This week was my kiddo’s first official spring break. A couple of weeks ago, I decided that I wanted to take her on her first backpacking trip. With support from my hubs, we got her outfitted with appropriate gear and I decided to find a site.
Now, I could go anywhere. My needs are pretty simple when it comes to backpacking, especially this time of year (meaning, I will be much more hesitant to go backpacking in Texas between the months of May and September; if you’ve ever done it, you know why). So I wanted to find a place that would be appealing to my 5YO.
When I ran the query on the TXPW website, looking for a primitive site available on the dates we wanted, I was really glad that Dinosaur Valley popped up as having one primitive site available. Trails for me. Dinosaurs for her. Score!
The drive to the park was very nice. We navigated through small towns on country roads and it reminded me of the region of Texas I grew up in. We saw lots of green fields and bluebonnets along the way. This is a great time of year for roadtripping in Texas.
The weather could have been better. It was overcast and cool; about 57 degrees with the looks of rain hanging in the clouds overhead. But at least it wasn’t hot.
Thanks to the popularity of the park, in combination with it being spring break for many, the line to get into the park was long. The sign indicated the park was at capacity and people were turning around. Good thing we had a reservation.
We went inside to get checked in and were greeted by the park staff and gave them our information.
The woman who’d greeted us first asked, “I just want to make sure you’re aware that you’ll be crossing the river.”
So, I’d seen the map and noted that the trail to our site crossed a river-like body of water on the map. Most of the time these “rivers” are barely running creeks that are easily passable on foot. But she’d said it with such gravitas that I was tempted to ask if we were gonna have to ford it like the end of the Oregon Trail. Ultimately I responded that, yes we knew we’d be crossing the river, though now I was excessively curious about what awaited us.
Then she asked if we knew how far we’d be hiking. I admit that question kinda irked me…mostly because the way she asked it. (Tone and body language make a big difference, y’all.) Like, she took one look at me and my girl and decided maybe we didn’t know what we were getting ourselves into. Though I hadn’t measured exactly, looking at the map, I could estimate the distance to our site was barely over a mile. Nothing to be stressed about. So again, I answered yes.
We got our parking tag and left, then drove on to the parking lot at the trailhead for the primitive sites.
After parking, we got straight to work putting on insect repellant, then put on our packs and wasted no time hitting the trail.
Before we knew it, we were at the “river”. It was about shin-high in some places and there were plenty of foot-sized rocks arranged to be a natural “bridge”. While it wasn’t exactly the Mississippi, I quickly observed that the placement of the skipping rocks and the volume of people trying to get across without slipping and falling in would pose a challenge for us.
Regardless, we pressed forward. My 5YO was in front of me so I could see what she was doing and we got off to a slow start. And watching her, I quickly realized that stepping on the rocks to get across was not going to be fast.
In theory, it seems simple, but when you step on a slightly-slippery rock that starts shifting under your foot, while you are constantly trying to maintain your center of gravity while wearing a full pack that is pulling you backwards…let’s just say I had to quickly re-evaluate how we were going to get across if we wanted to get across a) dry, and b) with all our teeth in the same place (call me vain, but I like my teeth where they are).
So, I told my girl to stop and I took off her pack. Then she proceeded to bound across those rocks like a mountain goat. She even had a trail of people following behind her, watching where she stepped. She made her Momma proud.
But I was still kinda stuck. I was wearing my pack, which was about 30 pounds total, and holding her pack which was about 12 pounds. (We were both loaded down with enough water to last us through lunch the next day, for both drinking and preparing our backpacking meals; water = weight.) I made a few half-hearted attempts at continuing while holding her pack in my arms, but once again, plans go out the window when you can’t find a stable surface for your feet.
I was standing next to a wide, flat rock that was not fully submerged and dropped her pack onto it. The people standing behind me looked at me like I was crazy, so I told them I was going to come back for it.
Then I slowly, SLOWLY went across the rocks, oscillating between cussing and praying, until I made it to the other side where my girl was waiting. I took off my pack and set it next to her and told her to not move from that spot and not to speak to anyone. I wasn’t going to be able to watch her and I needed her to be as safe as possible.
I went back and retrieved her pack from the rock I’d left it on, strapped it on my back, then once more went rock to rock to get to the other side.
After that business was done, we both put our packs back on and quickly forgot about that slightly stressful start to her first backpacking trip.
Let me tell you, watching her hoofing it up the trail with her full pack on, climbing over rocks and jumping over tree stumps and roots made me so proud. And the trail was all uphill. Our site was on the top of the ridge we were climbing, so anyone who has hiked uphill wearing a full pack knows how much that can suck.
At about the halfway point, she was struggling and told me she didn’t want to carry the pack anymore, but we practiced some affirming words and I told her I would bet money that she was the only kid doing what she was doing in that park (meaning, a 5YO girl wearing a full pack, hiking to her campsite. There were plenty of families there car-camping, but I didn’t see any other small children like her on the trail with packs on). She seemed buoyed by that.
The trail itself was well marked, with the exception of two places where the trail was labeled “Cedar Ridge” instead of “Rocky Ridge”, which confused me for a few moments because the main trail that ran the perimeter of the park was called the “Cedar Breaks” trail. I need to give TXPW some feedback on that. But I looked at the map with my 5YO and showed her where we were going and how we knew which direction to turn, etc. There was a scenic overlook on the way to our site where I took a picture of her.
Then we made it to our campsite, and we were both relieved. I was excited to pitch our tent and get settled.
The site itself was large. And the sites were spaced far enough apart that we had a lot of room to ourselves. The site could accommodate up to 8 people, and I could see that being a possibility, with several options for a place to set up a tent.
After surveying the site for a good place to put our tent, I decided on a patch of land under the canopy of a grouping of cedar trees. The trees looked healthy and intact, so I wasn’t worried about any widow makers falling on us in the middle of the night. And I liked the protection the trees would offer from wind and other elements.
So we got to work setting up the tent first. My girl was beyond excited to be able to pound the stakes into the ground. But, we quickly learned that this part of the site had lots of small rocks hidden in the soil where we were trying to put the stakes. Annoying. I was wasting too much time trying to put in the first stake, repositioning it after hitting a rock, trying to dig the rock out so I could continue, only to hit more rocks. I looked over at her and her stake was already in the ground. She was using a flat, fist-sized rock as a make-shift mallet and was not getting discouraged when she hit rocks. She just hit the stake harder. Haha.
Anyway, we finally got the tent put up, and I taught her how to inflate her sleeping pad using the bag it came with. She did that like a pro.
Then we walked over to the other side of the site and set up our little “cooking” area. We shared a bag of mac and cheese, and finished it with s’mores (we roasted the marshmallows using the flame from the JetBoil).
Potty time was an adventure because the most suitable place to go potty was on the other side of a “field” of cacti. Lots and lots of prickly pears. I was glad that on the trail, we talked about cactus and what happens if you touch it. She correctly answered “it’ll poke you and it’ll hurt.” Right answer.
So she navigated the cacti with caution and we were both able to do our business at the end of the night before laying down in our tent.
We still had a decent signal so we did a What’sApp call with her dad and my other babies, then she asked to watch a camping “biveo” (that’s how she says “video”), which meant she wanted to watch an episode of Corporal’s Corner on YouTube. She loves watching his videos. And I do, too; they are very educational.
It didn’t get super cold that first night; maybe the upper 40s, but we were both toasty inside our sleeping bags and our REI Half Dome 2+ tent.
The next day, we were ready to explore the park. So I packed her REI Tarn 40 with day pack things (I’ll write a separate blog post on what should go in a day pack soon), adjusted the straps so it would fit me, then hit the trail.
We made it back to the river, and once again started across the rocks to get back to the other side. My girl made it across mostly fine, but ended up slipping and sitting in the water, so her hiney got wet, and her feet ended up in water deeper than her ankles, so all the waterproofing-on-boots in the world doesn’t matter if your whole foot is submerged.
I had about as much success. I was almost to the other side, when I stepped on a rock that was more slippery than it looked and my foot slid off and I also ended up in ankle deep water. Dammit. And I had only packed one extra pair of wool socks that were back at the camp site. Double dammit.
Forging on, we got to the trailhead and I knew trudging around all day with wet feet inside wet boots was a recipe for disaster, so we loaded into the car and drove into Glen Rose, making a stop at Tractor Supply Company where I bought a package of wool socks. We put them on and I put our boots in the floor board and blasted the heater onto them to try to get them as dry as possible during the drive.
We made it back into the park, left our car at the trailhead, and continued on with our exploration. We walked through the Monarch Trail and stepped into the park store. I bought a sticker and a few t-shirts for the fam. We sat at the nearby tables to eat our lunch, but my daughter kept getting distracted by the siren song of a Kona Ice truck parked in the nearby parking lot. I told her if she ate everything I gave her, she could have a snow cone. (Which I didn’t understand. It was in the mid-fifties, windy, and overcast. The idea of eating a snow cone was not appealing to me in that weather. But she’s a kid and I’m a grumpy adult. C’est la vie. 😆)
She got her snow cone, and we walked on to a nearby playground with picnic tables so she could finish it, then play for a few minutes. Finally, I told her we needed to go so we could find the dinosaur footprints.
We followed the trail and found the first set of footprints on the other side of the river. This part of the river was much more passable; the skipping rocks there were large and much more stable, so I had no fear of us slipping off into the water.
I wanted to find the next set of tracks so we got on the trail and started toward the Blue Hole. We found it, but since we would not be going for a swim there, we were not able to see the tracks. So we took a snack break and continued on. We found the “ballroom” tracks and got a picture.
Lots of people were here, taking off their shoes and wading in the water to go out onto the tracks. But I was the grumpy mom who wouldn’t let her kid go. Once again, it was in the fifties and there was no sun out. If there had at least been sun, I would have been more inclined to say yes.
After seeing the tracks and deciding we were ready to head back to the camp site, we stopped one more time at the dinosaur models in the field next to the park store and snapped a picture (seen at the top), then returned to the trailhead via the Monarch Trail.
Eventually, we were back at the river, but I was not about to mess with balancing my way across slippery, shifting rocks. So we took off our boots and socks, tied them together and slung them over our shoulders. We rolled up our pants and walked across, then put our socks and boots back on. Done. No stress.
Back at the campsite, we had dinner and played Statues in the Park for a while, which was really fun and funny; my little one has such a great imagination. By this time of the day, the sun had come out and the temperature warmed up quite a bit. All was well until we were winding down, getting ready for bed, then headed out to do our last potty of the day. My 5YO wanted to take a shortcut, and I didn’t really try to stop her, though I told her I didn’t want her to do that. We found our way to our tree and the next thing I knew, she was doubled over in pain, saying that her leg was hurting.
Poor little miss had a close encounter with a cactus. 😨 We limped back to the camp site and I spent the next hour pulling a million (maybe not a million, but it seemed like it) tiny cactus prickles out of her leg after trying to remove as many as I could from her pants with some tent repair tape I had.
Ultimately, I got most of them out using my fingertips (the tweezers I had in my IFAK were worthless. Note to self: replace those with Tweezerman tweezers) and had her change pants since the ones stuck in her pants were burrowed into the fabric pretty good.
She asked to watch another camping video, so another episode of Corporal Shawn Kelly bushcrafting lulled her to sleep, and I quickly followed.
The wind picked up that night and it rained, but we stayed warm and dry in our tent. The next morning, we woke up to a temperature drop and misting. After packing up the gear we could while staying dry inside our tent, we got out and had breakfast, then worked together to shake off as much water as we could from the rain fly before rolling the tent up and putting it away. Then we hit the trail and headed back home.
Bottom line, Dinosaur Valley was a great destination for a young, first-time backpacker. There are plenty of trails to explore and lots of amenities to hold a kid’s interest. And the primitive campsites are spacious, with plenty of room for multiple tents. A few takeaways I’m passing on to you:
Pack extra socks. If I had known the river situation was what it was, I would have packed more socks, for sure, but also…
To cross the river, just remove your boots and socks and roll up your pants. This eliminates the stress of stepping on a slippery, shifting rock that your foot will slide off of, sending you into the shallow drink. Especially when you’re carrying a full pack.
Make sure you know what to do when someone runs into a cactus, because it’s just kind of inevitable (especially in Texas). Luckily, I had recently taken a wilderness first aid course and this was discussed, so I’m really glad it was fresh on my mind, otherwise I might have been a ball of anxiety trying to figure out how best to address it.
Allow your littles to explore and encounter nature the way they want to (within reason). Point out all the interesting things they don’t normally get to see every day and allow them to interact with them. Wildflowers. Ancient oak trees. Rocks the size of cars. Give them the opportunity to experience wonder and awe. This will help foster a more genuine appreciation and interest in going on another backpacking trip. After all, backpacking is both relaxing and hard work at the same time. Carrying all your gear is a workout for sure, but being immersed in nature and allowing yourself a break from the rat race is what makes it all worth it.
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