October 2023 Eclipse – Tourtoise & Hare

In 2017, Aneel and I happened to be on a road trip and going through St. Louis, MO. This was extra awesome because St. Louis was on a great viewing pathway of the total eclipse that happened that year. Watching that eclipse was a truly spectacular experience (my first eclipse), and we have been really excited to see the annual eclipse this year (2023) and the total eclipse next year (Texas has total pathway for both).

Finding camping spots has been a little difficult. Eclipses are popular events for camping and places either book up early (and are costly) OR don’t even go on sale until just a few months before (e.g., State Parks) and are a crapshoot whether you can book them. The pathway of totality for the October 2023 annual eclipse didn’t run through a huge amount of camping/park options, but we did find an RV park in Hondo, Texas with open reservations that wasn’t too expensive—Quiet RV Park.

I would definitely recommend the park. There was a very weird hiccup about a month before the trip where I signed on to double check something and saw that our reservations had been cancelled (we definitely had not requested for them to be cancelled, and I still don’t know why it happened). But after an email and a quick conversation with the park, they got us back on the books. The spot is really accessible and the park was super nice. Big spaces, not too crowded, pretty views. I like RV parks that still feel like camping, aren’t too crowd, and aren’t geared around inside RV park events. This was right up our alley. Two thumbs up.

Great Chargers in San Antonio

Before I jump into the camping experience and the eclipse, I will note that we drove through San Antonio to get to Hondo and stopped at the new Rivian chargers in the north of the city at the Shops at La Cantera. It’s a perfect stop. The chargers charge incredibly fast (less than an hour for almost a full charge- we were down to maybe 20% or so and charged to 100%). It’s an outdoor mall with over a dozen places to eat, so we stopped for lunch on the way to camping and then stopped for dinner on the way back from camping. An excellent stop. Also got to give fellow Rivian owners the secret handwave.

Camping and the Eclipse

The camping experience was pretty much centered around the eclipse. No camp tests really, and everything was straight-forward at our setup. But we did fit in a few great hikes the afternoon after and the day after the eclipse.

Weather the few days before kept flip flopping between cloudy and not cloudy. So, we were a little nervous about eclipse visibility. The morning of the eclipse was fully cloud cover at camp, so Aneel researched and found a town about 30 minutes away that looked much better for the forecast. So, we drove the Hare up to Bandera with camping chairs, and settled into a cute little city park to view the eclipse.

It was great. Slightly cloudy, which was actually fun because when little clouds covered the sun, our phone cameras could actually record the eclipse (full sun and you just get a giant sun blob). We played with our shadows, looked at the little crescent shaped shadows that trees cast, and watched as the moon covered more and more of the sun. Then the peak hit, and we saw the ring of fire! The moon sat in front of the sun not quite covering it on all sides. I love how it gets darker and chillier during eclipses too. The little park wasn’t full of people but there were plenty, and a cheer went up when the ring of fire appeared.

The Hikes

After the eclipse, we grabbed lunch at a little pizza place in Bandera—okay but not great. Then we drove into the Hill Country State National Area (SNA) for a hike. We weren’t sure if we would be able to get in because they didn’t have any tickets available for entrance during the eclipse, but we figured it was worth a shot… surely many people would have left after the eclipse. Sure enough—we got in just fine. The hike was really pretty: rugged and good diverse landscape. Almost no birds though.

The whole weekend had few birds on our hikes. Although at our campground, the field next to us was covered in hundreds of White-winged Doves AND we saw Crested Caracara a number of times.

We came back to our campground after the Hill Country SNA and relaxed for the rest of the evening. We also discussed our plan for the next day. We could have spent another full day and night there, but decided it would be nicer to get home Sunday evening and have a less hectic Monday morning. So Sunday morning we got up and drove to the other hiking area nearby—Castroville Regional Park. It was a pretty good hike… good landscape variation, interesting plants, not many birds, but a nice time overall.

I insisted we also stop by and do the Hondo Nature Trail on the way back to camp because it was the only “hike” in the actual town we were staying in. It’s about 0.2 miles but ended up surprisingly confusing. There are tons of different diverging and converging paths and that trail has more sign-posting then any other trail I’ve been on… people apparently donate to get a small piece of the trail named after them but then you just little named sections every 25-50 feet? It was a fabulously absurd little stroll with a well maintained garden at the entrance.

Then we came back, packed up, and set off for home. We stopped for one last hike while in San Antonio at the Government Canyon SNA. Less landscape variation as the other hikes we did, but definitely a place I’d come back to and try some other hikes on. By the end of it, I was pretty ready to be done hiking. We’d hit about 9 miles that day. So, with a last stop at the Shops for charging and food, our trip was over.