When you’re not in Denton proper, however, this city is a real drag if you’re trying to get around without a vehicle. There are practically no sidewalks, and those that do exist often only last for 20 feet or so before disappearing into someone’s lawn. Even while walking around downtown, where sidewalks and crossing lights are abundant, it was obvious from watching other pedestrian locals and the shouts of motorists as we crossed the street that foot traffic is the territory of second class citizens.

And bicycling is no different. Denton’s neighborhood pockets are all broken up, so that you often have to take a highway or major, four lane road to get from one suburban neighborhood to the next. I believe designs like this are created to slow traffic, so that you only get people living in those pockets driving through them, and therefore cut down on both volume and the recklessness of drivers in the area. But it also means that if you want to take a bike from here to there, plan on crossing dangerous highways, riding along the shoulders of busy main roads, and often finding yourself forced into parking lots, trying to dodge parked cars and finding routes from one lot to another.

That leaves us with the public transportation aspect, and here comes the accompanying good news. For being a relatively small city (though considering it’s somewhat simply an extension of Dallas that could easily be debated), Denton seems to have a really good public transit system. It’s cheap, $1.25 a ride, and buses travel fairly regularly (about every 45 minutes on the route we took) which is something that many large cities can’t seem to manage. The buses have a glass jar on them in which you drop your cash, no machine counting or fanciness, the driver basically just trusts that you drop the right amount of money in and then records your presence on a chart of some kind. I was quite impressed with the entire bus riding experience here in Denton.

It’s too bad that the city, which according to Wikipedia prides itself on being an artsy scene and “Many in the creative community see Denton as the antidote to the ballooning traffic and population concerns of larger cities.” I’m not sure what the antidote to ballooning traffic is, but maybe relative to Dallas, Denton is a slow town mecca.

All in all, I’d have to say that Denton’s downtown is pretty swell, it’s just too bad you’ll need a car to get there.

This video is from October 2008.

Even though we are obviously not all that pleased with Memphis, this video gives you a bit of an idea of what to expect from some of the main areas of the city.

Through business districts, highway underpasses and the Austin suburbs we did trek, nothing but the basics, a tent and sleeping bags in my pack, Yugi-oh cards in Tristan’s, and the clothes on our back. I’ve never done an urban hike like this before, where you have a destination that involves camping and not just touring a city and returning home. It was certainly different than hiking in the backcountry but to be honest, nonetheless fulfilling. The state park itself was about average as far as state parks go, but all in all for Tristan’s first true hiking/camping experience I felt very good about the whole father-son bonding experience.

And of course, a video of the first leg of our trip will eventually follow!

For now though, enjoy this little map of our journeys:

Urban Hiking in Austin, TX

28.7 miles total, 3 days of hiking.

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