Gail and I headed up to Lost Pines Resort near Bastrop, Texas, for our 31st wedding anniversary and for Gail to attend a Scentsy Conference..  We stayed there two nights, Feb 14 - our anniversary - and Feb 15th, Gail's birthday.   Very nice resort, alongside the Colorado River, and close to a park called McKinney Roughs.  On Monday while Gail was at her conference I went on an exploring run of the hotel grounds and the trails of McKinnyey Roughs.   Took a few photos along the way.

My starting point was this 'Smores Fire Area" where in the evening guests could gather around a fire and enjoy some Smores prepared by some of the hotel staff.

Onto the hotel trails alongside the Colorado River

That  0.7 trail took me to the entrance of McKinney Roughs, a State Park Natural Are.  There were trail maps available at the entrance, but where's the fun in knowing what to look forward to the first time out?   I left the trail map in its folder and proceeded on.

The trails started out kindly enough with some really sweet soft-dirt trails that took me by a huge Pecan tree

Decisions, decisions, as I came to this fork in the road......

I took the right fork...and of course I had unknowingly chosen the more difficult of the two trails and began to climb.....

...and climb....every time I got to the top of one hill, I figured it would flatten out for a bit; but no, there was always another hill around the next curve, sheesh.  I finally told myself, dammit, I am going to get to the top of this darn trail even if it takes me 3 hours.

Thankfully, it was not 3 hours, lol, although it felt like it on my legs.  I finally did get to the end of the trail, which intersected with another trail and my reward was a nice view of the surrounding area.

Of course, now that I WAS up...I had to now go down...and downhill for me, with my spine arthritis, is much harder than uphill.  This downhill, like the uphill, seemed to my legs to go on forever....

Ahhh, flat again....this trail took me back toward the hotel, with a couple of nice views of the river along the way

Back on the hotel grounds, my final lap took me around the hotel on a paved  path and past  the hotel longhorns grazing in their pasture.

I ended up with 5.2 miles done in just under an hour.  VERY hilly miles.

On Feb 16 I got up early in the morning before we checked out and ran part of the hotel golf course path.  I figured golf course, nice and flat, right?  WRONG.  The first part was flat, but O-M-G, then the hills started and Hole 12 was especially hill-hell, this thing kept going up for what seemed like forever.  Go up, see a curve on the path, go around the curve, another up...and on it went for about 4 curves and ups.  And not  a gradual up either, this freakin' hill composed of 4 parts had up angles like a darn roller coaster ride.  Not  QUITE that steep-and-straight up, but pretty darn steep.  My reward for finally getting to the top of the Hole 12 hill was seeing all the surrounding area laid out before me just as a beautiful sunrise came up.  Ended up with 3.4 miles for this outing.   Definitely got my hill work done for the week at this resort, lol.