Enchanted Rock & Gorman Falls
Holiday weekend camping with friends down at Enchanted Rock State park; fun. We left Fort Worth on a Friday and spent the 3 day weekend messing around at various state parks, camping, taking pictures, and camp fires at Enchanted Rock and Gorman Falls.
Most of these pictures are of Gorman Falls at Colorado Bend State Park which is nearish Enchanted Rock. The falls are a 45 minute hike in and they are simply amazing. Water from underground aquifers seeps out from atop a cliff face creating mineral formations normally found inside a cave outside. Plants growing on the cliff face get covered in minerals and more plants grow which get covered, resulting in sheets of mineral formations that must be seen to believed.
Snake!
While climbing around on the rocks near the falls my buddy who is leading the way suddenly jumps back and yells “SNAKE SNAKE SNAKE!!!”. We collectively jump back and gain our composure and snap a few pictures with a little point and shoot before we moved along. I honestly don’t know how my buddy saw the Cottonmouth curled up in a small depression in the rock he was in the process of climbing up. One more step and that snake would have taken a bite out of him center mass some where as his chest/face would have been directly over the snake as he pulled up on the rock. I kept thinking as we found another route around if I had been leading, would I have seen it? No rattle, no hiss, just a grey mass ready to bite. Yikes.
I didn’t really take many pictures at the actual destination for our trip. Enchanted rock is a cool place, but there are lots of people all over, so I generally kept the camera away and just had fun hiking, climbing, and caving. The last picture in the set below is from the top of what I call “the crack” which is literally a crack in the rock face that runs vertically from the bottom of the rock to near the top. You can get inside of this crack and shimmy your way all the way up. Its a real thrill when you poke your head out of the top (pictured spot) and see the sheer drop feet away. The last few feet pulling yourself out of the crack onto the main rock is pretty hair raising, for me anyways.
