We don’t get strong autumn colors around San Antonio but we can drive an hour to the north west to a couple of state parks and depending on the weather and the rainfall, we might see a bit of yellow and orange before the winter brown settles in. This year is no different but the timing is critical. In addition to the rain, we need that one cold freeze at night to shock the trees into starting their winter process. We had a few cold nights the end of October so I decided to head to the parks yesterday and see what the trees had to offer.
Our state parks have switch to a “Day Pass” process and if you don’t reserve a pass, you don’t get in. Well, I was able to get a pass for Garner State park, but Lost Maple was full to capacity. One park is better than nothing, so I headed out at about 7:30am yesterday towards Garner.
Unfortunately, the weather report from the night before wasn’t exactly accurate and when I finally got to Garner it was cold and windy. I parked down by the dam and picnic area where I usually shoot and walked around a bit. There wasn’t much color and nothing too interesting. Other than this area, most of Garner is camping sites, so this visit is pretty much a bust.
But like my spring wildflower hunting trips, the beauty of Texas is seldom found in the usual places. You have to get off the regular roads and on to the small county roads, ranch roads and even unnamed gravel pathways to really find the great views. So I took out maps and begin to look for small roads around Garner where the rivers crossed the road.
I found one just behind the state park. The water was over the road, but only an inch deep and easy to drive through. There wasn’t any traffic on the road which allowed me plenty of time to move along the road spillway, stop, take a picture and move a little further along the path. Here are 4 angles of the river as I drove through this water covered roadway.
After leaving this area, I drove south on Hwy 83 and found another road that showed a river crossing. This particular crossing appeared to be too deep for my car, so I did not cross. I did however take off my shoes and socks, carry my tripod and camera out into the water covered roadway and capture these two images. 
Next, I traveled back north on Hwy 83, over FR 1120 toward Rio Frio and ended up in Leakey where I got some gas. I then headed over to Lost Maple State Park area to see if maybe they had any cancellations and I could get a day pass at the gate. I grabbed this image on the road just before getting to the state park.
No luck getting into Lost Maples today. No pass – no entry! But just across the street from the gate I grabbed this capture.
Time to head home. I did drive several small roads on the trip home; none yielded any cool vistas or fall colors. The further south and east I got the less likely I was to find colors. This was my final image capture of the day. This was at the intersection of Hwy 187 and 337 as the Sabinal River crosses under the highway. 
Overall, not a bad day but definitely could have been better. Going back to Lost Maple with the corvette club on the 28th so hopefully will get some images of fall trees then!
Enjoy! Get our there and shoot!
Galleries: The Pixel Mixer. Fine Art America.
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