Summer Fun

Sparkling spring-fed pool makes for an ideal day trip from Dallas

The pool stays at a crisp 69 degrees year-round.

Photo courtesy of Lampasas

Editor's note: Dallas resident Stacy Breen is an intrepid explorer of local culture with an instinct for making nifty discoveries. She's contributing a weekly column on her cool finds.

This week, I managed to sneak in an expedition that included swimming at a landmark pool and dining at a four-star resort. The price wasn't bad and the best part is that I was able to do it all in a day.

The pool was Hancock Springs Pool, 180 miles southwest of Dallas. It's in Lampasas, which is convenient to Fort Worth (146 miles), San Antonio (121 miles), and Austin (69 miles).

Hancock Springs Pool is centuries old, and is rare in that it is fed by a large spring. I discovered it by accident a couple of years ago, during a drive to San Antonio. I was trying to avoid I-35, what feels like the most torturous highway in the country, and took 281, which also runs north-south and goes straight through Lampasas.

Swimming at the pool
According to the Texas State Historical Association, Hancock Springs was discovered in 1721 and was a destination for Indian tribes who made yearly pilgrimages to bathe because the water was believed to have healing properties.

I brought my sons: Conner, who is in college and is working at a garden this summer; Finley, who's 14; and Finley's girlfriend. The plan was to go down and swim for a few hours, then find a place to eat on the way back.

Entry costs $2.50 for kids and $3.50 for adults and they're open limited hours, 12-7 pm, Thursday-Sunday. It's a short window, but when I was planning, I knew I wanted to go on a Thursday; I am not going to a public pool on a weekend.

We left at noon, and got there at around 3 pm; we made a few pit stops on the way. You bring your own towels, and you can also bring in food, coolers, and blankets. When we pulled up, there was a family getting pizzas delivered.

Hancock Springs is one of the few free-flowing pools in the state; there's also one in southwest Texas at Balmorehea State Park, which claims to be the largest in the world. With a free-flowing pool, water from a spring flows through the pool and exits to a creek or lake.

At Hancock Springs, the water exits into Sulphur Creek, and on to the Lampasas River. The water is always 69 degrees. It's also laced with sodium chloride. It has a strong sulphur smell. That was a little surprising. The boys were like, "Oof, it's strong." But a lifeguard came by and said, "In an hour, you won't notice it at all."

Sulphur is good for your skin; they use it in acne medicine. I think the presence of sulphur in the water keeps it free of algae. Barton Springs, Austin's favorite pool experience, is more popular, but it grosses me out. All that algae and slime. Hancock Springs had no algae or slipperiness at all.

Dinner at the lodge
We swam for a couple of hours, and hung out on one of the picnic tables. There's also a playground, grills, and grassy areas. By then, it was time for dinner: We went to Rough Creek Lodge, which is right near 281.

Rough Creek Lodge is a well known five-star facility with a restaurant run by chef Gerard Thompson. He's received national press by magazines like Bon Appétit and Food & Wine. Rough Creek has always emphasized local, long before it was a trend.

For Finley and his girlfriend, they made a three-course prix fixe meal, with a Caesar salad, choice of entree like steak or pasta with chicken, and a dessert, and it was only $20. I had a crab appetizer as my entree. Conner had quail. And the chef sent out a fantastic pizza loaded with vegetables and fresh mozzarella they make in house.

We hung out on the patio overlooking the lake while sun went down. To be at Rough Creek while the sun is going down is the perfect time. After dinner, it took a little less than 2 hours to get back to Dallas. We were home by midnight.

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Airline News

American Airlines to take things up a notch at DFW Airport

Photo courtesy of American Airlines

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Fort Worth-based American Airlines is making changes at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (DFW), its largest hub and hometown airport, including departure times spread throughout the day.

DFW has an outsized impact on the rest of the airline’s operation and on the journeys of the nearly 700,000 customers the airline serves every day across its global network. More customers and more bags travel and connect through DFW every day than any other airport in American's network. What's good for DFW is good for everyone.

More banks
For more than a decade, American’s schedule at DFW has been concentrated across nine banks, or large clusters of flights across the operating day. As all airline bank structures do, this times large groups of flights together, coordinating arrivals and departures, and ultimately, coordinating quick and seamless connections.

Beginning in April — and visible in the airline’s schedules starting December 27 — American’s DFW operation is evolving to a 13-bank structure, providing more certainty to the airline’s average 100,000 peak daily customers traveling on the more than 930 average peak DFW daily departing flights.

With this structural schedule change, customers will find more departure options in highly desired time windows and fewer early morning departures to DFW.

American is also making an investment in block time for flights to and from DFW. (Block time is the total scheduled time between pushback from the departure gate to arrival at the destination gate.) The goal is more on-time departures, which lead to more on-time arrivals and fewer delays.

Connections
They're also working on improving connection times, making it easier to connect through DFW. The new structure should reduce the concentration of very short connection times.

Customers on the go such as business travelers can still book tight connections when time matters — but the schedule enhancements will now provide more options for a stress-free experience with more time between flights. Reflowing their schedule means fewer air traffic delays and more on-time departures and arrivals.

By spreading out its DFW flight schedule across the day, the airline is also spreading out customer volume, including everything from local customers arriving in parking garages, checking in at lobbies, and clearing security, to connecting customers making their way through American’s terminals to their next flights.

Terminals
Other improvements include modernizing American’s facilities and airport terminals, including Terminal A and C Pier extensions adding nine incremental gates.

They're also adding Terminal F to be completed in 2030, with 31 new gates that can accommodate increased widebody capacity, state-of-the-art baggage technology, dedicated premium lounges, Flagship check-in, and a new U.S. Customs facility.

New programs in partnership with the Transportation Security Administration and U.S. Customs and Border Protection include TSA PreCheck Touchless ID — allowing customers at DFW (and 16 other locations across American’s U.S. network) to use facial recognition technology for more secure and efficient identity verification.

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