The Tinaja Trail at Colorado Bend

Colorado Bend State Park has several trails that I have never hiked. I have been trying to check these off my list one at a time, but this park is a bit of a drive from my house (73 miles) so I can’t get to it as often as I would like. The park sits along the Colorado River as it flows through Texas (not Colorado) and there are many hiking trails to be found in the park as you can see by the map below. In the past I have mainly focused on the River Trail, Gorman Falls Trail, and Spicewood Springs Trail. On this occasion I decided to check out the Tinaja Trail, which winds around a canyon to a tinaja. A tinaja is depression in the rock that has been eroded by water.

So, late one afternoon I made time to get to the park and hiked this trail. I parked at the Cedar Chopper Loop trailhead and headed out to the Tinaja Trail. The Tinaja trail does involve some moderate climbing and the path is dirt and loose rocks, so you want to have some good shoes and watch where you step. I went on a cool evening in mid-winter so sun and heat were not an issue. The trail winds up and down some cliffs and does have a few nice overlooks. The overlook below faces to the northeast and as the trail winds around to the other side of the canyon there are overlooks facing west so there are places to plan sunrises and sunsets if you like. As you can see, the sky was mostly clear and there wasn’t going to be a dramatic sunset on this evening.

Overlook on Tinaja Trail at Colorado Bend State Park

At about the mid-point of the trail you get to the tinaja for which the trail is named. It is a large pool in the rocks. The water looked shallow and quite stagnant and I don’t think that I’d recommend jumping in for a swim. It was difficult to photograph the entire tinaja at once as it is surrounded by trees and brush. I was carrying only my hiking camera (Nikon Z50) and lens and I don’t have an ultrawide option for this camera. But, below is a photo standing behind a park sign facing north. The area is in full shade as sunset is nearing.

Tinaja Trail at Colorado Bend State Park

There were no other people around but I was not quite alone. I heard some vultures making whatever you call the sound they make in a nearby tree. They didn’t seem to be concerned with me and stood their perch as I changed lenses and took a few photos. They eventually decided that I wasn’t about to die and flew away.

Black Vultures at Colorado Bend State Park

I continued up the trail to an overlook facing west so I could see what a sunset would look like. I didn’t expect anything spectacular, but I was more interested in scouting the location for a future outing. The tinaja is down in the valley to the right. The below photo is a merge of several handheld images at different exposures to capture everything in the very contrasted scene. As you can see, the sky wasn’t great, but this might be a nice location for another evening. The cliff drops straight down past these plants and rocks.

Sunset from Overlook on Tinaja Trail at Colorado Bend State Park

I still had yet to see another person on this evening and I continued down the trail. When I had glanced at the map earlier I thought I could take another trail that would loop back to where I started, but that is not correct. There is another trail but it goes to a spring, so I ended up hiking all the way down to the River Trail and then back up the Old Gorman Road Trail to get back to the parking lot. By the time I was on Old Gorman Road Trail it was getting too dark to see the ground well enough to walk without stumbling so I had to shine my phone light on the ground in front of me. I eventually made it back to my car in the dark with stars in the sky after nearly 5 miles of hiking . If I go back out for a sunset photo, I will remember to pack my head-lamp and more carefully plan my way back out.

Maybe next time I’ll check out the Tie Slide Trail and Windmill Trail. Thanks for reading.

33 thoughts on “The Tinaja Trail at Colorado Bend”

  2. May not be a stunning sunset but still makes a very nice picture. Glad you didn’t become a treat for the vultures!
    5 mile hike in the dark, with nothing but the light of your phone, which is slowly dimming and then you hear a noise…. Hmm.. perhaps one of my characters will have to take a hike. 🙂

    Liked by 1 person

        1. But I watched Alfred Hitchock’s “The Birds” movie back when I was a teenager, and it scarred me! LOL! I agree though, I don’t recall any true stories where they have harmed anyone. Poor birds, get a bad rap.

          When reading a book about an Elephant reserve in Africa, I read how some vultures are killed for their brains. Due to believing that if they put their brains under their pillow at night it will bring them good luck! I promise I am not making this up! 🙂

          Liked by 2 people

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.