We are newbies with no experience pulling a trailer. We’ve previously been tent campers, but Covid-isolation affected our brains, and we bought a Cargo trailer that we’re converting into a comfortable travel trailer for the 2 of us. We are retired, and contemplating just living out of our trailer, and staying in National Parks.

Our Maiden Voyage was to Guadalupe State Park in June 2021. We haven’t camped in the summer before because of the heat in Texas, and in a tent there wasn’t much we could do to battle it. We offset high 80 temps on this trip with some periodic cloud cover, two electric fans plugged into shore power, tree shade, and the AC in our trailer. We brought a mister and hose that we could’ve hooked up to the Park’s water, but didn’t end up needing it.

We were comfortable and able to relax and enjoy ourselves by sitting in the shade, and each of us having a fan on us, and the trailer’s AC unit makes having a trailer worth every penny, even if you have nothing else in it. That being said, once you had to get up to do anything active, the sweat and need for water was back, and back to our fans and shade we ran.

The camp sites in this park were well shaded, and well spaced. The Park was clean. Great for riding bikes on its main streets, but not on its trails unless you’re into bumps, jagged drop-offs, and un-smooth mountain bike terrain. Having said that, many trails were closed while we were there because of recent rains, so some of those might’ve offered smoother bike trails.

The Trails are great for walking - shaded, and scenic, and at this time of year there is quite a variety of wildflowers around. You need to get up close to see these to appreciate their genius. Erika got a lot of good pics. I wouldn’t say hiking is great, only because it’s not a huge park.

Beautiful kayaking vistas, but getting your kayak easily to a drop-in point seemed like a challenge if it’s not easy to carry. We didn’t research this totally though, and might’ve missed an easier way to do it. Our camping neighbor found another park about 15 miles from us, that picked him up at our park, drove him to a drop off point in their park, and he took a 4 hour kayak spin directly back to our park. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.

Bathrooms and showers were excellent and clean. And shore power was good. We were able to purchase bags of ice at park entrance. No problems with bugs or mosquitoes which was nice.