did see a lot of deer out and about, especially in the early morning and early evening. We did visit the boat house where my dad tried his hand at fishing for a little while, but nothing was biting. 

The fish were there - we could see them swimming just below us in the lake - they just didn't trust anything dangling on a line out of the boat house!

Now, I don't know if you've been to a petting zoo any time recently. I hadn't in years. But petting zoos are a ton of fun! We got to meet some extremely friendly goats.

One goat in particular was a little too friendly. In fact, he manipulated his friendship with us to orchestrate an escape from his pen in order to eat the grass just outside of his fence. He befriended us, lulled us into a false sense of security, then butted his way out of the gate. 

Goats are strong! It was impossible for us to get him back in without help. We had to call someone from the lodge to come out to deal with the goat.

I think the employee who came out to deal with the goat situation was a little annoyed with us, but I also get the impression that this isn't this particular goat's first time breaking out. In fact, it seems like a routine. The goat was easily bribed back into his pen with food. I think he does this often.

It's pretty flat out there, but there is one decent hill with a wonderful viewpoint over the lodge's property. We drove out to the hill to take a short hike to the top.

A sign at the bottom of the hill instructed us to pick up a handful of stones from the rocky ground to carry with us. We weren't sure why until we got to the top. Someone had placed a metal bucket partway down the hill, and you could throw your stone at it like a target. 

Somehow, I was the only one in my family to hit the target. I was very proud of this!

We carried a bottle of Balcones Brimstone, a smoky Texas whisky from one of my favorite distillers (located in Waco, Texas!) with us. In the evening as it got dark, my parents and my wife and I sat around a campfire and enjoyed the extremely smoky whisky. I really liked it!

I called this "Fire and Brimstone Time". It was super hot outside, but in my opinion, it's never too hot for a nice campfire in the evening.

The sky is so clear out in Glen Rose! My dad got a telescope last year for Christmas, and he packed it along on our trip. He and I woke up early a few mornings, to look at the moon and the stars before the sun came up. We were up around 5, groggily sipping hot coffee and looking up to the heavens. We were able to see some really amazing stuff - the rings of Saturn, a few moons of Jupiter, some blue and red stars... but my favorite thing to look at was the moon. It's so incredible to have a close look at the moon's surface and to be able to see all of the craters. I tried really hard to get a good photo of it, but we never managed to figure out how to fit the camera eyepiece onto the telescope before the sun came up.

Staying at the lodge was the perfect blend of relaxing resort vacation and outdoors adventure. It was such a nice time to get away from everything to spend a wonderful relaxing few days with my parents.

Everything was perfect. Everything, that is, except for a semi-disastrous hiking trip we attempted one morning. More on that later...