The Austin Backpackers Meetup had a weekend backpacking trip this weekend to Lake Somerville State Park.

I just received my new tent and sleeping bag so I was excited to try them out. And I sure did.

So on Thursday and Friday morning I sorted, selected, and packed my pack with all the stuff I’ve been buying and was ready to go. I even created a spreadsheet of each item along with its weight in grams to figure out my base pack weight of 12.5 lbs. Then I was ready to go. Here I am on our front walk.

Katie recorded the event and created this photogrid.

There were eleven of us, and it was a great group of very nice people. Some of us were newbies like me that didn’t know what they were doing and some of us were old-hands who were very helpful explaining things to the newbies. it was a good combination. We arrived and stayed over that Friday night at the Nails Creek unit of the Lake Somerville State Park and Trailway. Then on Saturday we packed up, drove two cars to Birch Creek unit and headed out on the trail way, hiked about 8 miles to Newman Bottom in the back country and stayed over night. That night we had a tremendous rainstorm and many of us got soaking wet. I was lucky and woke to the distant lightning flashes at 3:30 AM and got prepared, but I still got quite damp just sitting on my pad and getting splattered on. Then on Sunday we packed up amid the rain, left there and hiked back about 6 miles to Nails Creek to our cars. Afterwards I volunteered to shuttle one of the hikers, Bryan, to his car back at Birch Creek and then I headed home. Overall I was a tired but satisfied backpacker afterwards.