A Fun Golfing, Camping, and Bar Hopping Weekend

The forecast in the middle of February called for 70 degrees with sunny skis - which automatically means "let's hit the road, play some golf and find a couple new fun bars and restaurants in New Braunfels." With that as the goal, we got two golf tee times, booked an RV site, and found some bars and restaurants in New Braunfels, which is one of our favorite Texas cities.

Exploring New Braunfels

Some of the reasons we love New Braunfels include:

• its small and easy to get around, everything seems to be less than 10 away and the traffic is light
• there are lots of fun things to do ranging from Schlitterbaum Waterpark to Natural Bridge Caverns and Wildlife Park to tubing, fishing, snorkeling, swimming, or paddle boarding in the clear water of the Comal or Guadalupe River
• the nightlife is hard to beat with a wide variety of fun bars with live music, cool patios, and lively fans
• there are some excellent restaurants with everything from BBQ to delicious seafood
• the vibe is cool and the natives are friendly and fun
• it's quick and easy to get to San Antonio, Canyon Lake, Greune, and lots of other fun spots to explore

See Texas Outside's New Braunfels page to find fun things to see and do.

Golfing in San Marcos and New Braunfels

Having been cooped up inside thanks to lots of rain, wind and chilly weather, we were excited about teeing off in shorts and 73 degree weather. On the way to New Braunfels for the weekend, we stopped to play of golf at the new Kissing Tree Golf Club in San Marcos. Kissing Tree is any upscale 55+ active adult community with some excellent amenities, including 18 holes of golf. The Kissing Tree Golf Club opened in October 2018 and it's the newest course to open in Texas in the last 6 years. The layout is great, the course is scenic, and it's a fun course to play. The fairways are wide and forgiving, there are no hidden gotchas, and you'll encounter some very interesting holes. This is a course that won't beat you up and that gives you a great opportunity to turn in a great score - in fact, a couple of the greens are reachable off the tee box on two of the holes! Here is a link to our review of Kissing Tree Golf Club.

From Kissing Tree we drove to New Braunfels and the next day played 18 holes on Landa Park Golf Course at Comal Springs. We love this course, in fact it made our list of the Best Courses in the San Antonio area, because it is reasonably priced, always in very good condition, challenging but fair, and it has lots of wildlife and some great holes that require strategic shot making. Here is a link to Texas Outside's Review of Landa Park Golf Course.

Camping In New Braunfels

We stayed two nights at River Ranch RV Park in New Braunfels which has several sites on a beautiful stretch of the cool and clear Guadalupe River which is perfect for fishing, tubing, swimming, or just relaxing in a lawn chair with your favorite drink and your feet in the water! River Ranch is a small 52 site RV park located beside I-35 which makes it convenient to explore north or south and it's minutes from lots of great bars and restaurants. One local told me that from River Ranch RV Park you can get to just about everything there is to do in New Braunfels within five minutes. Here is a link to Texas Outside's review of River Ranch RV Park.

Restaurants & Bar Hopping in New Braunfels

The hardest part of this weekend was deciding where to eat, drink, and listen to music - there are tons of choices. New Braunfels is loading with a wide choice of very good restaurants ranging from Asian to Italian, Mexican, BBQ, Seafood, and lots more. We found a good website that lists all the bars, restaurants, and venues with live music which helped make our decision on where to go. The first night we tried the Oyster Bar and enjoyed some fantastic Gulf Oysters and a loaded Bloody Mary with a cute face! . From there we walked across the street to listen to a good guitar player.

Saturday after golf we stopped in at Conways for an appetizer, some games, and a couple drinks - fantastic outdoor patio with a bar, music stage, small playground, bean bag toss, fire pits, jenga, and more. From there we went to Krause's Cafe which was highly recommended. Fun spot and it was packed - lots of craft beer choices, huge indoor and outdoor seating (German beer garden style with long picnic tables), a large stage, a variety of food choices, and more. That night they had a Reggae band and a beer mug holding contest to see how long young kids could hold a root beer filled mug straight armed!

From there it was a two minute drive to Moonshine & Ale - billed as a patio bar, shot bar, and piano bar - which I labeled a "very good time!" The waitresses were great and for fun they kept trying to get us to try one of their shots. They have well over 50 different shots with names like: Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Disgruntled Tamale Farmer (Tequila, Blue Curacao, Amaretto, and PJ), Gummy Bear (Raspberry Vodka, Peach Schnapps, Sprite, SnS), and Red Headed drink plus they also sell a variety of flavors of Moonshine from Ole Smoky. But the highlight was the Rock & Roll Piano Bar sing along show with two very good singers who also played piano and drums. A fun evening.

Sunday morning we were a little fuzzy and it took awhile before we decided that we best hit the road for home. A fun weekend.