Thread: OP Schnabel & Leon Creek

I'm not at home right now, so I can't post my GPS track and waypoints, but I wanted to share a neat experience I had today.

As you know, I work at home these days and occasionally I take advantage of that by waiting to hike until a weekday -- I'm a solitude kind o' gal, though I'll happily smile and greet any fellow outdoors enthusiast I meet on the trails.

So, I hopped in my car and drove to my parent's neighborhood which has both a fenced "jogging trail" (managed by their homeowner's association) and convenient access to the time-created trails snaking along Leon Creek off Hausman/Babcock Roads. Until recently, I didn't know the extent of progress on the new Leon Creek Greenbelt Park -- I finally found the entrance late last week off Babcock, as well as Baumberger Nature Preserve (haven't explored that yet, at all -- looks promising and gets mentioned in the birdwatching lists I follow).

Anyway, I had planned to locate a geocache that's near my parents' house but outside of the homeowner's association jogging trail. Instead, I noticed newly painted orange and blue blazes and decided, "I'm following these and seeing where they lead!" In a very cool discovery, for me anyway, I found that following these blazes led me to none other than OP Schnabel Park (a park one usually accesses via Bandera Road -- a long way from my parent's jogging trail entrance off Prue & Old Prue.

Logged about 4 miles (stupidly didn't bring my Camelbak, or any water, so once the clouds burned off I started feeling the heat and water loss). Relaxed at a covered pavillion with water fountains off one of the paved trails at OP Schnabel then wound my way back down the bluff and headed back to the Leon Creek Greenbelt portion.

This is a neat discovery for me and it bodes well for residents in the 78249 zipcode -- these parks will soon be linked up via wooded trails, some paved, some not, and aside from occasional roadway noise (due to crossing under Babcock Road and passing near various residential areas and Highway 16/Bandera Road), it's a wonderful escape.

I saw a Greater Roadrunner (of course, I didn't have my camera -- just my Garmin GPSMap 76S), five or six deer, numerous birds including Northern cardinal and a curve-billed thrasher (looks similar to a Northern mockingbird but with a longer, curved beak and red eyes), lots of lizards and butterflies of all varieties.

It pays to follow a whim of "I wonder where this will take me" now and then, and with GPS it was stress-free and fun realizing, "Wait, I'm crossing the boundary into OP Schnabel Park -- a park I certainly didn't think was accessible on foot from here, via marked trails!"

No bushwhacking required. I'll post a trip report and GPS track soon. I need to return with camera to provide some photos. I had never actually hiked at OP Schnabel before and I found several great viewpoints of the city from one of the paved trails (and some of the unpaved ones as well) -- great Medical Center views and such.

Enjoyable excursion and worth taking a day off my normal work duties to experience!

Just had to share. Now, what's with this hotter weather?!

Well, if it's bad form to raise this thread from days (and years!) gone by then I'm guilty. This one hits literally really close to home, so I felt compelled to add to it.

I used to have a rental property in the Oxbow subdivision along Leon Creek at Babcock which is adjacent to the neighborhood Shannon mentions. This in the middle 90's before the city developed the greenbelt and it and it was kind of our "secret" little woodland. Performing annual volunteer work with the HOA, we'd clear brush and trash in the area and had a nice little pond and wooded area to enjoy that not too many people knew about. I can remember exploring the creek bed and thought it was so cool that I could hike to OP Schabel from home! Along the way there are lots of neat little nooks and ponds, nice wooded trails, and even some cool, albeit small cliffs to climb around on near Schnabel. I don't know how many times I've been down these trails over the years... "Bunches!" as a friend would say. These days I make my home on the opposite side of the creek, but still in the general area and make my way onto the trail on occasion, usually making a geocache run of it.

In the photo, you can see a 3.5 mile section of Leon Creek between Babcock and Bandera roads indicated in yellow. (It extends further in both directions)
Nearest the Bandera end, there are now some newly constructed paved walking paths. You can also see on the left image that there is quite the geocache "power trail" to be found if that's your pleasure. There are also usually a lot of mountain bikers on the paths too.

Basically, a nice area to have a small "in the city" adventure.