5 Easy Day Trips from San Marcos

The argument for basing a Texas trip in San Marcos is geographic and a little unromantic. Two cities bracket the town on I-35, about thirty miles one way and forty-five the other. The Hill Country starts a few miles west of the highway and keeps going. Nothing on this list is more than a morning's drive, and most of it is a great deal less than that.

One thing to be straight about before the list starts. The two outlet malls are a six- and seven-minute walk from our front door, which is the real reason people book here, and that is where the walking ends. Every trip below needs a car, a full tank and some sense of when you want to be back.

1. Austin, about 30 miles north

The closest big day out, and the one people most often overplan. Austin is not a town you see in an afternoon, so pick a piece of it and let the rest go.

The Texas Capitol is the obvious civic stop and the easiest one to fit around other plans. Barton Springs is the city's spring-fed pool, which is a strange thing to drive toward when you are already staying ten minutes from a spring-fed river, and it is worth it anyway because the two swim nothing alike. Check current hours and admission before you go, because we have not verified either and they are the sort of thing that changes.

Austin's bat colony draws a crowd under the Congress Avenue bridge on summer evenings. Look up current viewing times before you drive up. We could not confirm one from a source we trust, so there is not a time in this post either, and turning up an hour early for a thing that has already happened is a common way to end that evening.

The distance is the least useful number for planning this trip. TxDOT has been rebuilding this stretch of I-35 for years and will be for years more, so a Tuesday morning and a Friday at five are two entirely different drives. DriveTexas is worth thirty seconds before you pull out.

Because it is the shortest drive on the list, Austin is also the one that works as half a day. Leave after lunch, take one neighborhood, eat dinner up there and come back. Guests who try to see the Capitol, a swim and a full evening in a single day tend to spend most of it in the car.

2. San Antonio, about 45 miles south

Our own numbers put San Antonio at about 45 miles. You will find figures above 50 elsewhere, depending on which end of downtown anyone is measuring to, so call it somewhere in the forties to low fifties and do not build a tight schedule on the difference. Either way it is one road.

This is the full-day trip on the list. The River Walk and the Alamo are what people drive down for, and both reward the kind of unhurried afternoon that a two-hour visit does not allow. Hours, ticketing and reservation rules for either are not something we have checked, so confirm them on the day rather than assuming, and be honest with yourself about parking. Downtown in a large city is the part of this trip that eats time, not the highway.

Going down and coming back the same day is comfortable. Going down, eating dinner and coming back is also comfortable, and it is the version we would pick, because the drive north on I-35 at nine at night is far quieter than the drive at five.

If your dates allow it, make this the weekday trip and give the weekend to something closer. A Saturday in San Antonio is a Saturday spent in other people's parking decisions.

3. Gruene and New Braunfels, in the 20-to-45-minute band

Close enough that it barely counts as a trip, which is exactly why it is the one we suggest most often.

Gruene is a small historic district you can cover on foot once you have parked, and its anchor is Gruene Hall, a dance hall that has been standing since 1878. Look at what is on its calendar before you plan an evening around it. The surrounding district is the rest of the visit: a few blocks, walkable, and pleasant in a way the drive does not prepare you for.

New Braunfels next door holds Schlitterbahn, which is a Six Flags property now and has been running weekends only, with Schlitterbahn West, Surfenberg and Blastenhoff open Saturdays and Sundays. It closes for the season in the fall. We are not going to give you a date for that, because the park has not published one anywhere we could reach, and a water park you drove forty minutes to find shut is a bad afternoon. Check the calendar for your dates.

The two halves pair well on a weekend when the park is running, water in the morning and the district in the evening, though that is a long day with kids and nobody will thank you for it. Split across two afternoons it is easier, and you are only twenty to forty-five minutes out either way.

If you have a Saturday and no plan, this is the trip that survives a late start.

4. Wimberley, and the reservation you need to make

West into the hills, in the same 20-to-45-minute band as Gruene, and the one entry here with hard logistics attached.

Blue Hole Regional Park is the reason most people drive to Wimberley, and it works differently depending on when you show up. Swim season runs May 1 through Labor Day plus weekends in September, and during that season a reservation for the swim area is required. Reservations come in two slots, 9 a.m.–1 p.m. and 2 p.m.–6 p.m., with half-day passes starting around $15 and season passes from $175. Residents can buy season passes from March 1 and non-residents from April 1, which tells you how far ahead locals plan this.

Outside that season the park is a completely different and much simpler proposition. It is open 8 a.m. to sunset every day of the year apart from Thanksgiving and Christmas, and the hiking trails, playground and picnic areas are free and need no booking at all. So the honest version is this: swimming at Blue Hole is a summer and early-fall thing that requires a booking, and the park is a year-round walk that requires nothing. Both are worth the drive. Only one of them will turn you away at the gate.

Between the two swim slots, the morning one is the one to take if you can get it. You are out by one in the afternoon with the rest of the day still intact, which is the difference between Blue Hole being the day and Blue Hole being part of it. The 2 p.m.–6 p.m. slot is the better call on a morning you want to shop the outlets first and swim after.

The park is at 333 Blue Hole Lane and the number is 512-660-9111. Details and the current booking window are on the Wimberley Parks and Rec page.

Wimberley Glassworks is on our area list too. We have not checked its current hours, so call before you build an afternoon around it.

5. Fredericksburg, the long one

Every other trip here is a decision you can make over breakfast. This one is a decision you make the night before.

Fredericksburg sits well past the 20-to-45-minute band the middle of this list lives in, out in the western Hill Country, and it is the only entry that stops being a day trip if you leave at eleven. Wine is the draw. We are deliberately not naming tasting rooms, because we have not verified which are pouring on which days or what a tasting runs, and a recommendation we have not checked is worth less than no recommendation.

What we can tell you is the shape of the day. Sort out who is driving before anyone tastes anything. Book ahead where booking is possible. Leave early enough that the drive back is not the last thing you have energy for. Done that way it is a genuinely good day out. Done badly it is mostly driving with a tasting in the middle.

It is also the entry here that most rewards a bit of scheduling. Give it the day you have nothing else booked, not the day you are also trying to shop, and put it in the middle of a longer stay rather than on the morning you check out.

How we picked these five

Three filters, and the third is the one that cut the list down.

The trip has to be doable there and back in a day from a room at exit 200, without the return drive becoming the main event. It has to be worth the mileage on its own, not just as somewhere to have gone. And it cannot duplicate what is already sitting outside the hotel.

That last one matters more than it sounds. The San Marcos River runs about 72°F year-round, so driving forty minutes to get into water only makes sense if the water is a different proposition: a limestone swimming hole with a reservation system, or a water park. Driving that far for a river is silly when you are already next to one of the best ones in the state.

You will notice how few individual businesses are named above. That is on purpose. Hours, prices and seasons in this part of Texas move around more than the internet admits, and we would rather point you at a town and one thing we have actually checked than hand you a list of five venues, two of which turn out to be closed on a Tuesday. Where we could confirm something, it is in here with the detail attached. Where we could not, we said so instead of rounding it up into a recommendation.

The day you don't drive anywhere

Worth saying, since the whole post has been pointing at the exits. A day trip is not automatically better than a day here.

The outlets are the six-minute walk, and if shopping is any part of the reason you came, that walk is doing more for your schedule than any drive on this list. Beyond that, the Meadows Center glass-bottom boats run over the springs about ten minutes from the hotel, with one scheduling catch to plan around: the last boat leaves at 4:30 p.m. and the center closes at 5. That makes it a poor fallback for a day trip that ran long and a very good plan for a morning you decide to stay put. There is more in our roundup of things to do here besides shopping, and the short version lives on the things to do page.

If you are still deciding whether San Marcos earns the stop in the first place, we made that case separately.

Coming back

The practical case for driving out from here rather than staying in either city is dull and completely real. Parking is free and you will use it every evening. Breakfast is included and it is hot, which matters more on a day you want to be on the road by eight than on any other day. There is an outdoor pool for the afternoon nobody feels like driving anywhere, though it is outdoors, so ask us before you count on it in cooler months. The rest is on the amenities page.

We are a highway hotel in an outlet district, which is not a romantic thing to be. It is a useful one when the plan is to spend five days seeing the middle of Texas and sleeping in the same bed each night.

Planning your trip? Check availability and pick your drives once you are here.