The day after Thanksgiving, Jan was talking with her sister Kathy, who mentioned that they had gone to see the Lost Maples the previous weekend. She said that the maple leaves were beautiful. I had gone to see the Lost Maples a few years back (see my previous post here), and had thoroughly enjoyed it.
Since Jan had not been with me on the previous trip, we decided to go see. We figured an hour and a half would do the trick, and we'd have time to walk and see the trees.
I brought my camera and some accessories (not a tripod or monopod - huge mistake), and we headed west from New Braunfels to Boerne, then on to Bandera and Medina, then turned south to the State Natural Area.
What we hadn't counted on was that the trip would take 2 1/2 hours, and that we would get there about 15 minutes before sunset. The park ranger asked if we knew that we were getting there very late. We said yes. No discount, of course.
We walked a little ways up the Maple Trail, but decided that as it was getting darker and darker, we switch to the East Trail, which is wider and graveled, so it would be easier to see coming back.
I felt a little like a salmon swimming upstream as we passed group after group who were returning from their walk and heading back to their cars. We were the only ones heading into the park!
To make matters worse, thick clouds came up from the south, and completely blocked any light from the sunset. It got dark in a hurry! I was amazed that my Nikon could get any good shots at all. It took some adjusting in Photoshop to get what you see here.
The tree above was the last one we saw. It is at the junction where the Maple Trail meets the East Trail. We decided that we would head back to the car, and save the rest of the trail for another visit.
The nice thing about going back to Austin so late was that we got to see the Christmas and Holiday decorations that the towns had put up. They were very lovely.
So that's the story of my second trip to see the Lost Maples.
Thanks for stopping by!
Mike Z
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