Camping: Davis Mountains

Hey, hey! If you missed my recap of our first days camping earlier this month, you can find that post here. 

Our family took off on a weekend camping trip to the Davis Mountains the first of February, thanks to DJ having some time off after signing day. We started day 2 by sleeping in! We had no real plans that morning, and really wanted to relax and make it feel like a vacation. 

DJ cooked a big breakfast of eggs, bacon and toast. 

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I spent the morning getting dressed, cleaning up the camper, doing dishes, and the girls spent the morning playing in the field and on the mountain behind our camper. 

Around 11, we headed out to hike. Since we had been here before we didn't want to repeat a hike we had already done, which left some really long trails. I told DJ to pick out one that wasn't that long, and he found one that was 2.5 miles, except it was an in and out hike- so we ended up hiking 5 miles! 

The scenery was beautiful. 

And while the weather started off cool, we quickly warmed up in the sun. The way up was definitely not the most fun! We would climb and rest, climb and rest. It took about an hour and a half, but we eventually made it to the top. At that point we could either add an additional few miles to another loop and trail or head back down. We had a snack and opted to head right back down! 

The hike down was much much easier! 

Woohoo! We made it to the bottom again. 

We had planned on having brats and hot dogs for lunch, but since we had a late breakfast, we hiked right through lunch, and opted for an early dinner. Megan played on the "bars" while DJ cooked fried rice. 

We had prepared the rice in advance and I had even chopped some of the veggies, so it was a matter of grilling the chicken and tossing everything together. I think we all had 2 servings because we were starving! 

We headed in to the town of Fort Davis, which is not big at all. Like it's one paved street and a few dirt streets. But, we caught a gorgeous sunset while we were getting gas and grabbing a few groceries. We ran out of bottled water quick! 

We drove through some of the back streets in the town, and saw this gorgeous church with the moutains behind. 

After our drive through town we headed to the UT observatory for our stars & consellations party. 

When we were camping here two years ago, we had booked this event as part of our trip and homeschool science, but due to COVID, the event was cancelled. When we decided to go back, we knew we wanted to schedule a consellation party. 

We browsed through the gift shop and the museum, and once it was dark, we were all ushered outside to the ampitheater where we learned about the constellations. I'm bummed because we weren't allowed to take pictures, so I just have a few from inside the museum. After we learned about the constellations, there weree 5 telescopes set up so we could see the moon, the green commet, Jupiter, and other stars. I wish I could've captured everything we looked at. 

We made it back to the camper around 10. The girls were exhausted from their hike. Megan and Adalyn were booth complaining of sore legs. I gave them some motrin and sent them right to bed without showers because we had a super early morning the next day!