Excellent recommendations, Kent. We haven't visited Mineral Wells yet; however, you may already have viewed our
Big Bend slideshow of photos taken during our weeklong Big Bend camping trip in October 2001. Having taken literally more than 600 photos between the two of us during that trip, I can definitely agree with your assessment of Big Bend as
king for photographers (and backpackers, and wildlife watchers, and...
)
Since you mentioned Oklahoma (which we haven't visited yet), I wanted to mention that Arkansas has some beautiful parks. My favorites within a day's drive (10-12 hours) of San Antonio are Petit Jean State Park, Mount Nebo and the Ouachita National Forest. Gorgeous parks, good facilities and a small state population so the park's are not as heavily visited as our Texas State Parks. I liked it so much, I posted one "on location" trip report in 1998 from our trip to
Queen Wilhelmina State Park & Mt. Nebo State Park. The official
Arkansas State Parks site has a lot of useful info. -- similar to our own
Texas Parks & Wildlife Department site.