Exploring Austin • Walnut Creek Metropolitan Park

Living in North Austin, Andy and I are about a 20-30 minute drive away from downtown.  Not a bad drive and we hop down often, but we've been looking for some places to visit that are a little bit closer. In my googling of "things to do in North Austin", I came across Walnut Creek Metropolitan Park.  We visited once before just to walk the trails and I stopped by this week to take some photos.  Plus I needed to get out of the house for some fresh air because the weather has been overcast and rainy for about a week, so I wanted to take full advantage of the sunshine.

This park has lots of great biking trails and some gorgeous hiking trails.  Definitely keep your eye for bikers if you're walking!  There's some dedicated trails just for hiking that I would recommend.  No matter where you go, though, it's nice and quiet.  Sometimes, when you're walking near the creek, you'll hear it before seeing it.  Even though the freeway is near, the sounds of the water over powers the cars.  

If you start your journey near the pool in the park, swing a left when the trail splits and walk all the way down till you get to the creek.  Since I visited after a few days of rain, the water was rushing. 

There was a couple down by the water with some pups that were having the best day of their pup lives.  Jumping and running all through the shallow creek.

This part of the creek was my most favorite.  It's a little further down from where the trail meets the shore.  The shade is cool and the sounds of the water and birds are calming.  You can hardly tell where the water meets the land.  Gorgeous! 

I saw a few couples wandering around as I snapped photos.  It's definitely a fun date spot.  It's pretty quiet and secluded for some alone time (smooches!) and makes for some pretty gorgeous photo ops.

My wanderings took me a little further out and I found this awesome little rock bridge.  It was really more of a rock waterfall and I wonder if water flows over all the time, or if that was just a symptom of the earlier rain.  Either way, it was a little tricky to get across without getting my chucks too wet ^_^ 

I absolutely love this park.  It's got some gorgeous geography in the creek and rock formations.  The trails wind but aren't too hard to navigate.  Walnut Creek Metropolitan Park is just gorgeous.  I'm so glad it's so close ^_^