Hiked along the creek one muggy, overcast day in Sept.  It had rained recently, so the creek was high and the waterfalls were surprisingly loud and impressive.  At times like these, "creek" doesn't seem like quite the right word for Onion Creek.  The flora was also nicely lush and green, including trees growing out of natural tanks in the rock.  It's not a difficult trail, though a little rough, and it gets pretty crowded, so this is not the spot if you're looking for solitude.

i did the homestead trail on this one ,  i did three state parks in one day 

This place was packed today due to the unseasonably warm weather. We had planned to hike the Onion Creek Trail on the south side of the park, but it seemed to still be closed from the Fall floods, so we made our way through the water and hiked around the Homestead Trail Area. The ruins of the old gristmill and home are pretty neat, but other than that the trail is pretty unremarkable. It was still nice to get out in this great weather, though.

If I hadn't been running on a tight schedule we would have made our way to the Flint Rock Loop on the north side of the park to make for a longer hike, but that will have to wait for another day.

As always, the area around the lower falls was enjoyable due to the neat rock. This area has always reminds me of the surface of the moon.

we couldnt do the homestead trail cause of high water.. 

McKinney Falls State Park is a very scenic and popular park.  There are some beautiful water falls along Onion Creek and natural pools where you can cool off and go swimming.  There is also an interesting rock shelter formation above the creek.

There are a number of trails in this park which provide variety in scenery and mileage.  The trails are well-marked and easy to follow, except for the area where you cross over the creek.  This spot is solid limestone and there are no signs showing where to cross, but if you study the map they provide you at the park entrance then you'll figure it out.

The weather today was fantastic and a good number of people were out in the park today as a result.  I can't complain too much though since Texas Parks needs all of the visitors that it can get so that they can keep the gates open!

The Homestead Trail is far from the most scenic state park trail, but it's a little bit of mileage.  On top of that I had failed to log my last visit, so I needed to get this one recorded to make it official.

Definitely go clockwise like the main review tells you to - and take a map! The trail is so poorly marked that you can easily get off-track like we did...

We thought that the recommendation was to go counter-clockwise. So, after finding the Homestead, we traveled east along the jeep trail (instead of the westward direction to go clockwise). Bad idea. The jeep trail seems lightly used and weeds had grown up.

We eventually hit a locked gate, where we almost turned around. Luckily, we went around it and found the aforementioned fitness center. Some kind TPWD employees asked if they could help us when they found us staring at the map inside the door. They pointed us the right direction to go clock-wise back to the falls.

Once we reached the falls, we were determined to make the loop - so we went all the way around counter-clockwise and enjoyed the hike very much. We ran across a couple of groups of hikers along the way, but mostly had the trail to ourselves. Well, besides the animals... We saw no snakes (as mentioned in the review), but saw 3+ deer and had a stare-fight with a rabbit for about 5 minutes before he hopped along his way. :-)

The ~3 mile hike took us 1:05 once we restarted.

The hike is short, easy, with a lot of shade and beautiful view of the onion creek. Not much of a challenge, but it is a lovely walk in the summer.