BOOKS

NEW HIKING guides cover texas state parks

Half Day Hikes has announced the second and third pocket-sized guides in its Texas state parks hiking series: Franklin Mountains State Park and Lost Maples State Natural Area. The new guides include hiking tips, detailed maps, highlights and full-color photos for 16 hikes in El Paso’s Franklin Mountains and six hikes in the Hill Country’s Lost Maples.

Hikes are rated according to difficulty; as the title indicates, most can be completed in roughly half a day or less. The first Half Day Hikes guide covered Big Bend Ranch State Park.

Each guide contains maps, highlights and trailhead directions. Half Day Hikes donates 50 percent of the proceeds from the sale of each book to the state park to support the ongoing management and maintenance of hiking trails and open spaces for recreational use. The hiking guides can be purchased on Amazon, at certain REI stores or at the park visitor centers.

At LOST MAPLES, hikes include a visit to Monkey Rock, an easy 1-mile loop to view the unique bigtooth maple trees and a challenging 5-mile loop with 470 feet of elevation gain that passes through Mystic Canyon.

In the FRANKLIN MOUNTAINS, explore an early 1900s tin mine, watch the sun go down from the Upper Sunset Trail, hike to a B-36 bomber crash-site overlook and summit North Franklin Mountain (7,192 feet).

 Louie Bond   Sonja Sommerfeld | TPWD