The month of May was a soggy, soggy one in Texas–so we’ve been homebound for the past several weeks. Along with Irie and Tiki, we were getting cabin fever so, with this week’s sunshine, we decided to hit the road for a quick day trip to explore the Highland Lakes chain.
The Highland Lakes are a stairstep series of lakes that wind through the Hill Country, designed to prevent flooding and, in the process, providing electricity and recreation on the dog-friendly lakes. The chain begins with Lake Buchanan, the largest of the Highland Lakes, then continues through the constant level Inks Lake, Lake LBJ, and Lake Marble Falls before reaching the varying level Lake Travis, closest to us. From there, the chain winds on into Austin, creating Lake Austin and downtown’s Lady Bird Lake.
Since the floods, boating has been prohibited on lakes south of Lake Buchanan but the lakes and parks themselves are open so we headed out to have a look. Our first stop was Inks Lake State Park, one of our favorite dog getaways. Even though this is a constant level lake, the water levels were very high…
Irie and Tiki insisted on going to our usual picnic spots, though…
Well, if you can’t picnic, you might as well swim!
The park had many campers and swimmers but was extremely quiet since there were no boaters (which was just fine with Irie and Tiki!)
The fishing dock was submerged, so John tried casting…and literally fishing in the parking lot!
We had a great visit, though, and enjoyed walking around and seeing the wildflowers which have really hung on a lot longer this year than usual.
From Inks Lake, we headed on up to Lake Buchanan. Stopping wasn’t permitted on the bridge overlooking the spillway but you can see from this online drone video how much water is being released:
Lake Buchanan was very muddy but we wanted to take the chance to see Canyon of the Eagles, a park and resort where we hosted a book signing for Texas with Dogs a couple of years ago. We remember that weekend stay very well–it was 112 degrees and the signing was outdoors–but this week’s visit was much more pleasant!
Tiki and Irie had a great time walking around and meeting some guests, and, I think, they remembered their visit!
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