Meridian State Park is a beautiful little gem! Now, I do mean little, because the park is fairly small, with about 40 accommodations. In my opinion, this adds to the charm of the park and probably accounts for how quiet and peaceful it feels. Meridian truly makes it feel like you’re getting away and immersing yourself in nature.

Vibes

Lake Meridian

Lake Meridian is a stunning 72-acre no-wake lake surrounded by the park. Since it’s a no-wake lake, it’s perfect for fishing, kayaking, canoeing, and paddleboarding. You can also swim in the designated swimming areas. We didn’t check out that area, so I can’t speak to it. However, I personally wouldn’t swim in any of the other areas (probably the point of a designated swimming area) because the shores are covered with lily pads, which would make me crawl out of my skin if they touched me. They are beautiful to look at, though!

Trails

There aren’t a ton of trails at Meridian State Park, with just over 5 miles of hiking, but it is still one of my favorite parks for hiking. The trails we did there were scenic and challenging, which I really enjoyed. It was one of the first times I had done a challenging hike, and I loved gaining some elevation and doing a bit of exploring and scrambling. Not all of the trails are challenging, but it was definitely a level up from the mostly flat hiking we had done at other state parks at the time we visited Meridian in September of 2020.

Serene

Meridian State Park was incredibly serene when we visited in September 2020. The park was so quiet that it actually freaked me out—and I’m a pretty quiet person myself. The trees almost roared as they rustled in the wind, and you could hear every native critter exploring and reclaiming what was rightfully theirs throughout the night. I had a really hard time sleeping in our borrowed, hand-me-down tent with no rainfly because of how loud the quiet was.

Don’t get me wrong, I know that isn’t the fault of a state park. This isn’t some outlandish Yelp review complaining about nature being nature. In fact, I’m incredibly grateful for how quiet Meridian was now. At that time in my life, though, I was incredibly stressed out—and I’m guessing I wasn’t the only one feeling that way in the last quarter of 2020, the year our lives were turned upside down. I was so unsure of myself in general, and now we were trying something new to me: camping. On top of that, my husband was collecting footage to make videos about it. We had been camping for a little over a month, and this was our fifth state park to visit in that time.

I loved the outdoors when I was young, but I had become rather disconnected from that part of myself during my teen and young adult years. I knew that camping was supposed to be a way to ground myself, connect with nature, and relieve stress. But I was worried that the slightest thing going wrong would be more than I could handle, and I’d just break. I thought my stress was too big to enjoy camping—maybe even too big to enjoy life.

I remember all those worries and feelings, but something about Meridian made me want to keep going regardless. And I did. Four years later, I look forward to visiting Meridian again, because these days I’m much better at enjoying the silence instead of being afraid of it.

Additional Meridian Need-to-Knows

• I already mentioned this in the accommodations section, but I want to reiterate the distance of the bathrooms from the primitive sites. Maybe this is a normal thing, but we had to drive to the bathrooms each time, which was a whole event, especially since we were camping with our dogs for only the second time ever. That said, the privacy of those sites is kind of worth it!

• Meridian is considered to be in the Texas Hill Country which is known for its beauty!

• Meridian State Park is only about 50 miles from Waco, TX if you’re into that sort of thing.

• A meridian often represents a peak, midpoint, or dividing line in life, time, or an experience.

Thanks for reading!

Check out our podcast about Meridian or our videos about our visit below!