As we visited both Lost Maples State Park and Garner State Park in the Fall, I’m sharing about our experience and what we thought of each park overall. Hope you enjoy!
RESERVATIONS: First thing to note is these parks can only take so many visitors, so it is best to reserve passes in advance to guarantee you will get in, especially during peak times of the year. As both of these state parks are known for having some fall foliage, it’s likely they will sell out when the fall foliage is at it’s peak. We reserved an evening pass for Friday, November 12th at Lost Maples (1pm – 10pm) and an all day pass for Saturday, November 13th at Garner (8am – 9pm). Lost Maples cost $6 per person and Garner cost $8 per person. Reservations are made on the Texas State Parks and Wildlife website.
LOST MAPLES STATE PARK – Vanderpool, Texas
We left the Austin area somewhat later than we planned on Friday, so unfortunately, we didn’t get to enjoy Lost Maples for very long due to the sun going down early this time of year. However, we still wanted to enjoy the daylight we had, so we did the East-West Trail and still got some pretty pictures.
View of the scenic overlook from the bottom.
As we didn’t get to hike the East Trail that leads to the scenic overlook, I can’t give a fair review if it’s worth it to add to your list. I think I would need to visit again to see the scenic overlook before deciding if it’s worth a visit. As far as fall foliage goes, I wasn’t too impressed. However, I did have somewhat low expectations being that 1) It’s Texas so it’s not that grand to begin with, and 2) fall foliage can be hit or miss. It was still pretty though!
I wish I had taken pictures on our drive to Lost Maples because the Texas Hill Country was beautiful, but I did get this last picture on our way back to the hotel – thankful for the gorgeous sunset views on our commute back.
GARNER STATE PARK – Concan, Texas
Garner is a huge park! There’s several trails and areas to hang out so it’s a great place for families to visit or go camping. As for fall foliage at Garner, it was really pretty (for Texas) and it was a beautiful day so win-win! It’s probably a gorgeous park regardless of the time of year. We drove around the park for a little while to get an idea of what hikes we wanted to do, then we were off to exploring. We started by taking the Blinn River Trail that eventually works it’s way up to the street which allowed us to see the scenic overlook on the walk back to the car.
I loved this trail so much! As you can tell, it was gorgeous. A little shoutout to my boyfriend, Michael, for taking all of these great pictures!
As we were walking down this trail, we came across this cute little peephole!
After we walked on through, this was the view (below).
Here is main view of the scenic overlook. The pictures don’t do it justice, but it was beautiful!We had breakfast for lunch at the car (Eggs + avocado + salsa – one of our favorites!), then we decided to hit the Wild Horse Creek Trail. The only downfall with this trail is that part of the route we took is close to the highway so we heard lots of cars (and could even see them at one point), but otherwise it was enjoyable. At the end of Wild Horse Creek Trail, you can go a few different directions based on which path you choose. As it was towards the end of our day, we went from Wild Horse Creek trail to briefly being on Forshee Trail (I think), then took Old Horse Trail to Old Entrance Road, and then took the main street back to our car. A little confusing, but if you’re looking at a map it should make sense, haha.
Although most of our second hike didn’t offer a ton of great views, there was one spot that you could really see the Texas Hill Country through the trees. Made for a pretty picture in my opinion 🙂
I realized after we finished our second hike, we didn’t get to visit the highest peak of the park (Old Baldy Summit) so that trail is on the to-do list for next time. I absolutely loved Garner State Park and we will definitely be going back without a doubt.
Have you been to either of these Texas State parks?
This blog post has been refreshed but was originally written and published on All Things Ashley Marie in February of 2022.
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