Bastrop State Park Hike/Letterboxing

Posted on | February 8, 2009 | No Comments


2009-02-06 Bastrop State Park

Originally uploaded by Phisch

In celebration of our birthdays this week (our = hubby and mine), we thought it would be fun to get outside and go find more letterboxes. Rather than stay in our own neighborhood, so to speak, we wanted to get a little further out.

After checking letterboxing.org, we found out that there are two big parks in nearby Bastrop that have several letterboxes. I decided to pick Bastrop State Park as opposed to the other one since we’d seen it on the way to Houston when we drove there last year.

Parks of the state park can be seen from Highway 71 and it’s curious because there are groves of loblolly pines where you’d think pine trees didn’t belong. They even call the area “Lost Pines.” We didn’t get to read on why these lost pines ended up picking this spot to call home, but it’s so pretty there we’ll be heading back to find out.

Of the six letterboxes in the park, we tried to find four but managed to track down only two which isn’t bad.

We tried for the first two which were on a trail near one of the campground areas. That got our camping bug going again, but J had a good point: “We can’t go camping because we don’t have a tent!” Details, details!

We didn’t have much luck on this short hike. One letterbox was missing, one had clues that didn’t line up. It could be that landmarks like “natural bench” were moved in the rains from two years ago. That, and we couldn’t find it when part of the clue reads “go 8 paces at 80 degrees.” The compass was in the glove compartment…good place for it to be, don’t you think?

We drove to the head of the Lost Pines trail which is a pretty long one at 8.2 miles. We only had to head up .6 miles of it then walk back. The boys did great! It was mostly uphill, though gentle, but they are troopers. We found both of the boxes we were looking for in that area and those were pretty neat.

We’re looking forward to more searching soon!

Category: Around Town, Family Stuff
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