Jacob’s Well | Wimberley, Texas

January always feels like the longest month of the year. It’s cold, gray, the holidays are over, and it’s back-to-work for everyone. Each year, in January, Dono and I try to take a weekend getaway to break up the monotony of the work routine. In previous January’s we’ve taken a weekend trip to Broken Bow, and we’ve also done a mini-road trip to Waco and Central Texas. We usually try to keep these trips short – only a Saturday/Sunday as we don’t want to impact our work PTO time so early in the year!

This year, we decided to take a drive to Austin, Texas, which is about 3-ish hours from our house. Donovan was itching to see the new Tesla facility which is currently being constructed. (Side note: I’ve never seen someone so excited to see a construction site. Ha!) I figured I might as well tag along and see if we can find some new things to do near Austin.

On Saturday afternoon, we were having some mid-day drinks at The Oasis on Lake Travis when I started looking at a map to see what else we could do before the sun went down. I saw Wimberley on the map and remembered Jacob’s Well was there. I showed Dono the photos of Jacob’s Well from Google, and he was all in. We quickly finished our drinks, paid, and headed towards Wimberley.

Wimberley is about a one hour-ish drive from Austin (more or less depending on where you’re coming from). The town was settled in the mid 1800s and the current population is only about 3,000 people. It’s a small place!

There are several watering holes in the Wimberley area, with the most notable (in my opinion) being Jacob’s Well – and that’s where we decided to go!

Jacob’s Well is located in the Jacob’s Well Natural Area which is managed by the Hays County Parks Department. When we arrived, we sat at the gate house for a few minutes, and then we realized we were dummies and no one was there. Another quick google search told us the park was open, but you only have to pay to get in during the warmer months.

Fortunately, we arrived so late in the afternoon that there weren’t a ton of people around, which made it possible to be socially distanced without having to wear masks.

The trail to Jacob’s Well is about 1 mile round trip, and it’s largely flat, which was nice. The only “sketchy” part was walking down the stairs and rocks to get to the area, mainly because the rocks were really slippy from how worn down they were.

Both of us felt like dummies a little bit because we couldn’t find the swimming hole at first. I don’t know if we were expecting some different or if it was too late in the afternoon to get good lighting, but we totally just walked by it.

Once we figured out what we were looking at, we spent a little time walking around, trying to get the best view of the massively deep hole in the ground. Jacob’ Well is about 12ft wide, and about 30 feet deep, however there are additional chambers that cover another 120 feet or so – pretty deep!

Quite honestly, I was a bit underwhelmed. Perhaps I had hyped it up too much in my head or was expecting something different, but the area wasn’t very big. I was also expecting the water to be much more blue and clearer. Guess I got duped by other people’s photo-shopped pictures. (insert facepalm).

In the warmer months, you can pay to swim in Jacob’s Well – I think around $9 per adult. Plus, you have to make reservations, as they limit the number of people who can swim at a time. Honestly? I don’t think I need to come back for swimming, but it was a neat geological feature to see and cross off the list!