Hiking In Texas

 Pack Your Day Hike Backpack Just For You There is a lot of discussion about what to put into a backpack for trail hiking. For now, I'm just focusing on packing a backpack for day hikes. My day hikes description is: hikes that take a day or less, and are between 3 and 8 miles.  It's cool if you do 10 to 20 miles a day which will stretch your food and water needs well beyond what I'm writing about today. But, most everything else you might pack will probably be similar to those doing the shorter hikes. And, this is where there is an important distinction to make.  What you pack should be based on YOU. You have unique needs when considering what you'll need to feel secure and comfortable on a day hike. Nobody else can tell you that. We all have different abilities and experience levels and physical histories, so we each have to take those things into account when we pack for a day hike. Age, physical condition, history of injuries, metabolism, medical conditions, mental a...

Making Photography Easy on the Hiking Trail Here's what's working for me these days. I went through a lot of experimentation, and a lot of frustration, trying to find the right rigs for hauling my cameras when I'm out on the trail. So here are my solutions. But first, a few words about how I view trail photography and my uses for the photos, and videos, I record. After more than 40 years of practicing photography and videography I arrived at a term to describe the type of visual recorder I am: I'm an archivist. That is to say, I capture photos and videos for the simple joy of making a record of events, times, places and memories. Of course, I also want the archive to have well-composed and acceptably-exposed images.  I use a fraction of the images and videos I capture in venues like this. Others I release on my BeHance profile and on my YouTube channel . Some I share with family and friends (always interested in making new acquaintances). Another very small fraction of...

Have you ever been on a hiking trail like this?  Probably not. From the time you step out of your vehicle in the parking area at the trailhead for the Gorman Falls trail, until you return, your feet are walking on a geologic window into the Paleozoic Era. It is all revealed here. The rocks you walk over and stand upon were formed 541- 252 million years ago, right after the very first animals appeared on earth. This type of geology is often well-buried beneath tons of newer landscapes. But here, it was eroded to the surface by the Colorado River . How special is that! And, there are caves below!  A side note for the geographically-challenged: This is NOT in Colorado. This Colorado River is in Texas and is the major water feature in southwestern Texas, along with its tributaries and an underground aquifer system. The trail starts out from an oversized trailhead parking lot with restrooms.  This is the Colorado Bend State Park's busiest trail so you will likely see other peo...