Inspired by some of our vacations to the Smoky Mountains, Matt and I decided to start hiking more. After buying some hiking shoes and a small hiking backpack, we hit up our first trail at the Fort Worth Nature Center and Refuge over Easter weekend. It was a great place to start hiking as they had several well-marked trails. They have bison and prairie dogs on property, but we only saw the bison. They had a cool nature center, too, where we were able to see other fun native creatures such as an alligator snapping turtle (dude, their tongues are crazy, look below). We were too distracted to take any pictures but we had a great time.
We were free this past Saturday and the weather was looking good for the morning, so we decided to try a new park, the Marion Sansom Park, also in Fort Worth. It was actually created for mountain biking, but hikers are allowed on it. While the trails were not as clearly marked (we kind of made our own trek by following a variety of different trails), it was certainly more strenuous! I could see how mountain bikers would love it- constant hills, fun turns, and a good variety of different landscapes. I personally was very happy to be using my own two feet as opposed to biking it because you could pick up a lot of speed on some of those steeper hills!
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The park is literally across the lake from NAS Fort Worth.
Matt enjoyed that aspect immensely. |
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| You can get a sense of the different elevations, too. |
We hiked for a few hours at this park before calling it quits for lunch. Our legs were definitely feeling the hills so we went home and crashed for a few hours. But we had a great time and it was so cool to feel like you're in the middle of this forest when you're really just a few minutes outside of downtown Fort Worth. I highly recommend it and we look forward to going back!
