I visited Pedernales Falls as a part of a group event and this state park served as our weekend base camp. I was the first to arrive, so I decided to hike the trail down near the falls. My intent was to cover all of the trails, but when I got down to the Pedernales River, I found it so scenic that my hike turned into a photography expedition.
I took an informal/unnamed trail along the river towards the falls and, when I arrived at the falls, walked all over the rocks where the water pools and rivers of water flow through curvy, carved out channels.
My solo hike (reflected by the .GPX file) represents only 3.9 miles of the 9.9 total miles.
When the others arrived in the evening, I told some people how impressed I was with the beauty of the falls, so several of them begged me around midnight to take them on a night hike down to the falls. We walked from base camp down the main road to the falls, but it was so dark you couldn't really see the water from the observation points, but you could hear it. We took one of the rocky trails down to the falls, but it was difficult to navigate in the dark with nothing but flashlights, so we decided to hike back. On the way back, we took a wrong turn down the road that leads to the picnic area before we realized our mistake. We didn't get back into base camp until 2:30am. Our night hike represents the other 6 miles of the 9.9 total miles.
One other nice thing about this park is, at night, you can see fireflies flying around. I haven't them for quite some time, so it was nice to see these bioluminescent insects again.
