River Ranch County Park — Attraction in Texas

What a wonderful place River Ranch County Park is. This new-ish addition to the Williamson County Parks system is fantastic. This park is ranch land returned back to nature and a beautifully maintained park. It has over 20 miles of trails for easy hiking, trail running, and equestrian activity. If you spend enough time out there you can see a lot of wildlife. I have seen and heard all kinds of song birds, white tail dear, cotton tails, lots of jack rabbits, reptiles, several different raptors, and I finally got to see the wild turkeys I have been hearing occasionally. But alas, the resident porcupines still elude me. The park features improved camping sites with electrical and water hook-ups, walk in camping sites with bathrooms and parking availability, as well as walk-in primitive campsites. The park has a day use pavilion with a great playground next to it. This park features a fantastic Interpretative Center with lots of hands-on and interactive features. It’s a great place to escape from the heat for a while and to learn about the natural and human history of the area. There is also a great reference library maintained by the non-profit volunteer group “Friends of River Ranch Park” who are also present at the I.C. a few days a week to welcome visitors and to answer any questions guests may have. The park is staffed by great people. The staff at the headquarters are welcoming, friendly, and informative who all have a passion and love for the park and its guests. The maintenance staff work tirelessly in all kinds of weather to keep the park in great shape for visitors. They constantly keep the trails maintained and navigable while also keeping the park facilities immaculately clean and maintained. I could not sing enough praises for all the staff I have interacted with at this park. A special thank you to Carissa and other maintenance staff members who ask me if I “have enough water” when they see me on one of my long hikes in the hot Texas Summers. 😉🥵 River Ranch County Park is a great place to recharge and enjoy some nature that’s not too far away from...

TL;DR - $21+ million park paid for by everyone, exclusive to a select few.

Like a lot of you, I was excited for this park. Though I'm sure they're nice, I don't have elementary schoolers, so I have no interest in the interpretive center and child-specific amenities, nor does what this park have to offer in terms of camping and RVing do anything for me. I'm all about minimally invasive single track nature trails to ride my bike on.

As a mountain biker (MTBer), I generally ride your standard local destinations (Brushy, Suburban Ninja, Walnut, Georgetown lake, etc) and was excited that a massive new park was opening right down the road from me since it's significantly closer, and there's around 1400+ acres, so plenty of room for WilCo to have planned some great bike trails along side the other offerings.

While I didn't expect the same level of quality single track trails that tenured parks such as Brushy Creek or Walnut might have, I did at least expect single track trails to exist seeing as how the website says that park goers will have the opportunity to bike among other things. Sadly, I was wrong, and the website is misleading.

According to the trail map "bicycles are limited to the roadways and trails Q and V only". Trail Q is a campground trail, as in the trail that one walks to get to their campsite, and trail V is the literal sidewalk entrance to the park from Bagdad road.

Horses, on the other hand, are "limited to natural surface trails only" which is all of the trails, and they have built a special area for horse trailers.

This is clearly favoritism towards the equine community. They get access to the entire park while anyone who came to ride their bike on the trails are restricted to what equates to the kiddie table. Yay, corruption!

If it's not favoritism and corruption, I have no idea why else WilCo didn't think to put aside a legitimate portion of this 1400+ acre plot of land to the very, very large MTB community. Clearly there's no financial motivation because they'd rack up some serious change at $4 a day/ $50 a year if they had a legit...

First the good stuff -

We saw a flock of wild turkey just off the Prairie Trail (about 20-30). They flew in across the meadow and lighted just at the tree-line.

We also saw a bald Eagle. At first we were sure it was a Caracara because it was perched near a vulture, but as we got closer it became clear it was an eagle.

The interpretive center is very nice. Be careful if you walk out front though as what looks like steps is a ledge. Not sure how that passed inspection, as it needs railing. I was told I am not the first person to step off of it by mistake.

Nice camping areas. There are three levels of Camping. 1. Full hook-ups. 2. Drive-up and walk in. 3. Hike in (although the hike is only 1/2 mile on a well maintained dirt road). We decided to make reservations for next month at one of the drive-up/walk-in sites to see how it is.

Restrooms - Squeaky clean. Main facilities are perfect. There are also several pit toilets throughout the park. Nicest pit toilets I have ever encountered.

Nice play ground near a large pavilion.

The Bad: We hiked 6 miles of "trails" today. I can't say whether or not the rest of the park is this way, but every inch of the six miles we hiked was on very well maintained dirt roads. All but a couple of places could be traversed by a Honda Prius. So, not really trails.

The trail signs. We joked that whoever created these signs had never hiked a day in their life. We even gave them a name - "The Trail Riddler". Because 1/2 of the signs were truly a riddle to figure out.

The poop: This is an equestrian park that allows pedestrians to hike the trails. To be fair, not every trail allows horses. Because of all the horse poop, no one is really inclined to pick up their dog poop. So you get to deal with both.

Verdict - We will be going back again. Will be camping next time and we will knock off the remaining 14 miles of "trails". I will update this review once I have completed all the...