A Walk in the Park
When is the last time you took a walk outdoors? Just a few weeks ago, my family went on a half-day trip to Tyler State Park, which is nestled in the piney woods region of northeast Texas. The park contains more than 13 miles of hiking trails that surround a 64-acre lake. If you enjoy camping, there are just over 100 campsites, several cabins, and almost 30 screened shelters to take advantage of—all you need is time and a reservation. Since we were only there for about half a day we had no need to camp. While exploring the park we encountered visitors fishing, hiking, cycling, kayaking, paddle-boarding, pedal-boating, jogging, picnicking, playing at a playground, and relaxing. We even saw a photo session celebrating an engagement in the middle of the road as we were driving through the park as it neared sunset.
We hiked a few trails that Saturday with the shortest and easiest being the Blackjack Nature Trail. It leads any wanderer through open, savannah-like terrain with long grasses and few trees. This trail is also the location of the sole bird blind at the park, constructed by a high school student that earned her Girl Scout Gold Award for the project. The second trail was the Lakeshore Trail, which nearly encircles the entire lake. We ended up hiking only a few hundred feet of this trail before moving on since someone decided to smoke cigarettes just ahead of us, and we were not especially excited to follow behind—so we decided to drive to another trail.
The longest trail we hiked that day was the Whispering Pines Trail. After parking as close to the trailhead as we could, we started walking passed a group of cabins and noticed something. A man was walking around dressed as what could be described as a medieval cosplayer in a tunic, which I thought was a bit peculiar at a state park—it wasn’t Comic-Con after all. Then we saw more people dressed in the same style. With so many questions left unanswered in all our minds we stuck to the plan and continued toward the trail, which took about a hour to complete at a leisurely pace.
The trail meandered through a forest of a variety of trees. Full disclosure: I did have to reference the park’s website to get the actual names of the ones I remembered seeing. We saw post oaks, pines (loblolly and shortleaf), mockernut hickories, eastern red cedars, flowering dogwoods, and American beautyberry. Some of those trees can be seen in the photographs I made along the trail, which are included in this post. The emerging fall colors were especially impressive in some places due to the sunlight coming through openings in the taller trees. One image I’ve included captures how the dappled sunlight backlit a few of the trees along the trail. As we walked along we commented to one another multiple times how strange it was to not see any birds while on this hike. We saw different bird species on the Blackjack Nature Trail, but none on the Whispering Pines Trail, even though birds should have been active since it was closer to the evening by then.
After completing the Whispering Pines Trail hike we headed back to the cabin-area parking lot. All our questions from earlier were about to be answered! There were loads more people dressed in medieval garb, and we learned they were a large group that gathers together every six months for Live Action Role Playing (LARPing as some call it) competitions. The documentary “Monster Camp” gives an interesting look into the lives of those that take part in the activity. One “maiden” told us that her husband won the tournament (behind the large cabin) and became king for the next six months, which made her the queen. They were all changing out of their battle gear into their banquet attire for the evening celebratory feast. We all have our interests, and more power to them choosing that and being confident enough in themselves to do it!
Tyler State Park: https://tpwd.texas.gov/state-parks/tyler
Do you enjoy visiting state parks? Let me know about some of the ones you’ve visited, where ever that may be, in the comments section.
Take care of yourselves and I wish you the best on your next photography adventure!
