New Braunfels, TX

New Braunfels, TX (2009) - When I was a kid, the river in New Braunfels was a family friendly trip. Today it can be, but you really have to plan appropriately. DO NOT take small children to the river on the weekend.

We took five (5) kids ages 4 to 10 years old. The kids had a great time and rave about the trip. As Mom, it was a good trip with a few dicey moments.

The days you are there are an important factor to the success or stress of your trip. We decided to camp Wednesday through Friday. We left early Friday. We were surprised how many campers came on Thursday. I don't mind a full campground. What I do mind is a bunch of drunks with loud music and bad language. My kids are still too young to notice the lack of clothing, but in a couple of years it will be a concern. Everybody is running around in swimsuits and some of these "bikini's" are no bigger than dental floss. If I do it again, I will try to camp Tuesday through Thursday.

We camped at the Lazy L & L Campground up river. For kids this is a great campsite. They have an area called the "Devil's Playground." There is no playground equipment anywhere. As long as the river is running low, this area is a fun area for all ages to wade, throw rocks and go down a small chute. There are trash cans and plenty of rock shelf to picnic. You do have to hike up some serious stairs to get to the bathroom, but the bathroom is in walking distance. Oh yeah, not handicap accessible. The stairs are a challenge to get down to the river.

Benefits of the campground, it has a lot of sites on the river with steps built into the banks to make the river accessible. The campsites we saw all had a grill, a firepit and a picnic table. We were in site #15 which is pretty much in the middle of the campground. It was an easy walk to the bathrooms and to a dock to swim or drop a kayak. It was a healthy walk to the Devil's playground and several other steps that went down to the river for exploring and swimming.

Things to plan for include the showers and river equipment. You must buy tokens from the office to operate the shower ($1/6 minutes). It is helpful to have someone watch the timer for you since it is outside the shower and there is no beep or warning that the water is going to shut off. Showers are just concrete stalls so shower shoes are recommended.

River Equipment: we just took $4 tubes from Wal-mart. For our kids this was perfect. They probably would have enjoyed renting at least one tube to share, but I had a little trouble justifying the $15 rental fee. If we actually traveled down the river, it would have been worth the rental fee, but just for swimming around the campsite, it was not.

During the day, we had a great time. Night time was dicey. Every night we were there we had at least one neighbor we had to tell to keep the music down and watch the language. There is a quiet time from 10 pm to 8 am I think, but it is definately not enforced.

It was a good trip, but I don't think I will do it again for a long while.