So Sean and I decided to go camping. We packed our gear, loaded the car and headed for the lovely hills of west Texas to Lost Maples State Natural Area. We have heard from several other friends, that love to camp, how amazing it is and so I made reservations a few months back. Well as we were approaching our destination Sean noticed our reservation said ‘primitive’ next to it. Fretting a bit, we soon found it meant a roughly 1.2 mile hike into wilderness to the ‘closest’ campsite, and that the site had no facilities… well it had a composting toilet a hundred yards or so from where we camped, thus I shouldn’t exaggerate… it had almost no facilities.

We arrived very late Friday afternoon and had to completely repack (as I had packed for the non-primitive type site with running water and such) in order to only have to make two trips… yes we walked 1.2 miles three times! And two times we had between fifty and sixty pounds of gear on our backs and twice we did it in the dark. It’s a good thing we had a few very practical items packed or that trek could have been made many more times that evening. We got our things set up by about quiet time in the park… that would be 9pm or so. We also had some really cool people help us out with the last bit of the second trip. Austin Folks are so Awesome!!! (they were from Austin )

The next day we decided to head up to a scenic point on the map, well that turned out to be a three hour hike, the view at 2200 feet was pretty amazing though. The trees weren’t in full color but there sure were some pretty amazing reds, yellows and oranges among all that green, and yes most of those changing color were maple trees! Crazy to believe all those maples are tucked away in west Texas, and when we got up to head back Sunday morning many more had changed color. It was like being in the New England area and that Texas really had more than two seasons (for those that don’t live here I’d say we have a short brisk fall and the rest of the year it’s summer here ).

All in all we had a good time but I will be sure to check those reservations twice next time as the hike out Sunday was just as rough and we are both now very sore. I even bummed my knee in a fall at the bottom of a dry creek bed with a huge load on my back, but have no fear my price charming was willing to carry me back if need be. Turned out to just be a scrached knee, which he docotored of course, and a spranged knee, thus I will live to camp again. But for now here are some photos from this trip!

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 26th, 2008 at 9:54 pm.