South Texas Destinations – Page 2

South Texas Destinations: Phil Hardberger Park, San Antonio Texas

Phil Hardberger Park is one of the crown jewels, if not the crown jewel, of the San Antonio Parks and Recreation system. The city purchased the family farm of the Voelcker family and have turned the site into a natural and historic landmark. Hardberger Park is 311 acres and has 19th century buildings on the site.

Hardberger Park is unusual in that it is actually two separate parks, to all appearances. The eastern part of the park has an entrance on Blanco Road and seems (to me at least) to be the more heavily visited of the parks. The eastern side has, in addition to the usual walking paths and playground, the picnic pavilion and the larger of the two dog parks. The western half of the park has an entrance on Northwest Military Highway and has, in addition to the usual walking paths and playground, the Phil Hardberger Urban Ecology Center.

The west side also has an art installation, “Golden Age” by Anne Wallace, which uses reflective metal to simulate the appearance of a wildfire on the prairie area behind the Urban Ecology Center. Personally, I think that Wallace miscalculated the height of the grasses in the prairie, her explanation of the work reads, in part, “As Hardberger Park’s restored grassland matures, the gold will appear to hover just above the prairie, using the sun and wind to bounce light off the tops of the grasses,” except that by now, the gold is buried within the grasses for most of the year. I wonder if it’s too late to raise the poles holding the circles up another three to six inches . . .

Geology Trail, Hardberger Park, San Antonio — The Geology Trail, Phil Hardberger Park, San Antonio, Texas

Alex and I have explored the eastern side of the park pretty thoroughly. If you are in San Antonio and are starved for some greenery, there is a lovely corner of the Geology Trail that is really vibrant in the springtime. We have spent more time but done less exploring on the western part of the park, because there are a lot more paths over there. Somehow, since Hardberger is one of the closest parks to my home, we only go there when we’re out of ideas on where to go, and since between the heat and the fact that there just aren’t many people out there, we tend to do just a short walk and then hop across the street to pick up groceries (as I write this, the western entrance is across the street from the Alon Market HEB supermarket; I make no promises that the supermarket will be there whenever you’re reading this).

I mentioned earlier that there are two halves of the park with separate entrances on different streets. The halves of the park are separated by Wurzbach Parkway, a four-lane highway with a 50 mile per hour speed limit. So it’s cross-able, but it can be something of an adventure getting from one side to the other. The plan is to add a bridge joining the two halves. And the bridges that are on the Howard W. Peak Greenway System are very nice, and would serve for the purpose of getting visitors safely across. That’s not the plan, however. The plan is for a $25 million bridge that would be 150 feet wide and have enough native greenery on it that animals wanting to cross from one side to the other will be encouraged to use it rather than risk crossing the road as well. At the moment, it looks like voters will be voting on a bond to raise $15 million of this money in May 2017. Will the bond pass? After the November 2016 elections, who knows? Will the Hardberger Park Conservancy be able to come up with their share of $10 million? I don’t know that either. If I ever do find out, I’ll let you know.

Update: 3:10 p.m. Actually you can no longer cross Wurzbach Parkway. They’ve put up a Jersey barrier. Unfortunately, this is not a barrier made of jersey material (which would be easy to move aside and get through) but is, in fact, a 3.5-foot-high cement wall. As a result, the only way from one side to the other is to drive until when (if?) they build that bridge.

South Texas Destinations: Panther Springs Park, San Antonio, Texas

Ideally, this would be where I would write up Mud Creek Park, but when Alex and I visited Mud Creek Park, it was closed because, as one would actually expect, given the name, Mud Creek Park floods pretty badly when it rains, and it had rained recently when we went up there. So instead on that day we returned to McAllister Park.

So let’s go on to Panther Springs Park. Panther Springs Park is kind of an odd one to try to reach. It looks, on the map, like you should be able to access it from Blanco, possibly from the parking lot to the Mays Family YMCA. I actually swear that Google Maps said that there was a way in there at one point. But you can’t get there that way. You actually have to go up through a residential area (fortunately not through the actual neighborhood, but the street passes one housing development after the other) to get there.

Sotol Duet at the entrance to Panther Springs Park, San Antonio — Jon Isherwood, “Sotol Duet,” 2015

Once Alex and I were in the parking lot, we had to find the way into the park. Alex and I were walking through the parking lot when a man came up and asked where the entrance to the park was. We confessed that it was our first time there, too. So we continued towards the end of the parking lot. I needed to take a picture of Isherwood’s “Sotol Duet” on the way in, so I headed that direction and the man found the entrance before we did.

Basically, Panther Springs Park is a three-mile walking trail and a dog park. There isn’t much in the way of a playground or anything of that nature. We didn’t end up walking that much of the trail because it was still pretty warm out and the humidity was something to be believed. So we walked (and met a man and is son and their dog who were herding a baby snake from the path), returned to our car, and went home.

South Texas Destinations: Leon Vista and McAllister Parks, San Antonio, Texas

Like Fox Park, Leon Vista Park is another park that more or less is just a trail head for the Leon Creek Greenway. It is a very nice trail head for the Leon Creek Greenway (and leads to an area that is probably my favorite section of the greenway so far), but that’s basically all it is.

McAllister Park on the other hand, is a very different animal.

At what I estimate to be over a thousand acres, McAllister Park gives the impression of being larger on the inside than it is on the outside. The park is bounded by five pretty busy streets, and while driving on most of them, you would never guess that a park of that size lurks back there. The first time we went to McAllister Park, I parked my car by one of the playgrounds and Alex and I walked. And walked. And walked.We had no idea how much park was there until we explored. And after two more visits, we still haven’t seen all of it. There is one part of the park that heads off to the northwest and I have never been able to find that path at all.

Raccoon footprints McAllister Park, 2014 — Usually my pictures are all, “look at this vista,” “look at this architecture,” “look at this historic site.” So here’s “look at these raccoon footprints.” Because raccoon footprints. McAllister Park, 2014

My most recent visit was an attempt to continue the Salado Creek Greenway. I had followed the greenway from Walker Ranch Historic Landmark Park to U.S. 281, but no farther. There is a nice parking lot for the trailhead in McAllister Park. This parking lot also serves the dog park which is in that corner of the park. Then you walk for nearly 3/4 of a mile (1.2 km) before you even get to the greenway. Now that we’re aware of that, we need to set aside more time than we had that day to try it again. We will make it someday, though. Or maybe I’ll attempt it myself on a day off now that Alex is back in school and the weather is cooling off.

With four picnic pavilions, a dog park, two playgrounds, sports fields, and more than 17 miles of hiking and/or biking trails, McAllister Park is not what you’d call a quiet place to contemplate nature in solitude. If you are the kind of person who likes to people-watch, or who just feels safer with potential witnesses around, McAllister may be your kind of park.

McAllister is a park, so some of the paths are paved and level, and thus wheelchair accessible. Some paths are less so and accessible by wheelchair users with great upper-body strength. And some are just dirt paths and only accessible to people traveling on foot (and not even them, sometimes, when it’s been raining).

South Texas Destinations: Fox and Gorell Parks, San Antonio, Texas

These are both fairly small parks, so I figured I’d put them together.

Fox Park is not particularly exciting, I’m disappointed to admit. The parks website says that there are walking paths and such, but Fox Park mostly functions as a trailhead for the Leon Creek Greenway. If you blink, you’ll miss the park entirely.

Gorrell Park is still small, but has more going for it. The full name of the park is Officer Edwynn J. Gorrell Park, and the park is named for a police officer who was killed in the line of duty in 1988.

Gilbert Barrera, The Letter — Gilbert Barrerra, *The Letter*, 2012. At least it looks like Barrera finished it in 2012, judging by his Facebook. I took the photo in 2016.

Gorrell Park has a playground, picnic tables, and a quarter-mile walking trail, which is an out-and-back trail, rather than a loop. There is also a statue which for a long time was wrapped up, apparently to deter vandals. I have never been able to find a name or attribution for the statue, but it is titled The Letter and the sculptor is Gilbert E. Barrera. It is a widow holding a dove, which represents not just the widows of fallen police officers but also anyone who has suffered the loss of a loved one.

I mentioned vandalism. I’m not sure if it’s specifically anti-police vandalism, since the park is named for a fallen officer as such, but there has been some vandalism in the park. I would blame the vandalism more on the park’s proximity to Tom C. Clark High School, which is right across the railroad tracks. Clark is one of the best high schools in the area, and not at all bad in the national rankings, but kids are kids, and I seem to recall a study saying that homes that are near schools face more vandalism, so I suspect the same may be true of parks near schools. If the vandalism makes you want to be cautious, make sure that other people are in the park when you visit, and don’t go alone.

It’s a lovely park, despite the vandalism and perhaps worth a visit.

South Texas Destinations: Friedrich Wilderness Park, San Antonio, Texas

I’m trying to remember how my ex-husband and I discovered Friedrich Wilderness Park. I do remember that we accidentally wandered into Raymond Russell Park the first time we looked for it (but didn’t get very far into Russell Park at all — I finally explored that one fully just this year). Friedrich Park ended up becoming one of our favorite parks, though, and we introduced both friends and family to it over the years.

Friedrich Wilderness Park 2015 — Friedrich Wilderness Park, San Antonio, Texas 2015

The original land that made up the park was a bequest of Norma Friedrich Ward, who wanted it to be preserved as a natural area and named for her parents, Emilie and Albert Friedrich. Later, two men, Wilbur Mathews and Glen Martin, donated another 52 acres. Interestingly, though, despite its status as a natural area, Friedrich Wilderness Park is not untouched by human hands. I’m not talking about paved paths and the addition of bathrooms and a classroom. A stream passes through the park and where the stream intersects with the Main Loop Trail (and for a while out into the wilderness from there), the stream bed is concrete or cement or something like that. I’ve never been able to figure out how that stream bed got paved or why someone would pave the stream bed.

Friedrich Wilderness Park has eight miles of walking trails, most of which are not accessible to those in wheelchairs. Friedrich is where I first saw the path levels that are used in San Antonio. There is a loop path near the entrance that is level 1, but most of the other paths are level 3 or 4.

Friedrich Wilderness Park is also a nice place to go if you are a birdwatcher. It is one of the nesting sites for the Golden-Cheeked Warbler and the Black-Capped Vireo. Of course, other birds are seen there as well. Unfortunately for me, the Golden-Cheeked Warbler nests in “mountain cedar” (actually a type of juniper) trees, so the park is rife with them. Mountain cedar is a really bad asthma trigger for me, so I need to make sure I bring my rescue inhaler, particularly during the winter, which is when the trees release their pollen. Many people in San Antonio face a different, but related problem, which is more traditional “hay fever”-type allergies from mountain cedar pollen, so take any allergy medication before going.

South Texas Destinations: Eisenhower Park, San Antonio, Texas

We’re home from Chicago, so I will probably resurrect my Northern Illinois Destinations topic soon. I’m not entirely sure how many of the places we went I haven’t covered yet, but I got a lot of pictures of places that I have written. And I mean a lot, a lot, like over 600 total pictures. So I will probably start with a post sharing the pictures that I will eventually go back and insert into those posts. Then we’ll start tackling places that I haven’t covered. I probably will also do a post on some of my favorite buildings that are not really places to go for an activity, but things to see.

Next up alphabetically is Denman Estate Park, but we’ve already covered that one. So onwards and upwards to Eisenhower Park.

Eisenhower is a lovely park built on one of the foothills of the Texas Hill Country. I went there once with the now-ex when Alex was little, but I had a terrible asthma attack at the top of the hill and was afraid to go back after that. I was sure that everyone around me could hear the wheezing, it was so bad.

Now that I’m taking asthma maintenance medication (whoever came up with the combination of inhaled steroids and long-acting beta agonists really needs to be canonized), I can visit Eisenhower Park whenever I want.

The land which is now Eisenhower Park was originally part of Camp Bullis Military Training Reservation. Camp Bullis is still there, yards/feet/inches away from the park, depending on where you are standing at the time. Former General and US President Dwight D. Eisenhower was, for a time, stationed at Fort Sam Houston (locally called “Fort Sam”) here. In fact, he met his wife, Mamie, in San Antonio.

Sometime around 1972, the United States Army decided that they needed to reduce the size of Camp Bullis by more than 1,000 acres. They transferred ownership of this land to Bexar County and to the city of San Antonio. In 1988, the city turned their 320-acre share into a public park.

Eisenhower Park House 2016 — The house in Eisenhower Park, San Antonio, Texas, 2016

Eisenhower Park has picnic facilities, a playground, a house that I think was moved here from somewhere else, and, of course, five miles of hiking trails. Interestingly, no one has put the origin of the house on their website, so when I next go to the park (more on that later), I’ll make a note of it. I thought I got a picture of the sign explaining it but I can’t find one now.

The trails are, for the most part, unaccessible by wheelchair users. There is one paved path that goes pretty much right straight up the hill, but it’s pretty steep. I guess if the wheelchair user in question has really good upper-body strength or a fairly powerful motorized wheelchair you might be able to make it but I really wouldn’t recommend it.

At the top of the hill is a (not at all handicap accessible) observation platform. You can see downtown San Antonio from the platform, but it’s pretty small. Alex and I had tentative plans to go up to Eisenhower Park the Sunday before we left for Chicago, but it never happened. Alex is going to his dad’s for a few days later this week, so I may make the trip myself. I’m going up there because of the view of the city. I’m trying to figure out how to get good pictures of the moon with my cell phone camera and I read something that said that you can use a telescope or binoculars to bring the moon into sharper relief so I’m going to experiment with taking pictures with a telescope (or binoculars) from the top of the platform. The moon is farther away than downtown San Antonio is, but if I can make downtown look bigger from there, it might be worth experimenting with it on the moon.

South Texas Destinations: Comanche Lookout Park, San Antonio, Texas

Alex and I went to Comanche Lookout Park a couple of years ago when I was first playing around with the idea of starting a travel blog. San Antonio has such a wealth of parks and I thought that it was a real shame that I never really got out of the Brackenridge/Walker Ranch/Hardberger/Eisenhower/Denman Estate rut that I was in. So I started to research parks and discovered that Comanche Lookout has both geographical and historical interest.

The geographical interest is that Comanche Lookout Park is the fourth-highest point in Bexar County. And since Bexar County is pretty hilly, that means something. The elevation of Comanche Lookout Park is 1,340 feet. That’s nearly 400 feet higher than the very highest point in Cook County.

As to history, the local Native American nations, the Apache and, later Comanche, used the hill as, well, a lookout post, just as the name implies. Later, the Camino Real de los Tejas (not to be confused with the Californian Camino Real), which connected Mexico City to Laredo, San Antonio, and Nacogdoches, Texas went past the hill. That part of the road is known as Nacogdoches Road today. In the 1920s, a man named Edward H. Coppock bought the land that includes Comanche Lookout and he began work on a castle at the top of the hill. He never finished his castle before his death. A later owner razed all but the foundations and the completed tower at the top of the hill. The property was passed from owner to owner for nearly 50 years. The City of San Antonio purchased the parcel in 1994 and converted it into a public park.

Comanche Lookout Park tower, 2014 — The tower at Comanche Lookout Park, 2014

Comanche Lookout Park has 4.55 miles of walking trails and one of those outdoor fitness systems. You know, the “do pullups on this bar,” “hold this bar and do pushups” things. There is a city library on the corner of Nacogdoches and Judson Roads. And, of course, there is the tower (see image), which is surrounded by a fence.

I seem to recall that a large number of the trails are paved, but the path to the top of the hill might be a level 3, and thus unusable by people in wheelchairs without really good upper body strength or a really powerful motorized chair.

South Texas Destinations: Cibolo Nature Center, Boerne, Texas

Alphabetically, Brackenridge Park should be the next park up, but I’ve already covered Brackenridge Park here and here and here. So, skipping over Brackenridge, we get Cibolo Nature Center in Boerne, Texas.

We’ve been visiting Cibolo Nature Center since, oh, 2003 or so. I remember visiting it for the first time in the summer, and the sun was beating down on my hair pretty relentlessly (so that leaves out 2002; I didn’t have a whole lot of hair in the summer of 2002, I was still recovering from chemo). After the discomfort of the heat from the sun, I didn’t want to return again until fall. Once we went back, though, it didn’t take long to become one of my favorite parks, despite the half-hour drive it takes to get there.

The land which is now the Cibolo Nature Center was once just the back end of Boerne City Park (despite the name, there actually are other parks in Boerne). Prior to that, the land had been part of the ranch of Dr. Ferdinand Herff. A group formed to protect the section of Cibolo Creek that runs through this section of the park and also to preserve the little bit of wetlands that existed on the site. The city agreed that this was a worthwhile goal and the Cibolo Nature Center was established.

There are three miles of trails in Cibolo Nature Center,around two miles of which are named trails. These include the Marshland Trail, which leads out into the wetlands portion of the park, the Native Texas Prairie Trail, which leads out into the prairie at the center of the park, the Cibolo Creek Trail, which leads along Cibolo Creek, and the Woodlands Trail, which continues out into a wooded area farther along.

The Cibolo Creek Trail made me think of Middle Earth the first time I saw it, and it took me a while to realize why. The mass-market paperback edition of The Hobbit that was popular when I was young had Tolkein’s painting of the barrels with the dwarves in them escaping downstream and the view of the cypresses that line the banks lead to not a terribly different image.

They have at least in the past done controlled burns of the prairie area. This makes sense, because burning is an important part of prairie management. Without periodic burning, trees would eventually take over the land. Anyway, the now-ex, Alex, and I were in the prairie just after a burn once and we found something’s pelvic bones in the field. It seemed awfully small for a deer, but I’m nothing like an expert on osteology. At any rate, we didn’t want to disturb it, so we told one of the employees what we’d seen and where it was.

We had nicknames for most of the parks that we visited while Alex was young. The nickname that we had for for Cibolo Nature Center was “the dinosaur woods.” The “woods” part is pretty obvious, I think. The “dinosaur” part is one of the neatest things about the park. In 1997, there was tremendous flooding in this region. One of the side effects was that dinosaur footprints were exposed by the flooding near Boerne Lake. The city decided to preserve them by paving them over, from what I read, but prior to that, they made a cast of them and put the cast in the Cibolo Nature Center. It’s pretty easy to find the tracks from the parking lot. When you stand in the parking lot, you can see the pavilion (this is also where the restrooms are located). The path kind of skirts the pavilion and heads off to the right (as you look at it). The footprints are along that path.

The Marshland Trail is designed to be wheelchair accessible. The rest of the paths are largely pretty level, but unpaved. The path down to the creek itself is pretty steep and kind of rocky, so I’m not sure about getting too close to the creek in a wheelchair. I can only think of one staircase on the paths, and that leads up the side of the bluff between the Cibolo Creek Trail and the Woodlands Trail.

South Texas Destinations: Concepción and and Crownridge Canyon Parks, San Antonio, Texas

I’m running these out of order. I missed two, so I’m publishing this now and will follow up with Comanche Lookout and Cibolo Nature Parks in another week or so (maybe longer if I do end up exploring downtown San Antonio for Pokéstops in the next few days).

I have to admit that I haven’t spent that much time at Concepción Park. Alex and I explored a little, and it seems to be a nice addition to the neighborhood around there, with a swimming pool, a playground, picnic tables, and sports fields. Unfortunately, it is relatively low on shade and the only walking trail is only 0.5 miles (0.8 km). Alex and I were at the park primarily as a parking lot for the Mission Reach part of the San Antonio River Walk. Concepción Park, including the attached Sports Complex, are around 76 acres, which isn’t that large, but by my estimate, it’s around a mile along the river, which took us two tries, since we had our elderly dog with us the first time. We had to stop so that she would have the energy to make it back to the car.

My family and I have spent many happy hours at Friedrich Wilderness Park (post to follow later). One day when the now-ex and I were heading home from Friedrich, we passed a sign for a Crownridge Canyon Park. Curious, we turned at the sign and got utterly lost trying to find the park. We did see a wild turkey, however, when we accidentally drove into the parking lot of the Palmer Course at La Cantera, so there’s that.

This was back around 2006, in the days before everyone had Google Maps on their phones so we turned around and headed home. We figured out that we missed a turn onto Babcock and made another attempt a while later, but didn’t see the park then, either, due to having missed yet another turn that we didn’t know about.

I finally found the park for the first time sometime around 2009 or 2010 after my divorce and when my dad moved in with me and it really was worth the effort.

The area which is now Crownridge Canyon Park was, at one time, purchased by a company that wanted to put houses in that area. However, that land is in the Edwards Aquifer Recharge Zone and is also part of the nesting range of the Golden-Cheeked Warbler, both of which are pretty compelling reasons for the city to buy the land and mark it for public use. Eventually, from what I can tell, there is going to be one greenway including Crownridge Canyon, Friedrich, and the new Rancho Diana parks.

Crownridge Canyon is a great place for birders. As I mentioned, the golden-cheeked warbler and turkeys are both endemic to the area. The park also has bushtit and the last time we were there, Alex and I saw a really pretty (and still unidentified) blue bird in the parking lot.

The park has a public art display, Oscar Alvarado’s Hill Country Water Cycles, which consists of a wall and floor mural and also a model stream created with collected rainwater. The drive up to the park may be worth it just for the artwork.

Crownridge Canyon has 1.8 miles of hiking trails in a sort of figure-8 shape. The bottom loop of the 8, which is 1.3 miles, is kind of steep, but paved, so people with quite a bit of upper-body strength should be able to make the path in a wheelchair. The top loop, which is 0.5 miles, is steeper and is unpaved, so it may be unpassable by wheelchair users.

South Texas Destinations: Alamo Plaza and Bamberger Nature Park, San Antonio, Texas

So, since I’m not sure how to tackle over the 200 parks that I haven’t covered yet (many of which I haven’t even visited yet), I guess I’ll do this alphabetically.

First of the ones I’ve visited, I guess, is Alamo Plaza. I didn’t even realize that Alamo Plaza was a park until I saw it on the San Antonio Parks and Recreation website. While Alamo Plaza has a fair bit of history — it was part of the mission complex for Mission San Antonio de Valero (the Alamo’s original name). Today, though, there’s really not much to Alamo Plaza. I don’t think that the Alamo itself is actually part of the park. The Alamo is owned by the Texas General Land Office and not the city. The plaza itself is largely paved with limestone. People gather there to socialize and street vendors (notably, if I recall correctly, raspa (sno-cone) vendors) sometimes have carts set up there. There’s a gazebo and the cenotaph, which is a giant monument listing the names of those who died in the battle of the Alamo. Also, Alamo Plaza is where the city sets up the city Christmas tree.

2015 San Antonio Christmas Tree — The 2015 city Christmas tree for San Antonio, Texas in Alamo Plaza.

Bamberger Nature Park is in a completely different part of the city — the northwest side. At nearly 71 acres (28.7 hectares), Bamberger is considerably larger than Alamo Plaza. I seem to recall that seeing a sign saying that before it was a park, Bamberger was a part of some family’s farm. I thought I took a picture of the sign but can’t find it now.

There isn’t a whole lot more to Bamberger Nature Park than there is to Alamo Plaza, only in the other direction. Where Alamo Plaza is all built up, Bamberger Nature Park is largely unimproved. The only real change made to the park are 2.5 miles of hiking and biking trails. These trails connect to the Leon Creek Greenway. I’ve been there twice, once intentionally in December of 2014, and the other one in the spring of 2016 when I made a wrong turn on the Leon Creek Greenway. Both times, it was a very nice place to take a nature walk. Even if it was a little chilly in December.