Meador Manor

Rough Canyon near Robbers Cave (click image for a slideshow)

After a somewhat disappointing outing at Sequoyah State Park the prior week, I was determined to make the next expedition more rewarding, especially since I’d be passing the 400-mile mark since I began my series of day hikes in July 2009.  The weather was sunny and warm for December, rising into the 50s, although a chilly north wind constantly reminded me that winter was only a couple of weeks away.

Still leery of hunters, I scoured the map for state parks and at first considered a hike at Arrowhead on Lake Eufala.  The state once had twin lodges on that lake, Arrowhead and Fountainhead, with their own decorative motifs maintained throughout their respective parks.  All of the state lodges lost money, but those two really bled it, and the state finally disposed of them.  Fountainhead Lodge was sold to the Muscogee (Creek) tribe a couple of years ago for $2 million.  They’ve emptied it out to build a resort and casino – big surprise.  Arrowhead Lodge was sold off in 2000 to the Church of Scientology, of all things, which uses it as a Narconon drug and alcohol abuse treatment center.

I’d visited both parks back in high school and, while I liked the decorative motifs at the parks, I didn’t remember being impressed by the trails.  Lake Eufaula State Park and Arrowhead State Park each have a few short hiking trails and Arrowhead has several long bridle trails.  They’d do in a pinch, but I wanted something better.  My eye wandered eastward on the map to Robbers Cave State Park.  I was last there in September 2009, scrambling over the impressive cave area formations on a hot day with oodles of kids and climbers about.  While I had no real desire to explore the cave area again, I knew the park had some other long trails, although I had never followed them for more than a few hundred yards near the cave area.  A little web research convinced me to drive three hours to that park’s north end for what would become an 8.2 mile hike to Lost Lake, Cattail Pond, Lake Wayne Wallace, and Rough Canyon.

The drive was uneventful, although there were many little road construction projects along each phase of the journey.  A combination of toll fees and federal stimulus money at work, I suppose.  I’d driven the Muskogee Turnpike down to I-40 many times for day hikes in Arkansas, and was glad to be turning west for once for the jog over to Highway 2.  Here a bridge project, rather than simply reducing lanes, turned the narrow two-line highway into a one-lane road for a spell.  A stoplight at either end allowed cars through in waves.  You know you’re in the mountains when they take that approach.

Reaching the park, I drove over to the cave lot, opting to handle the weather by layering an undershirt, heavy microfiber button shirt, and jacket.  Unsure of how near the trail strayed to the adjoining Wildlife Management Area, I added a fourth layer in the form of my orange “don’t shoot me” vest and quickly scrambled up through the eastern edge of the cave area on the old CCC trail until I found the trail sign and blue blazes of the Lost Lake/Rough Canyon Trail.

It led northeast around the rear of the cave area, forming a rocky path protruding through the fallen leaves.  A mix of pine trees in with the deciduous prevented the landscape from looking too denuded.  None of my online maps showed the bridle trails, so when I came across one I followed it a bit to see if it led anywhere interesting (no) and then doubled back.  Eventually the trail reached Lost Lake.

I had not seen another hiker and the little lake was a lonely spot.  Part of the surface featured lily pads, and a fallen pine tree was still alive, although it projected out from shore at about 30 degrees above the horizontal.  The low concrete dam was aged and cracked, with an old CCC pump house at one end.  The pretty rock work was holding up, but the abandoned building’s wood was rotting away.  It was almost time for lunch, but Lost Lake was too depressing, so I forged onward.

The trail soon featured a greater abundance of pines, providing a lovely cushion of needles for the trail.  I reached the junction with Cattail Pond Trail and decided to take it and have lunch at the pond.  Near the trail junction I bushwhacked my way down to the rocky bed of the stream that was dammed to form Lost Lake.  I liked how a small boulder was propping up a rock ledge down in the bed, and nearby a tree was serving a similar function.

A sign announced Cattail Pond, where I spotted a sunny picnic area on the opposite shore.  I bushwhacked my way over there, finding it to be a camp on a bridle trail.  I enjoyed my usual turkey sandwich, this time a tasty one I’d purchased at a Bartlesville QuikTrip.  It was a welcome break, with a relaxing view of the grassy shore and nearby tree blooms.

I followed the trail across the earthen dam, which had been planted with pines.  It had merged with a bridle trail, but as I tread onward I noticed that the blue blazes for my hiking trail were absent.  I had missed a turn.  I backtracked and had a difficult time locating the turnoff, which was overgrown.  The section of the Cattail Pond Trail between the pond and the junction with the Lake Wallace trail was clearly seldom used.  It was quite faint and overgrown in places, sometimes only discernible by the frequent blue blazes on the trees.  I presume many people camping in the south portion of the park follow the Mountain and Lake Wayne Wallace Trails northward, but then turn off eastward to take the Rough Canyon Trail to Robbers Cave.  Few choose to instead travel on north to Cattail Pond.

Soon the trail was running beside a deeper rugged canyon created by the stream flowing from Lost Lake into the northern end of Lake Wayne Wallace.  I later realized that this section of Cattail Pond Trail parallels the Rough Canyon trail, travelling along the northwestern edge of the canyon, while the eponymous trail travels along its southeastern side.  I could not resist bushwhacking down to the stream bed.  This steep descent marked the only time on the hike when I used my trekking poles.  I memorialized the victorious descent with a silhouette shot of myself holding my poles aloft over the stream.

A series of fallen trees across the stream made me think back to the series of bridges across the Chicago River I remember seeing in the credits of the original Bob Newhart show as a child.  It was warming up and there had been no sounds of hunters, so I stripped off the hunting vest and had fun scrambling over the huge slabs of rock, posing for a self-portrait.  Clambering back up to the trail, I followed the gradually descending canyon rim and as the canyon ended I made another descent to the stream bed.  In the distance I could still see the series of “tree bridges” which I had now passed.

I reached a trail junction and noted I had just enough time for an out-and-back trip to the north end of Lake Wayne Wallace before I needed to head down the Rough Canyon Trail back to the cave area.  Along this stretch of trail I finally encountered other hikers, a group of six or more outfitted with small day packs like my own, but sporting some long wood staves as hiking poles.  Stumbling past them, I slunk onward to cross Ash Creek Road and a rock ledge ford across a stream.  Near here I heard the sound of a powerful engine laboring away.  A side trip showed it was a compressor for high-pressure gas pipeline.  I don’t envy the workers and engineers who installed that pipeline through the San Bois Mountains.

I finally reached the northwest end of the biggest lake in the park.  A bridle trail ran along here and the water level was down, so the shoreline was a muddy mix of stones, twigs, and the remains of many tiny mussels which crunched beneath my boots.  I paused for a macro shot of one and then reversed course, noticing that the trail blazers had gotten a bit carried away at times.  Pausing only briefly to capture a shot of a particuarly nice trail stone, the trail forded the stream I’d followed for much of the day across a broad ledge of rock.

I eventually reached the Rough Canyon Trail.  Before following it east back to the cave area, I walked northward far enough to reach a scenic portion of the canyon and bushwhacked my way down to the stream bed.  I was not surprised to find that I was only a few yards south of where I’d visited earlier via my bushwhack from the Cattail Pond Trail.  Climbing back up, I found a fallen branch of a pine tree, with a cone still attached.

At one point the eastward trail descended a rough slope.  A nearby section of bluff had what appeared to be a small cave, but a short bushwhack showed it only to be a crevice.  The trail made a stony descent to Fourche Maline Creek (Wicked Fork in French), which is the main flow into Lake Wayne Wallace and headwater to the Poteau River.  Here I encountered a family of hikers.  The father asked if I had just seen the two bald eagles flying past above the creek, but I confessed I had missed the opportunity, durn it.

After four-and-a-half hours out on the trails I was back at the cave area with the sun setting behind me.  I needed to run back to Tulsa for dinner with friends, but I’ll definitely return to Robbers Cave later, as in the southern part of the park there is still a Coon Creek loop trail and much more of the Mountain Trail to explore.

Click here for a slideshow from this day hike

Sequoyah State Park (click image for slideshow)

For my last day of Thanksgiving Break I decided to find some new trails to hike.  I’d spent the prior day on housework, mulching leaves and doing laundry.  The weather was warm for November, if blustery.  I scanned the map for trails I had not visited, with the constraints of them not being more than a two-hour drive away and being free of any hunters.  My eyes alighted on Sequoyah State Park at Fort Gibson Lake near Wagoner, home to one of the state’s remaining lodges, the oddly named Western Hills Guest Ranch.

I’d briefly visited with some friends staying at the park some months back and they’d mentioned there were hiking trails.  The state’s online map showed a variety of hiking and biking trails, although my own explorations would later show it to be out of date, which, when combined with very poor park signage, led me astray several times.  Thankfully freezes had killed off the underbrush and made the consequent bushwhacking tolerable.

I crossed the Highway 51 bridge over Fort Gibson Lake and arrived at the park around 10:15 a.m.  I turned west off the main road down past the Paradise Cove Marina, noticing that one of the trailheads shown on the map was not marked.  I drove to the adjoining picnic area to the south, where the map showed another trailhead for the small Eagle Roost loop trail.  I parked in a sandy lot at the trailhead near some of the planted pines which line many of the park roads.

Here there was a trailhead sign, although what I presume was once a registry box was a cobwebbed shambles.  The trail had been mowed and looped about a small hill, with occasional green signposts providing direction at junctions.  Other numbered signposts were presumably explained by some nature trail map I did not have.  I find it most irritating that many state parks do not post all of their trail maps and guides online, forcing one to either inquire at a park office or do without.  And Oklahoma’s travelok.com website was redesigned a year or so ago, for the worse, and now provides only sketchy information on most of the parks.

The only notable aspect of the trail was the Cockrum Cemetery, a burial plot of about a dozen graves which had a picket fence and reconstructed tomb which were put up a decade ago.  The cemetery began with the burial of Ka-tee Cockrum in 1884 in a tomb of native stone.  By the 1920s the area was so neglected that the stones were reused for a grain silo and the headstone moved to the family homestead.  It returned to this site in 2000 when the cemetery was restored.  The sign explaining this mentioned a North Ray cemetery – later I would realize that the peninsula the park occupies was once home to a ghost town called Ray.  A church, the Ray Mission, is nearby with another, larger cemetery.

When the trail returned to the lake, I followed a mountain bike trail not shown on my map around a small and muddy cove with abandoned picnic tables and debris scattered about.  It was depressing until some waterfowl appeared to lift my spirits.  Returning to my car, I’d hiked about 1.25 miles and was hungry, so I drove down to the tip of the peninsula and had a tasty lunch at the lodge restaurant.  I was the only customer for some time, although eventually three elderly couples appeared.  Some crabbed about breakfast no longer being served (at 11:15!) and another old fellow was being very picky about ordering his side salad just so.  Overhearing these other customers, I wondered if the restaurant not having Coke or Pepsi on hand, which had forced me to settle for a Dr. Pepper, might be symbolic: prune juice cola seemed fitting for the lodge’s clientele.  (Of course I know it is an old wives’ tale that Dr. Pepper has prune juice in it.)

After lunch I drove over to the nature center and found a modern trail sign for the Three Forks Nature Trail, indicating part of it headed off north along a paved pathway.  I shouldn’t have trusted the sign – the paved path was a mountain bike trail and, as far I could tell with later exploration, there is no Three Forks Nature Trail segment heading north from the Nature Center anymore.  A north loop for the trail is shown on the park maps, but the area is overgrown and only a few sections of the former trail, discernible by field stone curbing, remain and are cut through by barbed wire fencing.

I don’t like hiking on asphalt trails in my boots, but I persevered and headed north for over a mile, passing the riding stables, until the paved trail petered out at the road to the closed Cherokee area.  I could see it had been planned to extend the trail north from there, but that work had not been completed.  My map indicated another section of bike trail to the west, and I found it was there and was happily unpaved but cleared.  So I followed it and noticed that it branched off to the north to join with the Eagle Roost Trail – I’d seen red tree blazes for that section of bike trail earlier, although it was not shown on the online maps.

My section of bike trail turned south and then, frustratingly, ended at the road to the Seminole area.  The silly map acted like it just crossed the road, but that wasn’t true.  I turned east along the access road, arriving at the Ray Mission church and graveyard, close to the main road.   No trail signs, but I did see a cleared path to the south.  I followed it and it lead to a sewer lagoon, again with no signage.  I took another southern trail, which popped out on the Creek area access road, with no further trail to the south in evidence.  Maybe I was on the wrong path entirely or hadn’t stuck to the perimeter of the sewer lagoon for long enough.  Oh bother.

I wandered through a mowed field looking for a path south, but no dice.  So I returned to the access road and guessed the promised trail might lie to the west.  After passing another large mowed field, I found the bike trail again and followed it south to a creek close to the lake shore before it turned southeast to finally pass another sewer lagoon and terminate at the Chickasaw area access road by the golf course.  I walked back east along the road and found a large sign for the bike trails which showed the supposed path of several different sections.  It was only approximate for the bike trails and, like the online map, showed a north loop for the Three Forks Nature Trail which I would later find had been abandoned.  One hopes they have more accurate maps available at the park office or nature center, but given the shoddy park signage, I wouldn’t count on it.

Returning to the nature center area, I scouted around and confirmed that the west part of the north trail loop was non-existent.  So I walked south along the road to where I’d earlier spotted a sign for the Fossil Nature Trail, or Fossil Trails, as the sign put it.  This trail (or trails?) did exist, and was the most scenic in the park.  It made its way along the rugged and rocky eastern shoreline of the peninsula, allowing me a chance to scramble down to the water and along the rocky bluff.  When the shoreline bluff became impassable I backtracked and found an unmarked and crumbling cemented stone pathway back up to the main southbound trail.

This last bit of southbound trail had some abandoned and crumbling picnic tables, reminding me of the neglected cove I’d seen at the start of the day.  A big driftwood tree was interesting and the trail ended at a dock to the east of the lodge, where I could see Fort Gibson dam in the distance.  I retraced my path northward, following an abandoned unpaved roadbed for part of the way.  Soon I was heading north on the remaining part of the Three Forks Nature Trail, which then reached an unmarked fork.  The path to the left appeared to head back toward the nature center, while that to the right headed downhill toward the lake and was presumably part of the north loop toward the Choctaw area.

I took the right fork.  The trail could only be discerned by native curb stones lining its sides, which stuck up through the plentiful leaves.  A short side trail led down to abandoned equipment where what I take to be the park’s water pipes run down into the lake.  Eventually the trail popped out at the Choctaw RV area.  A dilapidated sign pointed westward, but I couldn’t easily spot a trail and wasn’t in the mood to ask the camp host, the only trailer in the area, for directions.  So I bushwhacked my way westward along a barbed wire fence and eventually came across a north-south section of what was once the Three Forks Nature Trail’s north loop.  The trail petered out to the north, and to the south it ran into new barbed wire fencing, forcing me to bushwhack westward to a road and return to the nature center.

I’d hiked 8.5 miles and was ready to call it a day.  While I’d enjoyed the walk, the inaccurate and outdated trail maps and pitiful signage, along with several derelict picnic areas, left me unimpressed.  I’m glad the Osage Hills State Park near me is kept in better shape, although it too could use better trail maps and signs.  Sadly I can’t expect any improvement for some time, given ongoing severe cuts in the state budget.  Much of the stimulus money is going to highway projects.  That way I can save time getting to our neglected state parks.  <sigh>

Click here for a slideshow of today’s day hike