Excellent write-up on Garner State Park and Lost Maples SNA, Turn Key! (
I've got competition if you keep that up!) It echoes my sentiments exactly. Justin and I have never camped at Garner or Lost Maples, actually, and the primary reasons are those you noted: crowding at Garner (most evident in the summer and around holidays any time of year) and relatively few trails; and limited non-hike in sites at Lost Maples SNA. That said, Lost Maples is high on my list of the next place I want to camp; I just need to convince Justin to do a hike-in camping trip someday.
We spent several days and nights in Leakey at a rental home near the Real County Airport in October 2003, so we had a great time exploring both Garner SP and Lost Maples SNA. Hiked "Old Baldy" at Garner for the first time (still need to share that write-up and the photographs we took there). We also drove probably every single loop road in the park while playing around with our new Garmin GPS, resulting in some wacky GPS tracks! At Lost Maples we ended up doing just a bit of photography and not much hiking. Scouted out the developed campsites to make notes of future sites we might enjoy; I'll have to dig up my notes and see if our numbers coincide with yours -- a couple of those sound familiar, and your criteria for a desirable campsite seems to mesh with ours.
I second copuswalker's recommendation for Hill Country SNA, by the way. No developed facilities (electricity, potable water, dump station) there, but plenty of short walk-in and longer hike/backpack-in sites, LOTS of terrific trails over varied terrain and just all around a great place to escape the rat race and get back to nature. I had a wonderful time in May
camping at Hill Country SNA.