Golfing, Camping, and Bar Hopping in New Braunfels

The mid-February forecast called for 70 degrees with sunny skies. That means “hit the road, play some golf, and find new fun bars and restaurants in New Braunfels.”

With set two golf tee times, booked an RV site, and found some bars and restaurants in New Braunfels. It’s now one of our favorite Texas cities.

Exploring New Braunfels

Some of the reasons we love New Braunfels include:

• It’s small and easy to get around in, the traffic is light, and everything is less than 10 miles away;
• There are lots of fun things to do ranging from Schlitterbahn 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 bars featuring 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

After being cooped up inside due to rain, wind, and chilly weather, teeing off in shorts and 73-degree weather excited us.

On the way to New Braunfels for the weekend, we stopped to play golf at the new Kissing Tree Golf Club in San Marcos. Kissing Tree is an upscale 55+ active adult community with some excellent amenities, including 18 holes of golf.

The Kissing Tree Golf Club opened in October 2018. 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. Plus, it gives you a great opportunity to golf 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. The next day, we 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 good condition, challenging but fair, and has lots of wildlife. There are also some great holes that require strategic shot making.

Here is a link to Texas Outside’s Review of Landa Park Golf Course.

Camping for the Weekend

We stayed two nights at River Ranch RV Park in New Braunfels. The RV park has several sites on a beautiful stretch of the cool and clear Guadalupe River. Perfect for fishing, tubing, swimming, and 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. That makes it convenient to explore north or south, and it’s minutes from lots of great bars and restaurants. One local told me that you can get to everything there is to do in New Braunfels within five minutes from River Ranch RV Park .

Here is a link to Texas Outside’s review of River Ranch RV Park.

Restaurants & Bar Hopping

The hardest part of this weekend was deciding where to eat, drink, and listen to music. There are tons of choices.

New Braunfels is loaded with a wide choice of good restaurants. These range from Asian to Italian, Mexican, BBQ, Seafood, and lots more. We found a source 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 at Conways for an appetizer, some games, and a couple of drinks. They have a 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. It’s highly recommended. Krause’s is a fun spot, and it was packed. They have 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.

Moonshine & Ale

Moonshine & Ale is billed as a patio bar, shot bar, and piano bar, which I labeled a “very good time!” The waitresses were great. 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 a 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. In all, it was  fun weekend in New Braunfels.