Meador Manor

Only 1176 miles to Vegas (click image for slideshow)

Friday, May 4, 2012 was one of the district’s unused snow days for the school year and classes were dismissed. My former piano teacher, Myra Schubert, had invited me to Bethany to see her current flock of pupils at her 60th teaching anniversary recital that evening. So I looked for a day hike I could make en route and opted to try the other lake near Stillwater, Lake Carl Blackwell, having hiked at Lake McMurtry a year earlier. Carl Blackwell is a larger lake only a mile southwest of McMurtry and features over 50 miles of equestrian trails, all nicely mapped on the OSU website since the university owns the lake. My Oklahoma Hiking Trails book warned me that the area has many ticks and chiggers, so I stopped at K-Mart as I left town to stock up on Deep Woods Cutter. The forecast said I’d be hiking in the low to upper 80s, so I dressed for the heat and insects by donning a light wicking T-shirt and my RailRiders Eco-Mesh pants, which have side mesh panels down the length of each leg which I can zip open for airflow.

A later extensive internet search revealed that the lake is named for the late Carl Petty Blackwell, who graduated from Oklahoma Agricultural and Mechanical College (present-day OSU) in 1918. After serving as an agronomist for the National Fertilizer Company he became the dean of agriculture and director of the experiment station. He passed away as the lake was being constructed in the late 1930s. The lake offers a number of amenities and I was happy to pay $5 for a day use permit after exiting the Cimmaron turnpike and driving a few miles west of Stillwater to the lake.

I drove across one arm of the lake and down past a water tower to circle the lake store and get a sense of the surroundings, espying a fisherman along the shore before driving back to the then-empty Hunt’s Meadow equestrian camp to park. I walked west past a row of pine trees to a large trail map, which indicated the orange loop I’d be taking was for beginner riders. It showed a nearby blue trail was for the advanced rider looking for fun.

I crossed Highway 51C to the trailhead, which was coated with the first of the button markers and ribbons which clearly delineate each of the trails. The trail led across a meadow and across a creekbed lined with trees, a pattern which would continue for a few miles and provide me with ample opportunity to observe many butterflies darting among the flowers. I saw a lot of cow parsnip and a low clustering growth along with the occasional purple flower, flax, fleabane, and evening primrose. Some bunched up to pose together and some grouped with others of their kind. I passed one plant which at first glance looked like cow parsnip, but on closer inspection was something else.

I followed the orange markers through scrub forest and through treerows and one of the many butterflies finally paused to pose. The trail finally pushed out along one isthmus of the lake, where I took a side trail down to the shore. The Three Men in a Boat were there, evidently having finished their tour along the Thames, with a ledge-like platform sticking out of the lake near me. I passed something resembling an immense dandelion head, which the internet tells me is one stage of meadow salsify.

The trail skirted the shoreline and I passed blackberry blooms and one large toadstool, capturing a nice close-up of a purple poppy mallow. The horse trail had its expected areas of churned mud, although on one slope the horses had cut through to rock. A herd of cows across the lake streamed down into the water to cool off as I passed some very pretty sensitive briar. Beside me were the Three Men in a Boat, while an AWACS plane thundered by overhead. I was growing tired of the shoreline and was relieved when the trail ducked into the trees for an intersection with the blue trail offering crude dining benches.

Rattlesnake Ridge

I followed the blue trail up to Rattlesnake Ridge, where a box turtle bumped my boot. The ridge provided the only big rocks and high views along this hike. I was in the cross timbers, with some rather ugly trees. The grades on this trail were indeed far more challenging than the orange trail. The blue and orange trails again intersected and trees were festooned with ribbons when they parted ways again. I returned to following the orange trail, taking what a sign indicated as the Price Loop back toward the trailhead.

I passed an intimidating dead plant barrier and then the trail sidled along a barbed wire fence for a long ways. The remainder of the trail was noticeably straighter than the meandering part along the shoreline. A gap in the growth of the fencing gave a glimpse of some silly silhouettes in need of weedwacking and dragonflies darted along the trail ahead of me for awhile. A nearby homeowner had a collection of tilted birdhouses. I passed a silverleaf nightshade and a sign told me I had two more miles to go, following in the tracks of one of nature’s bandits.

I reached some water troughs where a sign told me it was only 1176 miles to Vegas. Turkey vultures circled as my trail joined several others in the Big Dip through a creekbed. The trail through the trees had grown somewhat monotonous when I was rewarded by it breaking out into a wildflower meadow with a last look at the lake.

I returned to the horse camp, where a couple of trailers and horses had come in. A friendly ranger asked about my hike, which had extended 7.9 miles, and said about 100 horses would be in by the next day for the 6th annual Poker Ride, where riders collect cards along the trail to see who winds up with winning hands. I’m sure glad I hiked the horse trails the day before that ride!

This was my second outing with my Canon Powershot SX260 HS and I was again happy with the image quality although I still have to trick it out of overexposures. The GPS continues to be balky. So long as I was careful to hold the camera with the sensor up to the sky for long enough, it would get a lock and record the coordinates, but I had to check the display each time to be sure. Many photos I failed to check still lacked coordinates, which then had to be hand-placed when uploading to Flickr. I’ve ordered a new belt case that holds the camera with the top pointing skyward, which may help. My old Panasonic cameras would just record the previous GPS lock if they didn’t have a fix at the time of a shot, which sometimes led to inaccuracy, but I preferred that to not posting any coordinates at all.

The hike was a welcome break after a stressful work week, and allowed me to break the 100 mile mark for the calendar year.

Click here for a slideshow from this day hike

At Lake Devil (click image for slideshow)

Today was the first outing for my new compact superzoom camera, a Canon PowerShot SX 260 HS. I wanted to shoot some nice scenery I’d viewed before in a different season of the year, so I opted to drive three hours southeast to Devil’s Den State Park in northwest Arkansas. My day hikes spreadsheet reminds me that I first visited Devil’s Den in November 2010. I would hike the same trails today, comparing the exfoliation of late fall to the lush growth of late spring. After my initial visit 17 months ago, I returned to Devil’s Den a year later to hike the Vista Point bridle trail south of the primary hiking trails. Some day I’d like to make the estimated 12-hour trip around the 15-mile Butterfield Trail, but that would require some planning and perseverance since I don’t like to camp, just hike. Charlie Williams of Backpacker magazine, who makes great hiking maps, made a video of a wet two-day hike there at the end of 2006 he did with Dennis England.

Off to the Devil’s Den

I made a poor choice for a hot breakfast in Bartlesville. I won’t say which diner I picked, but I should have gone to Eggbert’s instead…lesson learned. The weather forecast for Devil’s Den said overcast skies in the morning with a 20% chance of thunderstorms and clearing skies in the afternoon. Reality reversed that, with the sun starting to rip through the low clouds as I sped east along the Cherokee Turnpike. The sun would break through intermittently at Devil’s Den during the morning and early afternoon and then the clouds would seal back up.

Exposure Issues

I drove into the park three hours after leaving Bartlesville, threading my way through a flock of mountain bikers and parking at the Yellow Rock trailhead at 10 a.m. I found that the new camera’s automatic setting produced shots which looked overexposed to me, blowing out the sky every time. So I often pointed up to the sky to get it to reduce the exposure, held the shutter button down partway to lock in the settings, and then panned down to take my shot. Unsure of how well this would work, I sometimes took a regular shot and then did my exposure adjustment trick, so I took over 300 shots on today’s hike, about twice the norm. At home I found the regular shots were indeed a bit overexposed but my trick worked overall. So I need to play around some more with the camera’s exposure settings.

Contrasting Shots

Once on the trail I promptly repeated a shot of a colorful bluff I vaguely recalled making 15 months ago, allowing me to construct a seasonal contrast shot if I upscaled and downscaled to match up the 3648×2736 shot made with my Panasonic DMC-ZS3 and the 4000×3000 resolution of the new Canon. In my shot the trees and groundcover were now leafed out and the rotten hollow of an old tree had crumbled down to a stump.

Panasonic Beats Canon on Panoramas

I tried out a macro shot of a spiderwort and then tried out the stitch assist feature on the new camera, which helps you line up a sequence of photos for a panorama. The same feature on the Panasonics had a nice “ghost image” of the previous shot, using an alpha channel transparency of the image, which made it much easier to align the shots. The Canon instead shows you a much-reduced image you have to overlay over the shot you are taking, made difficult by the reduced image size and lack of transparency. The Canon does provide more overlap, which is better for software stitching, but the Panasonic’s feature’s ease-of-use makes it far superior.

In the end, the panorama of the trail ascending to hug the bluff turned out okay, and the trail then led around the overhanging bluff, with colorful layers piled overhead. The trail hugged the bluff awhile longer and then turned and climbed the mountainside, with occasional sweeping views across Lee Creek, which was hidden in the foliage below. The twisted remains of a tree projected from the end of a trail overhang and soon through the trees the yellow bluff hove into view and soon I could see the Yellow Rock lookout, with a group of hikers enjoying the vista.

Yellow Rock Overlook

Yellow Rock Overlook

I passed huge tumbled rock shelves and reached the entrance to the Yellow Rock overlook. One of the hikers was stretched out at the edge of the bluff, taking in the sweeping view across Lee Creek, with three companions perched atop Yellow Rock itself. I shot a panorama of the Lee Creek valley, which I later compared with my fall 2010 panorama. I patiently waited for the hikers to vacate the spot, allowing me to shoot a close-up of Yellow Rock with Lee Creek in the background, walk north along the bluff to view the overlook area to the south, and walk out onto Yellow Rock itself with its convenient stone seats. Soon more hikers arrived from both directions on the trail, providing a sense of scale for the huge vertical bluff.

CCC Overlook

I headed on up the mountain, with the help of stone steps, following the white trail blazes for the long walk south to the CCC overlook. A group of horses, including an Appaloosa and a Bay, was tied up where the Yellow Rock hiking trail crosses the Old Road bridle trail. A large fallen tree had fungi growing along its trunk. I crossed a couple of footbridges and climbed the trail to join other hikers at the CCC shelter at the overlook. I was able to construct another shot contrasting the fall of 2010 to the spring of 2012.

Trailside Snake

As I backtracked down the trail, the hikers who had been at Yellow Rock were stalled out. One had walked near a snake, which had reared up and flattened its head. I was no more able to identify it than they were, but I did get a nice shot of it and we stared each other down as I passed by. Soon I was back down by the bluff but rather than retrace my way to the trailhead I took a side social trail leading down to the base of a bluff and running westward. A was surprised to find a couple of buzzards along here who allowed me to approach fairly close before flapping away.

[kaptainkory on Flickr identified the snake as a hog-nose. My father used the common regional name of puff adder for it, although the internet points out that popular nickname is technically incorrect.]

The Unofficial Bluff Trail

The trail extended quite far along the bluff, tucking under high overhangs with alternating dark and light walls. The trail led on and on for a very pleasant walk with no other hikers. I posed by a cylindrical wall erosion and later sheets of rock had fallen from the bluff but not yet crumbled away. The bluff finally began to shrink and common evening primrose appeared by the trail, fooled into opening by the shade. The unofficial trail ended at a campground, with huge tilted slabs of rock.

Lee Creek

I backtracked along the park road and down to Lee Creek and took the River Trail back to the main bridge and the picturesque small shelter nearby. Soon a father and his children were paddling a small pontoon boat alongside the shelter. I walked to the shelter toward some geese as another paddleboat slapped away down the creek. I posed in the shelter’s doorway to illustrate its diminutive size.

Devil’s Den Trail

I walked up to and along the Devil’s Den Trail, past the deep crevices, banned from intrusion as part of the ongoing effort to prevent white nose syndrome, although I saw several youths violating the ban and scrambling through a fracture cave. I suppose they’d be more conscientious if the white nose syndrome also afflicted humans. I crossed a stream which had eaten into a bluff and climbed up to shoot a panorama of the bluffside trail with a hiker providing some scale. Soon I reached Twin Falls, where I shot a panorama and constructed another seasonal comparison. I walked past the upper falls and saw that one of the sentinel trees had fallen. I saw the immense eroded rock block which reminds me of the Gaudi apartments in Spain with its window-like holes, then completed the trail and forded the creek back to my car, completing a 6-mile hike.

Devil Lake

I drove to the dam at Lake Devil, where everyone was gawking at a water moccasin, but one snake for the day was enough for me. I plopped down and had a late lunch and then washed up and changed clothes in a park restroom, glad to be rid of my sweaty clothing as well as the Cutter and sunscreen residue. I bid Devil’s Den adieu by 2:30 p.m. I was still willing to hike, but wanted more comfortable conditions. So I drove one hour north on Interstate 540 to Crystal Bridges at Bentonville.

Crystal Bridges

Crystal Bridges

Wal-Mart heiress Alice Walton has put $317 million into the new Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, a series of pavilions nestled in a ravine near downtown Bentonville, where Sam Walton opened Walton’s 5 and 10 back in the 1940s. I’m saving a visit to its interior for a future trip with a friend and fellow admirer of art. But this afternoon I figured I would have time to explore the roughly four miles of trails I’d read about which are incorporated into the museum grounds. I drove up to the main entrance, which is heralded by one of Roxy Paine’s stainless steel trees, or dendroids. This one is titled Yield and is less dramatic than his Conjoined, which I’ve seen at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. The first parking lot was full, so I drove back to one at the end of the Orchard Trail, a wide wiggling concrete path leading through the trees back to the main entrance. Its borders were outlined with many tall wildflowers.

The main entrance leads to an elevator and stair tower which affords a view of the pavilions below. I descended to the courtyard and located another piece of exterior art, Robyn Horn’s Already Set In Motion, made of redwood that has been dyed black. Soon I was walking down the Rock Ledge trail, which led for half a mile due north. There were wild hydrangeas along the trail, and soon I walking beside the eponymous ledge, hewn out in the 19th century for a railroad which was never built. A stone monolith of fascinating hues and texture marked the end of the line but the trail curved back to form the mile-long Dogwood Trail leading south.

A number of trees had been cut down and the pieces stacked between trees or used for stools. Trees still to be removed had a large blue X sprayed onto them. There were tree thrones carved here and there, and I posed on one. By now I’d made over 275 shots for the day and the camera’s GPS has been on for almost six hours. I knew the previous Canon camera GPS units were notorious battery hogs, so I wasn’t too surprised that the battery was almost out. The spare I’d bought and charged up was back in my pack in the car, so I was glad to find the Dogwood Trail led straight to the outer parking lot so that I could replenish.

I headed northwest on the half-mile Tulip Tree Trail, which hugged and crossed a ravine. A short side trail looped around a ravine carved by Crystal Spring, a natural spring which feeds the museum’s ponds. I like the stone bench they had built into the side of the trail.

I reached the paved 1/3 mile Art Trail, which led across a creek to where some gentlemen were confronting Stella, a bronze pig by André Harvey with a funny expression. A lovely trail area was not improved, in my opinion, by Dan Ostermiller’s Shore Lunch. I just don’t care for the thick rounded forms he uses in his bear bronzes. I’m also a philistine when it comes to James Turrell’s Way of Color, a “Skyspace sculpture” I mistook for a restroom because of a nearby sign. Evidently when it is operating you sit inside the space near sunset and artificial colors and the view of the darkening sky through the oculus provides a fun visual experience. Too bad its exterior looks so much like a 1960s state park restroom boondoggle. The actual restroom is up a side trail and rather more prosaic…and smelly.

There were more bears to come, this time Paul Manship’s Group of Bears, this version being cast decades after it was modeled. It was originally made for a gateway at the Bronx Zoo. The minimal detailing on the figures originally would not have mattered, since they would have been positioned twenty feet up in the air.  I admired some blue false indigo flowers nearby and then climbed along the 1.5 mile Crystal Bridges Trail to an overlook area providing a view of the pavilions to the east, with tall trees rising beyond.

Beside the trail was one of the fifteen Grains of Sand stones by Robert Tannen which line the various trails. Farther along were stones crossing the creek, forming A Place Where They Cried by Pat Musick and Jerry Carr to commemorate the Trail of Tears, part of which flowed about two miles north of the museum site. I then backtracked to the North Lawn Trail, which is a wide grassy trail delineated by concrete curbs. I had seen couples and families spread out to relax and picnic on the expansive north lawn earlier when I passed above it on the Rock Ledge Trail.

That trail led to the most disappointing artwork of the day, Lowell’s Ocean by Mark di Suvero. Roberta Smith admired this 20-foot-tall 26,000 pound monstrosity when it was installed in New York. I wish it had stayed there, as I find such huge abstract steel jumbles an ugly blot on the landscape compared to the weird elegance of something like Paine’s dendroids.

I descended to the courtyard level and briefly toured the gift shop before heading to the car, passing more pretty flowers. I’d hiked 4.5 miles around the grounds of the museum and look forward to returning later this year to view the art collection inside.

My New Camera Has Significant Drawbacks

It was a fun day and my camera gave me some nice shots. But its automatic mode tends to overexpose photos and I had to resort to significant post processing at times. Compared to my previous Panasonic Lumix camera it has worse battery life, inferior panoramic stitching assistance, and the GPS is far worse, often failing to geotag photos with no discernible pattern or reason for that failure.

The camera’s body design has ergonomic and design errors, such as a power button which is too difficult to press, being buried in a slight hollow. And the battery and memory card compartment lid wraps around the tripod screw mount, forcing me to remove my GorillaPod’s quick release clip every time I need to remove or insert either the battery or the memory card.

These shortcomings are quite disappointing, but the camera does take nice shots overall. I’ll play around with the exposure settings and see if other owners are reporting GPS problems. Perhaps I just have a defective unit.

Click here for a slideshow from these day hikes

Earth Day at Elk City Lake (click image for slideshow)

I could claim that I went hiking on the best trail in Kansas today because it was Earth Day. But I’ll admit that didn’t cross my mind when I decided to hike the eastern section of the Elk River Trail on this cool, sunny spring Sunday. I’d spent almost six hours on Saturday at the school, helping with the Chemistry Olympiad and meeting teaching position candidates at the district’s job fair. So I was anxious to take a long hike the following day while the great weather lasted. I opted to revisit the eastern five or six miles of the Elk River Trail an hour north up at Elk City Lake.

In 2010 I hiked the entire 15 miles of that trail, separating it into a series of day hikes. And I’ve hiked the other trails at the lake multiple times. The Table Mound trail has a National Recreation Trail designation and is quite nice, but I must agree with a camper along the Elk River Trail who commented back in 2010 that it is the best trail in Kansas I’ve taken thus far. Our neighboring state doesn’t have the geographic diversity of Oklahoma and is, well, rather flat for the most part. I’ve spent 15 days hiking eight different trail areas in southeastern Kansas since 2009 and will say that the rugged limestone bluffs of the Elk River are a welcome change of pace…literally.

This was the last hurrah for my Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS10 compact superzoom camera since a replacement Canon Powershot SX 260 HS will arrive in two days. Perhaps I should say it is the last hiss for the Panasonic, not hurrah, since today it amply demonstrated why I’m replacing it. Many of the shots I took today were a blurry overexposed mess, so my narration sometimes uses clearer shots from the return trip later in the day just so you have something to look at. The camera’s focus and exposure misbehavior is intermittent.

But even if only a fraction of my photos could convey it, today was a glorious day for a hike. I parked alongside three other cars at the eastern trailhead near the dam at 9 a.m. and headed through the beautiful glade and across the creek to climb the hillside to the limestone bluffs. The trail leads into a huge corridor-like crack in the rock, leading eastward until you exit the huge crevice to walk under rock overhangs around the edge of the mound at the west end of the dam. I took a self-portrait along the lush trail, wearing my hunter orange cap in the chilly breeze while my iPhone played dark Lana del Rey tunes.

A flock of birds flew by overhead as I admired how green and lush the trail was, quite a contrast to when I hiked here in February of 2010. I reached a road and followed it to the dam, then returned to the trail. Eventually the trail led down through a very narrow cleft in the rock to a lower area of the bluff. The trail is splendid through here, but sadly my camera had blurry vision.

At a high ledge a number of buzzards were wheeling about in the hard breeze. A man and his dog, complete with its own backpack, passed by. The trail led along high bluff edges and then down through the bluffs and along their walls. I passed the two-mile marker and soon the Dolores Baker bench, honoring a long-time member of the Kansas Trails Council, marked the end of the major bluff segment. It was a welcome spot for an early lunch.

On down the trail, where a tongue of rock projected upward, a group of six or more hikers passed by, returning to the trailhead. They had full packs with bedrolls, so I figure they camped along the trail. The trail crossed an old road and I took the washed out path down to the shore. I followed the shore westward around a point and returned by some low brick ruins, but all of my shots along here were useless except for one close-up of a brick made in Coffeyville.

I passed an unoccupied campsite, crossed a pretty waterway (rendered blurry by the camera, sadly) and trekked onward past the all-too-frequent blue blazes. After the 5-mile marker the trail was riding the top of the bluffs and I plopped down on one narrow ledge for a self-portrait. Below I could see where the Elk River was feeding into the lake.

Out on the topland I took a macro shot of a tiny cluster of flowers, complete with golden green fly. At least the macro mode still worked! I tried in vain to snap a shot of the turkey vultures fluttering in the strong breeze above me, but it was not to be.

I finally reached an overlook where I could see the Elk River in the distance and decided to reverse course. Today’s peregrination would extend to 11.5 miles over 6.25 hours.

I made my back along the bluffs, passing pockmarked stone and trees in the trail, rounding bulging bluffs and passing eroded areas resembling stacked rock walls, plus a few real rock walls marking old pioneer claims. Cobwebbed crevices and beautiful bluffs passed by, along with one of my students and his parents, whose happy greeting reminded me it was Earth Day.

Soon I was re-entering the rock corridor and descending the hill to the trailhead. It was a splendid hike I shall repeat some day, armed with a better camera. I’m lucky to have the trails of Elk City Lake and Osage Hills close by, although when time allows I’ve still some more distant and novel trails to explore.

Click here for a slideshow from this day hike

Down Winding Stair Mountain (click image for slideshow)

A year ago I made a loop hike over Winding Stair Mountain off the Talimena Skyline Drive in the Ouachitas of southeastern Oklahoma, hiking a portion of the Old Military Road built in 1832 from Fort Towson to Fort Smith. With severe weather forecast throughout northern Oklahoma for the weekend, I decided to flee the storms to spend Friday night in Poteau so I could start early on Saturday for a longer loop hike from Holson Valley Road to the Talimena Skyline Drive, including two miles along the Old Military Road. I’d been planning this hike ever since I discovered it on Charlie Williams’s OuachitaMaps.com.

So after school let out I drove out of Bartlesville under lowering skies to Tulsey Town for dinner and to buy a few of Charlie’s preprinted maps at Backwoods. The trip south took me through one thunderstorm, but Tulsa itself was only having sprinkles as I came through. I drove under gray skies to find Cavanal Hill still looming over Poteau, where I spent the night at the Days Inn. I was paying more than twice what I would have spent for a night next door at the Black Angus Motel, which I actually did stay in over 45 years ago. Yes, I was at the Black Angus when I was about three months old, joining my parents and a neighbor family for a fall foliage tour which I of course have no recollection of whatsoever. Mother, whose memory of details always astounds me, not only remembered the name of the motel but recalled that we had a restless night there, with her wishing the room had a rocking chair.

My sleep now was less fitful, perhaps in part due to the somewhat improved accommodations, although the hotel WiFi was a fiasco and the water pressure in the near-empty inn was so strong my shower had the bathtub a quarter full by its conclusion. The hot breakfast included eggs, bacon, and sausage, so I was quite content as I drove toward Winding Stair Mountain, making a stop at a Tote-A-Poke for some water and a Lunchable for the trail.

Ooo, when I get so hungry…Tote-A-Poke
I could almost eat a donkey…Tote-A-Poke
I want me something crunchy…Tote-A-Poke
I want a lots of lunchy…Tote-A-Poke
For a sandwich or a Twinkie, or something cold to drinky…

In high school and college my friend Jeff and I noted all of the crazy convenience store names as we drove hither and yon across the Sooner State and beyond. We sniggered more at Kum & Go than Tote-A-Poke, I’ll admit. I wasn’t singing the Tote-A-Poke rap as I drove out of Poteau, however. Instead I was rocking to Heavy Chevy on the recently released Boys & Girls debut album of the Alabama Shakes.

I climbed into the Ouachitas and turned off on wide lonesome Holson Valley Road, taking the Boardstand Trail turnoff, which my lousy camera refused to focus on. Oh how I am looking forward to replacing the futzy thing. There were several cars already there and I headed off down the trail, which was a riot of greenery until the forest canopy thickened. I would follow white blazes today since the spur I was on would soon dead-end into the Boardstand Trail, which you can follow westward to the Old Military Road or southeast to Deadman Gap and Horsethief Spring. They all sound like fun destinations!

Over the river and through the woods I went…well, I did ford a few narrow forest streams. On a couple of occasions the trail ran alongside incongruous barbed wire fencing in the middle of the forest and it crossed and recrossed a wide gravel forest rood which I would use for my return journey. Seldom did the forest open up much, although in one area of thinned cover a tree had an unusual lower canopy. The rare open area was a welcome respite from the enclosing woods on this overcast morning and I enjoyed walking through some of the very tall trees.

A pretty butterfly posed for me, flexing its wings and then holding still for close-ups. Eventually I reached the Old Military Road, made evident by the wider path often levelled out by stonework and fill. I reached the trail junction where a year ago I’d turned aside for the Choctaw Nation Trail and I thus retraced sections of the old road with admirably preserved stonework. The one-wagon-width road curved again and again as it wound its way up Winding Stair Mountain toward today’s Skyline Drive.

I passed spiderwort and went through a fence gateway as I climbed to Oklahoma Highway 1. More spiderwort attracted my eye in clusters of two and more, with more pretty wildflowers, including some Baby Blue Eyes. I reached the Talimena Skyline Drive trailhead, where I saw a young couple setting out back along my path. Precisely three hours, to the second, after leaving my car I reached a picnic table for lunch. I’d averaged 2.2 miles per hour on the way out as I walked up and down the inclines and climbed the 700+ feet to the Skyline Drive. I intended to beat that pace on the way back by taking the forest road the trail had crossed multiple times.

The path back was strewn with flowers at first and happily the sun broke through the clouds as I retraced my path, cheering me along as I passed another couple out hiking and later a tattooed man and his dog. I noted where the faint trace of the old military road continued northward while today’s hiking trail curved eastward toward the forest road, which I followed after turning off by the barbed wire fencing to find a gate to frighten dumpers, with only ruins beyond.

The forest road had only one tree down across it, sawn for clearance but with a scattering of pine cones. I propped my camera on one of the boulders by the roadside for a blurry self-portrait and marched along the road admiring the layers of forest ahead of me and blue skies above. Every so often there would be a clearing to one side, often with a fire ring of stones showing folks like to camp along here. I reached the car before 2:30 p.m., having completed 13.4 miles and improved my earlier 2.2 mi/h pace to 2.8 mi/h along almost five miles of forest road.

I headed back homeward, taking scenic highway 82 across the San Bois Mountains and zooming to Tulsa for dinner and then to Bartlesville with sun rays poking through the low clouds. It had rained 2.5 inches in my absence and the wind must have been fierce, as I found the front yard and driveway completely covered in branchlets from the River Birch tree. I like the shade it provides, but its constant shedding of branchlets and the way it fills the gutters each spring with its female catkins can be tiresome. One day I’ll replace it with a nice Japanese Maple or Chinese Pistache to join my Cherry Laurel.

Although this day hike cost me $45 in gasoline and $92 for a passable hotel room, it was a welcome escape to the piney woods. Next weekend I will be stuck at school all day Saturday helping with the chemistry olympiad (don’t ask) and meeting teaching candidates at our job fair. But May will bring several three-day weekends during which I can hope to hike before the summer broil begins.

Click here for a slideshow from this day hike