Mother Neff State Park

One sunny day near the end of my visit to Texas, my buddy James drove down to Waco to hang out with my wife and me. It was a beautiful day, and on a whim, we decided to drive 30 or so minutes to Moody, Texas to visit Mother Neff State Park.

Mother Neff State Park is named for Isabella Eleanor Neff, mother of Governor Pat Morris Neff (who also served as the president of Baylor University from 1932-1947), who donated the first six acres of the park to the state in 1916. In 1921, Governor Neff made the park into the very first state park in Texas. Additional surrounding land was donated to the state and today it is 330 acres.

Despite having lived in Waco for several years, I had never made my way out to Mother Neff. It's one of - if not THE - smallest state parks in Texas, but I was very impressed by the upkeep and facilities. The park headquarters is very nice, there are bird blinds for birdwatching, the campsites seem well-maintained, and there are some 3 or 4 miles of hiking trails throughout the park.

We explored nearly all of the trails which took us through a few different landscapes - a prairie, a forest, and a river trail near the Leon River.

One interesting feature is known as "The Cave". Technically, it's a rock shelter. This cliff overhang was used as a shelter by native people for hundreds of years.

James and I make a podcast together called "Attempt Adventure". Since we live in different countries and rarely get the chance to meet up in person, we wanted to take some promotional photos for our show.

You can listen to the Attempt Adventure Podcast wherever you get your podcasts! We are on pretty much every podcast app.

We had fun messing around and taking some pictures at an old rock table that was used by the Civilian Conservation Corps when they were doing some work on the park in the 1930s.

One of the park's most iconic features is an old stone lookout/water tower, also built by the Civilian Conservation Corps. The tower was built in 1935. You can climb up for a view all across the park.

It's a very small state park, and you can see pretty much all of it in a matter of hours. It was so fun to explore somewhere new, and next time that I'm in the US, I'd love to spend a night or two camping out at Mother Neff.