After finishing at the Matthew and Hazeltine Smith Trail, we hiked over to the northern part of the Bull Creek trail. We took off from the trailhead closest to the underpass where Old Spicewood goes under 360. It was a nice quiet and peaceful hike (despite some road noise) until we got down to the swimming area by the first underpass that the river/trail makes under 360.

On our way down, we got to see a heron fishing for dinner, plenty of birds and just one other person - a woman and her dog on the other side of the trail. The solitude was so surreal that we wondered a couple of times whether we were actually on the right trail!

There were no water crossings on the western part of the loop until the trail is about to go under the 360 bridge. It looks like you can continue along a trail without crossing the river, but we followed the trail signs to cross the river. It was not much of a problem for us to cross over the creek on the rocks, thanks to our hiking poles. Without the poles, it would have been tough to stay dry.

The swimming area was full of people having a great time... and thus, plenty of trash. We saw a couple of "illegal" rope swings and plenty of beer cans. But, it was fun to watch the kids enjoy themselves for a while before we headed back up.

After re-crossing the river, we took the eastern part of the loop trail - which adds two more river crossings. The most bizarre part of our whole hike was at one of these water crossings. There is literally a fire hydrant in the middle of the creek! Very strange...

We will definitely be going back to complete the entire trail sometime soon!