Thanksgiving at Lake Brownwood State Park

The lake was very low, still feeling the effects of the drought.

Don’t cut hearts into the prickly pears, y’all.

We made Thanksgiving camping reservations a little later this year and paired with only having the four days off instead of taking the entire week, we needed to go somewhere mid-range, not making the trek to South Llano River SP or the Davis Mountains as per what we’ve done frequently in the last several years. Plus, we’d already hit the Davis Mtns back during Spring Break in 2023, though I could easily go there twice a year or more if time was available.

Lake Brownwood is “out there” in that vast space between I-35 west of Waco before you get to San Angelo and Abilene. A lot of ranches, some wind farms, and some small, dying towns. The last time we’d camped here was back in 2017 when Forest was 3. My parents had joined us for that trip, too. Six years is a lot of difference between camping with a toddler/young preschooler and now camping with a young tween. Somehow we managed to book the same campsite, too, though I had thought we were one off until I started looking at photos and comparing them.

The weather wasn’t as good as in 2017. It was fairly cold with some rain and if it wasn’t raining it was pretty cloudy on one of the days. We covered all of the trails in the park, which will be a separate post. I’d love to get to this start park earlier in the fall or in the spring to see what blooms out there, especially since we found some interesting plants this time around—more on that soon.

It was a quiet Thanksgiving for 2023 for us.