Meador Manor

February 22, 2014

I’ve now taken Wendy on several hikes to enjoy the trails at Elk City Lake, an hour’s drive north in Kansas. Together we have hiked both the north and south ends of the Table Mound Trail as well as the east and west ends of the Elk River Trail. So on a warm February afternoon we opted to hike the Timber Ridge Trail between Card Creek and the western shore of the lake.

Timber Ridge Trail (click image for slideshow)

I first hiked that trail four years ago, revisited it two years ago, and now the 2.5 mile route has become somewhat faded and overgrown. The fading blue tree blazes are crucial for locating the leaf-obscured path, so we were glad to hear from the Card Creek Recreation Area host that he will have some Boy Scouts working this spring to clear and re-blaze the trail.  All of the trails at Elk City have rugged areas, and this trail is gentle up top but rugged on its lower sections.

Tree Growing Out of Rock

Our first stop was a surveyor’s mark. Soon the trail dissolved into a shallow leaf-filled depression in the soil with only faded blazes to offer guidance. I enjoyed pointing out trees which had struggled to grow up out of cracks in the rocks, and from previous hikes here I recalled a section of bluff where a huge pie-wedged piece of rock has popped out.

Somewhere along here a crashing of brush made me whirl and cry out, and we laughed when we saw it was just another darn armadillo.

The lower trail eventually intersects and briefly follows part of an old road running diagonally up the ridge, and Wendy and I posed in silhouette form on the roadbed. We dawdled on a rock above Card Creek, enjoying the view west across flat fields.  After ascending to the top of the ridge, we paused again at a big rock providing an overlook.

A scattering of what at first looked like ice-covered stones led us to investigate, discovering the remnants of what I suppose was a glazed terra cotta basin that was completely coated in glass. Later the camp host speculated it might be a remnant from an old glass factory in the region; before World War I the natural gas supplies in the area led to a number of glass factories, which eventually folded due to a shortage of suitable sand.

Glassy remains

Our dawdling stretched out the hike enough so that Brothers Railroad Inn in downtown Independence would be open for a tasty Italian dinner. I enjoyed my baked meat ravioli, but Wendy’s chicken parmigiana was atypical and she’ll choose something different the next time we’re in town to hike more trails; there are still a few sections of trail at Elk City she has yet to experience.

Click here for a slideshow from this day hike

February 22, 2014

Another Lakeside Hike (click image for slideshow)

Last weekend Wendy and I took advantage of warmer weather to escape for another lakeside hike, this time at Okmulgee Lake. Although she grew up mostly in her home state of Texas, she graduated from Okmulgee High and once taught elementary and high school students there, so she was familiar with the lake, although she did more swimming than hiking there. I had a more photogenic hike there back in the autumn of 2011, but Wendy and I enjoyed the chance to escape the pressures of our jobs on another day hike.

We stopped for some delicious Chatsworth boxty at Kilkenny’s in Tulsa, then drove on south to Okmulgee for a 3.5 mile hike. I like how the Oak Leaf Trail has distinct sections, beginning with the shoreline trail with its lichen-covered slabs, followed by a hillside with scattered picnic tables, and then a hill with a paved lower trail leading over to a shelter in a camping area with a parallel and more primitive trail higher up which passes by a slab of rock providing a nice overlook of the lake.

Okmulgee Lake Overlook

Wendy enjoyed examining the graffiti at the overlook, ranging from romance to comedy. At the pretty rock shelter we were ungrammatically commanded to visit the bathroom, but nothing much was going down there. 🙂

Lake Shelter

Click here for a slideshow from this day hike

February 21, 2014

I’ve been swamped for the past month with work on a corporate grant proposal and design work on the high school expansion, and the weather was quite wintry for much of that time. But Wendy and I did manage two lake hikes which I finally have time to document, the first at Kaw Lake in late January.

An Imposingly Impassable Trail, or Possibly Passable?

The seasons impact the Eagle View Trail (click image for slideshow)

The Eagle View Trail at Kaw Lake, a few miles east of Ponca City, is not maintained well by the Corps of Engineers. The trail is about 12 miles long, open to equestrians, and winds along the south shore of the lake from Osage Cove to Burbank Landing.

Over 3.5 years ago, in early June 2010, I discovered it was terribly overgrown at both ends, but tried to hike it from the Osage Cove trailhead. I struggled for ten minutes northwest toward the lake shore before giving up, having struggled my way through chest-high grass and other overgrowth.

My frustration at never making it to the lake along that trail festered for years. So when Wendy and I wanted to escape town on a late Sunday in January 2014, I proposed that we have lunch in Ponca City and then see if the trail was passable in the winter when the overgrowth would be minimized.

She was game for the 90 minute drive 75 miles eastward along US 60, but I needed to find an alternate for my usual restaurant choice in Ponca City, Enrique’s Mexican restaurant at the airport, as they are closed on Sundays. TripAdvisor led us to have lunch at Zino’s Italian restaurant, which turned out to be a great choice. I thoroughly enjoyed my meal and plan to return to dine there if we ever make use of our reciprocity option for concerts at the nearby Poncan Theatre via our season membership in the Bartlesville Community Concert Association.

A Successful Day Hike

A 4.7 mile in-and-out hike

Trying the trail in mid-winter turned out to be a good choice; the trailhead was much clearer than what I’d found in late spring years earlier. We’d manage a 4.7-mile in-and-out hike this day until the trail faded noticeably.

Wendy’s shot of the field

A pickup with a horse trailer at the trailhead warned that we would have to be wary of droppings along the trail, and it wasn’t long before we starting dodging them. Soon we reached the edge of the large field where I’d abandoned my quest years ago. I think looking across the rising expanse of grass was one of Wendy’s favorite parts of the day. The trail hugged the fence line here, soon turning due west to make a straight shot to campsite 73 at Osage Cove, which is a preferable trailhead to use when accessible.

There was a play area, where I slid down the slide. The adjacent amphitheater had been tagged by the dreaded Ice Cream Cone Gang, but that did not deter us from proceeding north along the trail toward the curving lake shore. The trail eventually diverted from the fence line path, something we would likely have not noticed, given the poor trail maintenance, were it not for a large marker.

We finally reached the rocky south shore of the lake, where we found sheets of ice and snow still shrouding the more sheltered faces of the rock near the cool lake waters. This was my favorite part of the hike, other than the trail living up to its name when we spotted one eagle along the trail, which was so fast I could only grab a fuzzy shot of it in flight.

A Jutting Prow

Trees along the shore framed lake views as we walked northeast. At one inlet, a slab of rock jutting out from the water made me think of the prow of a sunken vessel. Rim rocks showed previous lake levels and one trailside stump was striking. Invasive cedars lined one section of shore, and we passed some unwelcome trailside beer cans as well; some people just don’t get it.

We found a fire ring at the most significant promontory along this section of shore and then the trail began to fade noticeably. There had been occasional yellow blazes on rocks here and there, and some plastic markers, but after the next inlet the trail became quite hard to trace. I think most people hiking from the campground turn around here, and we decided that we would follow suit.

While retracing our route we encountered a young couple on horseback, with one horse slipping and sliding around on the wet rocks. I was glad Wendy and I had followed trail etiquette and stood far back from the trail to give them passage.

A Welcome Glare

The sun glared across the water as we returned, a welcome sight in January. A lone boat zoomed past us as we left the lake behind, happy that we had escaped town for a Sunday stroll.

Click here for a slideshow from this day hike